The Best Restaurants in San Leandro
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The best restaurants in San Leandro, according to the experts: Michelin Guide and San Francisco Chronicle have both weighed in, and their honors are what rank this list. Top Hatters Kitchen comes out on top.
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Fusion Delight and Pearl Bay Tea House hold the next two places. San Francisco Chronicle shows up on more of this list than any other guide, with Michelin Guide next.
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Rank 1. Top Hatters Kitchen
Contemporary Vietnamese
The lush courtyard patio in a quiet San Leandro neighborhood is reason enough to seek this place out, but the kitchen delivers the follow-through. A Vietnamese-Californian restaurant born from a former hat shop, with cocktail names still nodding to millinery, it holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand. The chef and co-owner built her reputation slinging Italian zeppoles from a food truck, and that playful instinct runs through every dish on the menu.
The awards
- Michelin Guide Michelin Guide: Bib Gourmand
- San Francisco Chronicle San Francisco Chronicle: The best Vietnamese restaurants in the Bay Area
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Rank 2. Fusion Delight
Cantonese
Gold flower fixtures hang from the ceiling of this grand San Leandro banquet hall, where the projectors are always ready for the next big event and the dim sum carts have been replaced by tablets. It's a multigenerational scene, grandparents and kids at the same table, tea steaming alongside turnip cakes. The strawberry taro balls, crunchy outside and custard-oozing within, tend to stop conversations mid-sentence.
The awards
- San Francisco Chronicle San Francisco Chronicle: Best dim sum restaurants in the SF Bay Area
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Rank 2. Pearl Bay Tea House
Dim sum Chinese
Lazy Susans on every large table and clubby blue ceiling lights give this San Leandro dim sum house more party energy than you'd expect from a shopping plaza. The menu runs through the classics: taro cakes, pork siu mai, rice rolls stuffed with shrimp and yellow chives. The shrimp balls arrive so crunchy that staff split them tableside with scissors, which is a small performance worth witnessing. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the Bay Area's top dim sum spots.
The awards
- San Francisco Chronicle San Francisco Chronicle: Best dim sum restaurants in the SF Bay Area
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Rank 2. Tio's Mediterranean Grill
Middle Eastern
Two Latino chefs who spent careers in Mediterranean kitchens run this casual East Bay restaurant, which wanders freely across Persian, Iraqi, and Afghani cooking without planting a flag in any one of them. The menu splits into grilled and sautéed plates, both arriving with vivid yellow basmati rice. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the Bay Area's top Middle Eastern spots, which tracks for a room this unpretentious doing food this specific.
The awards
- San Francisco Chronicle San Francisco Chronicle: Best Middle Eastern restaurants in the Bay Area