The Best Restaurants in Sunnyvale, by the Record

A dim sum restaurant attached to a Sunnyvale Ramada Inn sounds like a punchline, but the kitchen-feed TV looping footage of cooks pulling noodles and stir-frying greens sets the tone quickly. This is a spacious, serious dim sum house with a sunroom and patio, serving har gow, barbecue pork buns, and chicken feet glossed in sweet sauce. The house chile oil quietly runs the whole operation. Black charcoal buns filled with salted egg custard are the crowd favorite.

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A halal grocery and meat market in Sunnyvale that also happens to run a charcoal grill out back. Order a koobideh or chicken tikka skewer and about fifteen minutes later someone emerges with an aluminum tray lined with lavash, which quietly absorbs all the smoky, spiced drippings. The San Francisco Chronicle named it one of the Bay Area's top Middle Eastern spots. Sides you'll have to source elsewhere, but the skewers alone make the detour easy to justify.

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Chaat done properly is tactile work, and this sunny Sunnyvale spot leans into that, handing you puffy bhatura to mop up simmered chickpeas or letting you crack open semolina puri with your fingertips before filling them with tamarind water. It grew out of a popular food truck, and the families who used to find it in parking lots now get a plant-filled patio instead. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the Bay Area's best South Asian restaurants.

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The menu roams from South Indian chicken 65 to Indo-Chinese noodles to biryani without feeling like it's hedging its bets, which is a harder trick than it sounds. This casual Indian restaurant in a strip mall along El Camino earned a San Francisco Chronicle nod for South Asian dining in the Bay Area. The Vijayawada biryani, where the rice simmers in a tomato-onion gravy until each grain is loaded, is the kind of dish that makes the drive feel incidental.

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Saigon Seafood Harbor runs a hybrid system: you fill out a paper order slip, then carts bring the food anyway. It's a dim sum parlor in a Sunnyvale strip, and the barbecue pork buns arrive with that glassy, lacquered top that signals someone is paying attention. The siu mai gets a drizzle of chile oil, and the scallop dumplings are translucent little parcels with enough celery to keep things bright. Weekend tables fill fast, so come early or come hungry enough to wait.

1. San Francisco Chronicle Best dim sum restaurants in the SF Bay Area