The Best Chinese Food in Los Angeles

Tucked into Mandarin Plaza on Broadway, this contemporary Chinese American restaurant and bar is the project of a first-generation chef cooking his own story onto the plate. The cocktail program is serious enough to earn national bartender recognition, so start there before the food arrives. Dishes are built for sharing, the kitchen is open to the room, and the whole setup feels more like a dinner party than a transaction.

1. Esquire Bartender of the Year · Kenzo Han
2. Punch Best New Bartenders · Kenzo Han
3. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Time Out The best Chinese restaurants in America

A scarlet lobster logo, shells painted gold and silver on the wall, and half the tables splitting one at any given hour make the signature self-evident at this Cantonese restaurant in Alhambra. Henry's is an unassuming room doing homestyle cooking that's increasingly hard to find, selected by the Michelin Guide and named to the LA Times' 101 best. Come at dinner when the full menu opens up, and ask what vegetables are in season.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
2. Los Angeles Times The 101 Best Restaurants in California
3. Time Out #34 · The 40 best restaurants in Los Angeles you need to try right now

The strip-mall facade on Las Tunas gives nothing away, but inside, the room goes full imperial, red and gold and blue, with the kind of scale that makes you feel a dinner party is the minimum viable unit. This is fine dining rooted in royal Manchu cuisine from the Qing court, so luxury ingredients arrive without apology. Come with a crowd and order widely; the menu rewards the ambitious table. A Michelin Guide selected restaurant.

1. Chinese Restaurant Awards Elite 12 United States
2. Los Angeles Times #88 · The 101 best restaurants in Los Angeles
3. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Los Angeles

Chengdu Taste does not negotiate with your spice tolerance. This Alhambra Sichuan restaurant has been packing in crowds for years without once softening its approach, and the dining room smells like chili oil and vindication. Toothpick lamb, heavy with cumin, is the move that everyone talks about. The Michelin Bib Gourmand is on record here, and lunch is the local's trick for skipping the line that forms most evenings.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand
2. Time Out #36 · The 40 best restaurants in Los Angeles you need to try right now

Dim sum ordered off a menu rather than flagged down from a cart means everything arrives from the steamer still properly hot, which sounds obvious until you've had the other kind. This Cantonese seafood restaurant in Rosemead holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand and draws the kind of crowd that fills large round tables for both weekend dim sum and proper evening dinners. The seafood is the reason to stay through dinner.

1. Chinese Restaurant Awards #6 · Elite 30 Canada
2. James Beard Awards 2022 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: California · Tony Ho

Order at the wood counter, catch a glimpse of the kitchen behind it, and try not to eat the pastries before your food arrives. Liu's Cafe is a small, low-key Chinese diner on 6th Street where the seats fill fast and the menu leans into comfort: wontons, braised pork belly rice, chili oil noodles, a pot of milk oolong on the side. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand, and the sesame cold noodles won a LAist Best Bites nod.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand
2. LAist Sesame cold noodles · Best Bites

The menu at this tiny Arcadia noodle shop is short by design, because the kitchen is doing exactly one thing: Shanxi-style hand-pulled noodles, springy and chewy in a way that dried pasta simply isn't. The pork belly and fermented soy number has regulars arguing over what to call it. A Michelin Bib Gourmand, cash-and-carry energy, and a strip mall address that filters out anyone not paying attention.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

The parking lot fills fast and the wait on weekends is real, but this Cantonese noodle shop in Rosemead moves its crowd along with the confidence of a place that has never needed dim sum carts to draw a line. Everything arrives hot and carefully seasoned, from steamed buns packed with char siu to rice noodle rolls that most tables order twice. A Michelin Bib Gourmand, and priced like they forgot to notice.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

A sign-in sheet on the sidewalk is your first clue that this strip-mall dumpling shop in Monrovia runs on its own terms. The menu is short, roughly half of it devoted to the namesake specialty, and the kitchen makes everything fresh each morning rather than pulling from a freezer. The pan-fried options tend to disappear fastest. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand, which explains the lines without quite preparing you for them.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

Sichuan cooking in a bright, window-lined room in Alhambra, where the mapo tofu and tea-smoked duck have followed loyalists from the old address a couple miles away. The kitchen runs on scarlet numbing oils and chopped chilis, and a bowl of fish in rattan pepper broth will leave your lips buzzing in the best possible, er, notable way. A Michelin Bib Gourmand, and a private room handles large parties well.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

1. Chinese Restaurant Awards Top 20 Honourees · Elite 12 United States

1. Chinese Restaurant Awards Top 50 Honourees · Elite 30 Canada

1. AAA Three Diamonds

A large window into the kitchen lets you watch steam rise off the bamboo stackers all day long, which sets the mood nicely for this casual dim sum shop in an Arcadia strip mall. Everything is ordered from a menu rather than plucked from carts, so bring a plan. The team behind Sea Harbour in Rosemead runs this one, and regulars who know that pedigree tend to fill the tables early on weekends.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The refrigerators hum louder than the dining room at this bare-bones dumpling shop tucked into the back of a City of Industry strip mall. Water is available if you ask, and the menu makes more sense once you find the poster on the wall. None of that matters much when handmade dumplings arrive with fillings like lamb with fennel or pork with lotus root, and noodles come glossed in scallion oil.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The chewy, seafood-studded rice noodles are a reason to organize a group dinner in San Gabriel, which is exactly how this Southeast Asian seafood restaurant operates best. Chinese, Thai, Cambodian, and Vietnamese cooking styles all converge on one very long menu, and the servers genuinely steer you away from decision paralysis. Salt and pepper crab is the move, but the beef loc lac quietly earns its table space too. Selected by the Michelin Guide.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. AAA Approved

1. AAA Approved

The beef noodle soup here has a peppery, slow-built broth that earns its reputation quietly. This is a Taiwanese-Chinese casual spot in Irvine, the kind of place where the noodles, crispy pork chop over rice, and spicy wontons keep the room perpetually full. A few Sichuan dishes round out the menu, including a beef tendon with garlic sauce that regular customers seem to order without looking down. Fast service, warm room, zero pretension.

1. Eater The 38 Essential Orange County Restaurants

A food concept from B.J. Novak that treats chain restaurants as source material rather than punchlines, Chain landed its first permanent home inside a mall food court, which feels exactly right. Four chefs each riff on a fast-food classic: a Cantonese fish sandwich, a spicy chicken number, a teriyaki bowl, a mapo wagyu wrap. The nostalgia is the point, and the execution is the twist.

1. Eater The Hottest New Restaurants in Los Angeles

A Sichuan restaurant on York Boulevard with a bright green facade that makes it hard to walk past, even if you're committed to a different dinner. The cooking leans on the chef's Chengdu roots while poking at newer ideas, and the wings and fries come dusted in ground spices, which is how fries should be seasoned. The noodles are handmade nearby, and they're the reason to bring a table full of people.

1. Eater The Best Restaurants in Highland Park

Beijing duck carved tableside is the move at Mr. Chow, the Beverly Hills fine dining institution that helped reframe what Chinese food could look like in America. The room leans glamorous, the prices lean ambitious, and the clientele leans toward people who treat both as a given. Dumplings, hand-pulled noodles, and stir-fries round out a menu that draws from upscale pre-revolution Chinese cooking rather than the takeout canon. Steely Dan wrote about it, which tells you something.

1. Eater The Best Beverly Hills Restaurants

1. Los Angeles Times #95 · The 101 best restaurants in Los Angeles

1. Los Angeles Times #101 · The 101 best restaurants in Los Angeles

1. Los Angeles Times #101 · The 101 best restaurants in Los Angeles

1. LAist Specialty Dynasty Xiao Long Bao · Best Bites