The Best Taiwanese Food in the United States

Sneakers mounted on the wall are, in fact, for sale, which tells you everything about the vibe before you've ordered. Erik Bruner-Yang's café and all-day dining room on H Street blends a retail shop with Cambodian and Taiwanese cooking, all meant for the table to share. The caramel fried chicken has been on the menu long enough to qualify as a classic, and the Michelin Bib Gourmand suggests the kitchen isn't coasting on that.

A Taiwanese restaurant in Denver's Capitol Hill where jellyfish and pickled mustard stems show up on the menu but somehow feel like comfort food by the time they reach the table. The cocktails lean into it too, with an Old Fashioned built around rose jam and black tea. Eater named it one of Denver's best restaurants, and Westword gave it Best New Restaurant honors.

The clay pot of three-cup Jidori chicken arrives at your table still simmering, which tells you everything about how seriously this casual Taiwanese restaurant takes itself. Exposed brick, concrete floors, and a laid-back South LA vibe don't telegraph the kitchen's precision, but the Michelin Bib Gourmand does. Vegetarian takes on mapo tofu and dumplings hold their own alongside the meat dishes, and the lotus root salad is quietly worth ordering.

The tall, narrow wood-framed windows let you see the whole room before you walk in, which is a nice preview of a Taiwanese restaurant that doesn't hide anything. Eric Sze and partner Andy Chuang run a menu that moves between popcorn chicken dusted in a sweet-spicy blend and whole striped bass lacquered in black sugar and yuzu, and the beef noodle soup, built on a 16-hour oxtail broth, has a following of its own.

The pork toast, shrimp mousse pressed onto Japanese milk bread, is the detail that explains why this Taiwanese comfort food restaurant filled up fast after opening in the Mission. The chef came up through pop-up days, and that restless, inventive energy carried over into a full room and a menu that swings between numbing mala ribs and a silky tofu pudding. Eater named it one of the best new restaurants in America in 2023.

The xiao long bao are made in-house, and you can watch through the glass as the pleating happens at speed. This is the New York outpost of the global dumpling chain, set in a large underground room near Times Square that runs loud and packed most hours of the day. The New York Times gave it a star in 2024, which did nothing to shorten the line. Expect a menu of soup dumplings in various fillings, a youthful crowd, and prices that won't require a moment of hesitation.

A big live oak shades the patio, which tells you most of what you need to know about this all-day cafe and cocktail bar on West Fifth. Coffee in the morning, serious drinks by afternoon, and a menu of laid-back dishes that runs from breakfast sandwiches built around crispy hash brown patties to a Taiwanese-style fried chicken sandwich at dinner. The kind of Austin spot that makes parking feel like a personality trait, and means it.

San Dong is a Taiwanese noodle house on Bellaire Blvd where the forks, spoons, and bowls are all the to-go kind, and you grab your own containers off a shelf like it's a very small hardware store. The menu is beef noodle soup and pan-fried or steamed dumplings, and a full meal for two comes in under $20. Bring cash, tip the cashier, and don't expect much elbow room.

Doors open at 11:30 and close a few hours later, which tells you everything: this small Taiwanese restaurant in Temple City operates on its own terms, and the lines that form before opening tell you the neighborhood is fine with that. The menu hangs above the cash register, so you read it standing up. Tea arrives in a Styrofoam cup without asking. Expect to be out in twenty minutes, holding a Michelin Bib Gourmand memory.

Tucked into the back of a Rowland Heights strip mall stacked floor-to-ceiling with restaurants, this Taiwanese spot is the kind of place you almost drive past three times before finding. Inside, the warehouse floors and generously spaced tables make it unusually calm for a menu that reads like a small novel, packed with seafood, consommés, and rice dishes. The Michelin Guide gave it a Bib Gourmand, and regulars tend to already know what they're ordering before they sit down.

The facade is done up like a corner bodega, but step inside and it's all blonde wood, exposed brick, and a little bar where solo diners settle in without apology. Win Son is a bright, casual Taiwanese spot in Williamsburg that holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand, and the menu takes Taiwan's culinary landscape somewhere fresher than the usual shorthand suggests. Scallion pancakes show up alongside so many dishes that ordering them as a starter is quietly redundant.

Mainlander is a Taiwanese tasting-menu spot dressed like a midcentury tiki den, all orange-tinted light, Polynesian-style art, and vintage furniture that clearly cost someone a lot of weekends. The menu changes monthly and borrows freely from German, Sichuan, and Missouri pantries. Esquire put it on its best new restaurants list, and reservations open on the first of the month at noon, so set an alarm.

A Taiwanese café and cocktail bar tucked into a Star Metals office lobby, which sounds like it shouldn't work until you're sitting on a green velvet couch at noon eating a scallion pancake stuffed with braised beef shank. The menu shifts as the day does, coffee and pastries giving way to oyster omelets and rice bowls, then cocktails after dark. A James Beard semifinalist for Best New Bar, it holds a Michelin Guide selection too.

Taiwanese bubble tea chain Chatime lets you build your drink from the ground up, dialing in sweetness level, swapping to dairy-free, and piling on popping pearls or lychee jelly until it's exactly your problem. The UNLV-adjacent shop pours milk teas, fruit teas, and brown sugar pearl drinks to a crowd that has strong opinions about boba. A second location in the Arts District is already in the works.

String lights zigzag above the patio out back, where counter-service Taiwanese food and soft serve draw crowds to this Emeryville spot. Fried tofu skins that look remarkably like Wheat Thins share a table with grilled corn and fried chicken in a citrusy Sichuan peppercorn sauce. The housemade sparkling oolong and an unconventional sake list give you something to argue over while you wait for a seat.

A Taiwanese home-cooking spot in Bayside so far from the subway that getting there is its own commitment. The chef, owner, and entire staff is one woman, Mei Lee, so ring the counter bell and wait. She'd rather you didn't spread the word. The New York Times put it at number ten on their 100 Best Restaurants list, so that ship has sailed. Beef noodle soup, lion's head meatballs, and broth poured to the rim say everything the bare room doesn't.

The Huang family has been pressing organic artisan tofu here for decades, and the shop has quietly grown into a full hub for Taiwanese vegetarian cooking. Pick up frozen dumplings, house soy products, or pull up to the hot bar and have things ladled into a bento box. Not every item is vegan, but the staff will tell you exactly where anything lands. The San Francisco Chronicle named it one of the Bay Area's top vegetarian and vegan spots.

Fruit tarts are the whole point at this Taiwanese bakery in Alhambra, where the crusts are milled from Tehachapi Sonora wheat and the fillings lean on local farms, including strawberries from Harry's Berries. The chef trained at Le Cordon Bleu and did time at Milo and Olive, and the drinks menu runs single-origin espresso, hojicha, and seasonal sparkling sodas alongside. A focused, careful little shop doing one thing with very deliberate ingredients.