This bright, modestly-priced Chinese restaurant, nicknamed JFY Dumpling Cafe or just Dumpling Cafe, features a beautiful wooden pagoda indoors with a centerpiece table underneath. Menu highlights include a gorgeous signature xiao long bao basket with seven colorful flavors, including original pork, salted egg yolk, cheese, and black truffle. Other crowd-pleasing dishes range from boiled dumplings (pork or chicken) to shrimp and pineapple fried rice and beef chow mein. 

This Scripps Ranch establishment offers a wide range of traditional Hunan specialties, along with comfort food favorites like shrimp fried rice. The fish fillet with pickled vegetables topped with sliced hot peppers and scallions along with the tender beef and broccoli are popular. Another popular item is the marinated lamb with cumin, served on a sizzling iron plate to keep the meat piping hot and crispy. 

This Mira Mesa establishment has undergone a revival with Chinese banquet specialties, dim sum, and regular jazz performances and recently expanded with a second Chinese restaurant, Diamond Palace, in the College Area. Its all-day dim sum includes all the greatest hits, like pork siu mai and shrimp har gow dumplings; expect lines for weekend dim sum but they take reservations for parties of eight or more. 

The legendary soup dumpling restaurant from Taiwan lives up to its global reputation in the Westfield UTC mall. Diners can marvel at the rigorous dumpling-making process in the kitchen window when they first walk into the dumpling mecca. Pair the Kurobuta pork soup dumplings (also called xiao long biao or XLB) with the pear lychee martini made with whole lychees. Chicken xiao long biao has also been added to the menu as an alternative. Cap off the meal with the unforgettable moist chocolate XLB for dessert.

The UTC outpost of this hugely-popular chain specializes in a personalized, entertaining customer experience. To start, the server prepares a bowl of soup for each diner to taste; you can choose up to four bases for your table, from Sichuan spicy to tomato soup. The Dancing Noodle dish is hand-pulled at your table by an expert Dancing Noodle Master, dressed in a traditional Chinese costume with an entertaining face-changing mask. Trained in Taiwan, he performs throughout the restaurant and he even lets you try on his headdress and flutter the fan.

This cozy establishment is decorated with festive Chinese lanterns, bird cages, and wall murals depicting life in historic rural China. Part of the Dong Ting Chun chain with locations in L.A. and Las Vegas, the restaurant features traditional favorites like stinky tofu, steamed medicinal chicken soup with hog maw in a clay vessel, and Grandma’s braised pork served with steamed buns.

This fast-casual establishment, located in the 99 Ranch shopping plaza, offers quick buffet-style dishes along with the highly recommended homestyle Hong Kong dishes cooked to order in their kitchen. Along with their roast duck and barbeque spare rib dishes, their shrimp with scrambled eggs is a Cantonese specialty that leaves you craving for more.

This longstanding restaurant in Kearny Villa serves a wide range of dishes, from seafood to sizzling beef with black pepper sauce. Popular favorites include Peking duck and shrimp with honey-glazed walnuts as well as whole steamed fish and lettuce wraps filled with minced chicken.

The Hong Kong-style eatery on Convoy Street gives customers plenty of options for seafood and roast meat specialties. The roast pork belly is a standout with crunchy crispy skin combined with tender, juicy meat. Another popular favorite is the lobster, cooked as you like it: ginger and scallion, pepper garlic, or salt and pepper with butter. The add-on noodles round out the entree to balance the aromatic flavors.

Chinese restaurants from L.A. are increasingly branching out to San Diego, and Tasty Noodle House is one of them. This modest restaurant specializes in Shanghainese cuisine as well as scrumptious plates from other regions. The fish fillet and beef with spicy sauce are numbingly spicy and delicious and the Shanghai pan-fried pork buns topped with black sesame seeds are a must-try.

This homegrown popular Convoy Street establishment focuses on comfort cuisine. It’s hard to go wrong with any variation of the tasty morsels of dumplings on offer; boiled, steamed, or pan-fried are all good choices. Choose a drink from their extensive list of craft beers, whiskeys, or cocktails, like Mule in a China Shop, from the adjoining 1920s-style Shanghai Saloon.

Chinese Uyghur dishes come from the Xinjiang province where Chinese Muslims have combined a mix of Chinese and Turkish flavors in their homestyle cooking. They only serve halal meats, and their lamb is especially aromatic and tender. Try the Uyghur kebabs or the Uyghur plov — a subtle rice dish simmered in a cauldron of broth and topped with stir-fried meat mixed with carrots and onions. The hand-pulled Laghman noodles are springy and scrumptious, especially in the spicy fried noodles made with housemade spicy chili oil that you can purchase in jars to take home. 

This Cantonese restaurant is a branch of Cui House, a dining operation based out of Kunming, China with establishments listed in the Black Pearl Restaurant Guide (China’s equivalent of the Michelin guidebook, launched in 2018). Menu highlights include Cantonese roast duck, crispy slow-roasted pork belly, and salted egg yolk chicken wings.

The Convoy Street restaurant has been on the strip for nearly a decade, serving up traditional dishes along with modern favorites. Standouts include the beef with king mushrooms and dried red pepper chicken, made with small morsels of crispy chicken thighs spiked with scallions and hot Szechuan peppers.

The Shanxi region in northern China is known for its knife-cut noodles and vinegary flavors, and this establishment stays true to the traditional cooking methods. With a toothsome, bouncy texture, the house-made noodles are what make this spot special. Biang biang spicy hand-ripped noodles is the star dish, and can be ordered with spicy cumin lamb or beef brisket. 

This hot pot outpost, with headquarters in Beijing, has a 30-year history of providing a fancy version of the Chongqing specialty. Customers can choose from various soup bases, including red-hot spicy Sichuan style and mild pork bone broth. Try the house-made mashed shrimp paste as well as wagyu and Kobe beef to cook at the table. The generous snack bar includes standard condiments, as well as sweet items like fried glutinous sesame rice balls.

A spacious new Chinese restaurant and banquet hall from the owners of Golden Island in Mira Mesa features dim sum carts, roasted meats, live seafood, and other Cantonese-style dishes. Operating in the Rolando neighborhood near San Diego State University, the 15,000-square-foot space hosts two dance floors and two stages for live music with the capacity to seat 700 guests.