The Best Chinese Food in Canada

A converted gas station in a small Ontario town holds 24 seats and one Michelin star, which tells you something about what Jeremy Austin is up to. The Pine is a contemporary Chinese tasting menu restaurant where the chef's years cooking across China and Italy show up in dishes built almost entirely on Canadian ingredients. It ranks on North America's 50 Best Restaurants list. The menu cards arrive with personal stories instead of ingredient lists, which is either charming or a warning.

The roast duck arrives at the table as a ceremony, sliced tableside and served with the kind of precision that makes you feel underdressed even if you aren't. This gold-accented fine dining room on Cambie is the Vancouver outpost of a centuries-old Beijing institution, and it holds a Michelin star. The menu runs from crispy duck to bird's nest and abalone, but simple stir-fried greens with garlic pull their weight just as quietly alongside the showpieces.

Tucked behind Hong Shing on Dundas, Yan is a micro-restaurant running three nights a week for 28 guests at a time. Chef Eva Chin strikes a gong before each course, then narrates the food with warmth and disarming candour, connecting Cantonese tradition, Singaporean memory, and Hawai'ian upbringing into what she calls neo-Chinese cooking. The monthly tasting menu ends with guests leaving clutching bags of leftovers, which tells you something about the spirit of the host.

Down a Kensington Market hallway that looks like it leads nowhere, a door opens onto a loud, packed room doing serious Sichuan-inflected Chinese cooking. Chili oil, cumin smoke, and the char on silver needle noodles do most of the talking. The Hong Kong French toast with black sesame jam and oolong condensed milk is the kind of dessert that makes you forget you had a plan. Michelin Bib Gourmand.

The fish tanks near the entrance set the tone: this is a grand Cantonese seafood restaurant where the crab you're eyeing is still very much alive. The dining room runs to white tablecloths and banquet-scale celebrations, but the kitchen handles a casual dim sum lunch with equal care. Vancouver Magazine named it Restaurant of the Year, and it holds a Michelin Guide selection. Regulars know to call ahead for off-menu specials that never quite make it onto paper.

Lipstick-red banquettes and white tablecloths in Yorkville signal a Chinese restaurant with more polish than your usual regional spot. MIMI is the fancier sibling in its family of restaurants, leaning into refined technique and good ingredients rather than homestyle comfort. The menu moves across regional Chinese classics, and the four-foot belt noodles have a way of commanding the table. Groups do well here; portions are built for sharing.

Sitting at the edge of old Chinatown, Bao Bei is a Chinese brasserie where the menu reads like classic dishes that took a very interesting detour. The chef's approach leans playful rather than reverent: mantou buns packed with braised pork and miso-serrano aioli, fried rice built around bitter melon and masala-preserved mushrooms. Nothing here is trying to be traditional, and it doesn't pretend otherwise. The Michelin Guide has selected it.

The Peking duck here requires a phone call to reserve, then arrives tableside in a cloud of flambéed rum, carved to order, with the carcass reborn as soup or a peppery stir-fry for the finale. This Shaanxi restaurant on Granville pairs that theater with biang biang noodles, roast lamb, and waterfront views. A Michelin Selected pick, it draws a crowd that planned ahead and dressed for the occasion.

Hand-folded dumplings that change with the seasons set the tone at DaiLo, Nick Liu's New Asian-French restaurant on College Street. The menu is built around sharing, with dishes that are generous, boldly seasoned, and clearly personal. Whole fried trout with nam jim and Hainanese chicken with black truffle under the skin suggest the kitchen's register. The cocktails are taken seriously, and the wines are well-chosen. Come with people you like feeding.

A slim, stylish contemporary Chinese restaurant on Laurier where the menu quietly mixes Montreal sensibility into familiar staples. Sesame noodles and garlic fried rice get the same serious attention as steamed oysters with fermented black bean sauce or beef tartare spiked with doubanjiang. The cocktails follow the same logic, which is either reassuring or alarming depending on how adventurous you're feeling. Selected by the Michelin Guide.

Red lanterns and a ceramic lucky cat set the tone, but scallion bao filled with stracciatella cheese does the explaining. This tiny Bloordale Village restaurant lands a Michelin Bib Gourmand for cooking that defies easy labeling, pairing pan-fried radish cakes and pork wonton noodles with miso cheesecake and Parmesan tapioca fritters. Servers pour natural wines throughout, cheerfully, as if the bottle might run out.

You climb a flight of stairs off Cambie to find white tablecloths, chandeliers, and a wall of pristine fish tanks keeping watch over the room. It's an upscale dim sum shop drawing the kind of crowd that irons its shirts, but the Michelin Bib Gourmand signals the menu won't punish your wallet the way the setting implies. The kitchen plays dim sum mostly traditional, with occasional detours that actually make sense.

Copper and wood panels give the dining room an easy elegance, but the room is really just a warm place to sit while the kitchen does its work. This is an upscale Cantonese restaurant where the menu runs deeper than most, with a "kitchen specialties" section that includes wine-marinated crispy duck tongues and kidneys alongside the kind of congee that makes you want to cancel your afternoon. The Michelin Guide has it listed among its Vancouver selections.

The floors, walls, and tables are built partly from recycled chopsticks, which tells you immediately that this is not your grandmother's dim sum parlour. Little Bird is a casual dim sum spot in Kitsilano where the conceit is pairing classic Cantonese bites with B.C. craft beer, and it holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand for the trouble. The dumplings cover the range from ha gow to sweet corn and shrimp, and the beer list is taken as seriously as the steamer baskets.

A team visible through the back folds dumplings by hand all day at this Chinatown institution, and the room fills accordingly. It's a casual dumpling shop with a full Chinese menu, though most regulars ignore the latter. The boiled pork and dill are the ones to know. Bags of frozen dumplings sit near the door for when you want the same thing at home at midnight, which, fair enough.

Tucked onto the second floor of a shopping mall on Marine Drive, this sprawling Cantonese banquet hall is the kind of place locals fill on weekends without needing to tell anyone about it. Dim sum runs through the afternoon, with dumplings packed with shrimp that actually justify the wait. Dinner pivots to a broader seafood menu, lobster and abalone among them. The room fits large groups comfortably, which is the whole point.

Crystal bead chandeliers and a floor-to-ceiling cherry blossom mural set the scene, though families and groups make sure the room never takes itself too seriously. This is a big, boisterous Cantonese dining hall in East Vancouver, selected by the Michelin Guide, where dim sum is the main event. Diners tick off choices from a photo menu, and everything arrives from the kitchen freshly made and steaming.

March is a tiny Cantonese spot where the chef works the kitchen solo, which means the pace is set by one person and her wok. She may roll in after you've been seated, and she may hand you a deck of Uno cards while the smashed cucumber salad comes together. In exchange, dishes land the second they're done, so the jian buns arrive scalding and the eggplant has the sticky-sweet edge of something fried too hard on purpose.