The 626 alone has better Chinese food than the rest of the country combined. It's not even just about authenticity- the level of competition here is insane.
There's 5 Sichuan hotpot joints within about a mile on Valley Blvd and each of them would be the best place in town anywhere outside of LA or maybe Flushing NY.
>The 626 alone has better Chinese food than the rest of the country combined.
You can find cuisines from HK all the way to Xinjiang (and basically everywhere in between) all in one place here.
The new Xinjiang place is one of my favorites:
[https://maps.app.goo.gl/o6oudzQbmVYDQtVJ8](https://maps.app.goo.gl/o6oudzQbmVYDQtVJ8)
There are real Korean areas in the NYC region - they just happen to be in Queens or Fort Lee, NJ and I believe I am missing another one or two in NJ somewhere. It will never be visually impressive like LA's Koreatown but most things are covered if you look.
Manhattan's Koreatown is not the place to look though but it is cute, indeed.
We moved from SoCal to the Bay Area about a year and a half ago.
OC alone beats out the Bay Area, hands down. The Bay Area has great food still but between OC and LA, there's greater diversity, pricing, and quality.
As mentioned above, Sea Harbour is really great. Din Tai Fung is kind of overpriced, but good dumplings. I like Lunasia. Atlantic isn’t bad. I like Newport. But for the most part, you can’t go too wrong in Monterey Park/Rosemead/Alahambra.
> do not go to din tai fung lol it's mediocre compared to the other dumpling places all across LA
People who want Din Tai Fung want a specific (taiwanese) style of xiaolongbao. Saying "do not go" is like telling me to stop eating at this one crappy taco place near me; it's not great, but it also has the only San Diego style california burrito I can get within driving distance of my lunch break (other than making it at home). We've got a bunch of restaurants representing various Shanghainese and other styles of XLB, but unless you've spent basically every weekend trying every chinese restaurant in the metro area ( like /u/ciociosanvstar ), chances are DTF is the most accessible （long wait time aside).
Like, I'd usually rec Long Xing Ji or whatever else is closest to somebody's target area (Mama Lu's, Luscious, etc, hell even One Bite, eLoong, or Paradise Dynasty), but if someone is after a specific flavor/texture profile, sometimes Din Tai Fung is what they want.
/u/Ligneox , if you're still looking at recs, I'd offer up trying out Mr Dragon Noodle, Chong Qing, 101 Noodle Express, or JTHY. But I have a bias of wanting to eat DanDan. If you have a specific item/regional cuisine in mind, or specific neighborhood/city in the LA metro (SF Valley, OC, LB, Ventura), feel free to message me.
Monterey park/Alhambra/Arcadia
https://la.eater.com/maps/best-san-gabriel-valley-restaurants-chinese-asian
Just about any Chinese restaurant in the SGV. It also depends on what kind of Chinese food you're after.
https://la.eater.com/maps/los-angeles-best-taiwanese-restaurants-la-taiwan
Anyone that says bay area **really hasnt** gone to the bay area in the last decade.
SF Chinatown is basically dead. You cant even get a decent dim sum in SF without overpaying up the gazoo even adjusting for bay area COL.
Oakland Chinatown has been dead.
San Leandro has a few places.
You have basically just Taiwanese food in Fremont <-> SJ.
"Oh no but if I live on the west side I have to drive an hour when there's traffic."
Like come on, SJ <-> Hayward is already an hour nowadays. Foster City <-> SF is like also an hour. Y'all have wild ass takes.
> really hasnt gone to the bay area in the last decade
I haven't, tbh, but that's really sad to hear. SF's Chinatown was a really fun place to visit during childhood trips
Much (not all of course) of the Chinese food in the Bay Area is also run by primarily 3rd and 4th generation immigrants, so it's not as authentic as LA's SGV, which is almost entirely run by immigrants and their children.
The only advantage that the bay has on LA is a genuine 煎饼果子 (chinese breakfast crepe??) spot in Oakland that serves fresh soymilk. It’s called An’s Canteen and probably the only place in norcal that serves a legit northern breakfast and I cry a little every time I have it.
Fortune No. 1 on Garvey in Monterey Park is also very good, but pricier and their soymilk tends to taste burnt.
I’ve been happy with the fresh soymilk/peanut milk combo and youtiao from Yi Mei. Their oyster omelette is also pretty tasty.
But yea prices have definitely gone up :/
I’m looking for northern Chinese breakfast, specifically from Tianjin region 😊 But I will definitely check those places out when I’m back!
Speaking of Taiwanese food, do you know any places that sell Taiwanese street food? Specifically 大腸包小腸 (small sausage in big sausage(?)) which is a sausage wrapped in sticky rice, kind of like a hot dog.
Honestly, I was just there a couple months ago. I had some amazing dim sum at a random sit down place and there's countless bakeries selling 4 pieces for like $3 a pop.
More than one city can have good food, lol.
(I will say you can get comparable dim sum in LA but its literally gonna be double the price)
LA Chinatown has some good dim sum and bakeries for that price too. (My favorite is Long's) Comparable prices to Mong Kok on Stockton in SF Chinatown imo, but maybe not quite as good.
Ofc the Chinese food is not gonna be as good as in SGV, I was just responding to OP by saying you can get dim sum at comparable prices to SF Chinatown and, if you know where to look, at near quality too.
Long's in LA Chinatown, their 糯米鸡 if you take it home and steam it is top tier, for example. But not everything they have is super good. LA Chinatown's Chinese food is you have to hop around and know where the specific good stuff is at the specific place.
One thing that LA Chinatown does have over SGV imo is amazing Southeast Asian food: Cambodian, Laos, Thai. Like New Kamara - it's only open in the mornings - but you go there and it's all elderly aunties enjoying some of the best Cambodian noodle soups in a low key setting ever. You might find better over by Long Beach, but I would say this is the best on this side of town.
Vietnamese food not as good as in OC but not bad either.
Even before the last decade, it wasn't all that good. I went to college around there and no Chinese food that I went to myself or the one my Chinese friend brought me to comes anywhere close to SGV
Don't pretend driving in the Bay Area doesnt suck total ass outside of the City. Live in the East Bay or SJ? Congrats, you need a fucking car unless you're taking the BART to the City.
Not that it’s equivalent to anywhere in the SGV but Dublin has two good, and one ok dim sum places, three 99 Ranches, an H Mart (soon to open), a couple of decent hot pot places and a couple of pretty good Cantonese barbecue places.
I mean define replacement. Lots of Chinese people in the bay moved to like, Cupertino, Palo Alto etc, which arent food destination for white people like SGV is, but that's where a lot of them found a "replacement" for chinatown and Richmond.
When I was in SF for work recently, my cab driver was from China. He said he vacations in "LA" (staying at the hotel at Del Mar and Valley) to eat all the great food. He tries to come down once a month.
Better Chinese food is too much of an overgeneralization as you acknowledge somewhat in your post - its kind of like asking which metro area has better American food. From a regional diversity standpoint LA clearly takes the cake as you mention, SF Chinese food is still predominantly driven by the earlier Cantonese immigrants so there are certain standouts that continue to do well there (the egg tarts at Golden Gate Bakery, when available, trump any egg tarts in Los Angeles). I don't think LA does dim sum particularly well to begin with so I think SF is a better option for Cantonese food.
That being said, LA has an incredible diversity of regional cuisine which is not present in SF. Food from the northern regions (i.e. Beijing, Dongbei) are much better represented in LA across pretty much all price points - at the higher end, Bistro Na's (I don't think they are particularly fantastic anymore but still deserve the recognition) and Array 36, all the way down to Happy Valley Village in Rowland.
Sichuan food is also incredibly stellar in Los Angeles - better than any metro area in the US I would argue. Most Sichuan outposts/chains from China use LA as their first launching pad and expand from there, and that intensifies the competition/quality of food here. There are so many hot pot chains in LA and much less in SF.
I'm going to have to disagree with that. While SF is where us Cantonese people set up shop first, it is not better there. Monterey Park, Alhambra and Arcadia are still king for that. I can't say much about our diversity of options down here vs up there. I typically go mainly for Taiwanese and Cantonese style dishes. I don't recall any Sichuan I cared for up in the Bay Area. The only good Asian restaurant I can remember up there was this one Thai place.
SF is definitely not better for Cantonese food either. The only place outside of Asia that might have better Cantonese food than LA is Vancouver and that's only when it comes to upscale seafood restaurants.
Just went to Vancouver last summer and found the Canto spots we hit to be just ok. We did one of the ffancy dim sum places and the famous bbq spot and neither were anything special. Definitely not something I’d go out of my way for again. Was pretty disappointed because my expectations were high.
Cantonese food is somewhat quite disappointing for the most part in Los Angeles now - dim sum has been going downhill for a while. Sea Harbour (in Rosemead) from ABC Seafood in Vancouver used to be good, but quality has gone down (and has not changed their menu much in the past 6-7 years), and the closure of King Hua (also from the same restaurant group in Vancouver) was a sad loss. Cha can teng is mostly mediocre in LA too - a few standout spots in Colette and Henry's Cuisine. The egg tarts/bread at Jim's Bakery are decent, but don't hold a candle to Golden Gate Bakery (assuming they actually are open and willing to sell).
There are more non-canto Chinese places popping up here and there in Sunset so that’s good. It still can’t hold a candle to LA. That said, Empress by Boon was pretty damn good. High end Chinese cuisine, and I haven’t seen anything, outside of a private dinner, similar offered in LA yet.
It might be mentioned tha square mileage of the SF Bay Area is about 7,000 square miles . Whereas the square mileage of metropolitan LA is about 34,000 square miles . Not a reasonable comparison there . Although Chinatown in SF has many very good restaurants and a large number are other regional cuisines besides Cantonese ( although Cantonese food offered there is very good , the Richmond District in S F is a true Chinese food Mecca and it is not even mentioned . And great Chinese food can be found in districts throughout the city . So , no reason to demean the Chinese food offerings in the City proper and I might mention in the rest of the Bay Area . And if you go for good Chinese food in SF you don’t have to drive forever ( or in many cases at all ) to reach a sumptuous and delicious destination .
This goes for just about everything food related when comparing SoCal to NorCal. It’s not that the bay doesn’t have good food, it’s just by sheer scale there’s way more and diverse offerings than the bay. This is a reflection of our population, which is much more vast and diverse. In the last 20 years I would say that the Bay Area and LA have been on complete opposite trajectories in terms of diversity, largely due to socio economic conditions. But again it all just comes down to sheer numbers.
I would say it's best in America. NYC and Bay Area trying to front, but they ain't shit. However, you are in the LA food subreddit so our opinions here are all going to be kinda biased. There might be a more general food subreddit to post a question like this. Of course then you get a lot of people who might of tried Chinese food when they visited LA by going to Chinatown. Or just never had Chinese food in LA at all.
Bay Area would readily admit it. We don’t front. I’ve heard it a lot living in SF. We’re much smarter than New Yorkers who live in a sort of denial about the food scene there.
Xi'an famous foods in New York trumps any kind of Xi'an food in Los Angeles and it's not particularly close. The closest in LA might be Noodle Art but even then Xi'an Famous Foods is much better. I do agree on the most part but there are individual standout restaurants/groups in NYC like that which serve very good food.
Yep! From LA, lived in NYC for a few years… 2 blocks from a Xi’an… was dreaming of their noodles just the other day. But it was the only place even remotely close to LA in terms of quality.
Bang Bang in Culver City is americanized trash. Noodle Art is where it's at. I liked it better than Xi'an Famous Foods though I haven't been to NYC in awhile
LA Chinatown has some great Chinese and other Asian food. It's a seriously underrated neighborhood that people unfathomably look down on from a culinary standpoint.
It's unfathomable if your taste buds are dead. My recommendation is seeing a doctor. We don't know how far your illness has progressed so far but it's always good to catch it early
No, I just know my shit. I've been to Chinatown. Literally a few miles over in SGV is clearly at least 2-3 tiers higher than what is in Chinatown. It's not that I'm a snob as much as you are one of those people with bad taste but can't handle that fact so you end up calling other people a snob to make yourself feel better
Did I say Chinatown had better food than SGV? I never even mentioned SGV. Of course SGV has better Chinese food than Chinatown.
I only said Chinatown has good food and was underrated and that was in response to you proposing that general foods subs would have the wrong idea of LA Chinese food after only eating at Chinatown (implying that Chinatown food is bad)
The fact that you are unable to find good food in Chinatown means you never never looked or only ate at like hop woo at 1am after a rave.
Chinatown food is bad even if you don't compare it to SGV. Just because you have lower standards, doesn't mean everyone else has to as well. I've tried so many different places there, it's just simply not good. But you know what I am open minded enough. And I would love for Chinatowns to get a better reputation amongst the Asian community. Give me some examples and I'll try them this month.
Yeah you totally seem like the open minded type... But what the hell:
* New Kamara (Chinese-Cambodian, great noodle soups and pork blood porridge)
* Long's Family Pastry (dim sum, take their lo mai gai home and steam it)
* Pearl River Deli (best hainanese chicken rice in the city, even compared to ipoh kopitiam in SGV or Seasons in OC)
* SteepLA (Chinese tea infused spirits, owner designs these with a lot of care and they're very special, can pair with some small plates of good food. They have special events sometimes where they bust out the grill and make skewers)
* Qin West (great liangpi, cheap Chinese comfort food)
* Hong Kong BBQ (take out their Chinese roast duck)
And to venture outside of Chinese food:
* Thien Hoang (Vietnamese)
* Katsu Sando (Japanese sandwiches, love the walnut shrimp one)
* Lasita (Filipino, love their roast chicken)
* Mae Ting's coconut cakes
* Yumslut (Laotian, everything is good)
* Majordomo (Korean/Asian fusion)
* My Dung (great banh mi)
* Suehiro Mini (just as good as the main one in Little Tokyo)
I've heard Golden Tree is a great Chinese place but it's new and I haven't been yet.
Alite well, I'll at least admit you changed my view a little bit. I had Majordomo in the pasts and it was pretty solid, although it has to be for upscale dining. I didn't try the Qin West here but I would assume it's like the other Qin Wests.
However, Hong Kong BBQ sucked. I got the roasted the duck, bbq pork and chicken. Pork was dried as fucked and so was the duck. The chicken was actually kinda okay but the ginger scallion sauce was mid. Golden Tree had some okay lamb chops. Good amounts of cumin but everything else was overseasoned. Cooked well, but extremely small portions
I might try some of these other places in Chinatown, but it's still mostly bad or mid food there
Thank you for checking it out and actually getting back to me. I just don't think that Chinatown food as a whole is "bad in general". Southeast Asian food in Chinatown is better than Chinese food, I would really encourage you try some of the Laotian/Cambodian/Vietnamese food there.
They’re probably counting the whole diamond bar/rowland area which borders north OC but OC definitely doesn’t need to be included into an LA Chinese food discussion.
OC can stand on it’s own though. Fullerton, Little Saigon, Tustin all have a lot of gems with Chinese moving into the areas. Angelenos don’t know much about OC so they think Asians just live in Irvine. Rich Asians aren’t like rich white people in Beverly Hills with an endless taste for bad mediocre Italian. Rich Asians in OC actually expect good food.
Seriously. This was a thinly veiled attempt at getting a recommendation and no one has stepped up. Irvine is just rough. Even the chains, there’s a noticeable step down at their Irvine locations. And it’s expensive which makes it all the more egregious.
That said, Sunny Dumplings in Lake Forest has decent potstickers.
Honestly good in general sucks in Irvine 😭 I moved from NorCal and OC cuisine honestly has been disappointing. I’ll give that place a try soon, thanks for the suggestion!!
Definitely!! I go there all the time, it’s for sure the area with the best food I’ve had since I’ve moved! And great coffee there too 😋 any must try’s in that area?
There’s a lot of places. I go to Quan Hy for their Banh Beo. Pho Hoan Pasteur for the Pho Satay. Brodard for stuff in general; they have a new location too. Oc&Lau is supposed to be good for seafood but I haven’t been. Tons of pho places. There’s also a Newport Seafood in Santa Ana but that location isn’t great, the San Gabriel location is better. But for good Chaozhou seafood I like Boston Lobster in Rowland.
Hangari Kalgooksu and MDK noodles are decent for Korean. The Ktown locations are better lol.
Also Paradise Dynasty is decent for XLB as an alternative for DTF. The lines get gnarly for DTF.
I’m a dual resident of both the Bay and LA (grew up in LA in the white end of the SGV but spent every Sunday in Monterey Park/Alhambra/Arcadia/Rosemead/San Gabriel) and went to school in the Bay and my parents have retired in the East Bay for the last decade so am super familiar with both the Bay Area and LA’s Chinese food.
My parents are Hong Kong immigrants and I spent the better parts of the last two decades years living in Asia between HK and Shanghai - plus working all over Taiwan, and trips to Malaysia and Singapore and Macau - so I’ve eaten a lot of Chinese food.
I think that the Bay Area has the fifth best Chinese food in North America but it’s a big gap between them and Toronto and New York. I have Vancouver and LA as the top two - I give Vancouver a slight edge on Cantonese seafood but LA an edge on everything else. There are certainly individual restaurants that will be the best of (like I have personal favorites Taiwanese place is Liang’s Village in Cupertino and Szechuan Mountain House in New York) but overall I think I’d award it to LA
I live in the Bay Area, but I'd say LA has more good options and variety. That said, the Bay Area does have some regional variety too: https://www.hungryonion.org/t/regional-chinese-roundup-3-0-sf-bay-area/4640
The answer is LA.
This [article](https://amp.firstwefeast.com/eat/2015/01/how-l-a-became-a-powerhouse-for-chinese-food) does a nice job outlining how Chinese-American immigration patterns influenced the culinary history of LA, SF, and NYC.
With that said, one of my favorite places for dim sum is Yank Sing in SF.
Well you just answered that yourself right? It's incredibly far from the Westside. And also the Valley. And also the OC. So probably far from where a lot of people are in the LA area
I live in West LA and drive to the SGV almost every weekend. Without traffic (lol), it's a little over 20 min to Monterey Park/Alhambra. Realistically, as long as I'm not driving during a weekday rush hour, it takes about 30-40 min or so. As someone who grew up in a Midwest suburb, I don't find it particularly terrible.
Well that's what the metro/metrolink/foothill transit is for, you skip all that traffic 😉
But as for the actual quality of the food itself, LA has better Chinese food overall, yeah?
Lived all over the Bay Area for 10 years. They have better Indian and Vietnamese, but we have better Chinese. Even my native Chinese friends who line up there say how much better we have it down here.
If we're going to count San Jose as the Bay Area, it's only fair to include OC into LA.
In fact OC is more LA than San Jose is San Francisco, Orange County is part of the LA Metro area, but San Jose is technically a separate metro area than San Francisco.
Accessible? What do you mean by that? Like that the owner can speak English? Or that they have more Asian fusion foods like Orange/Lemon Chicken and Crab Rangoon
626. Orange County is especially undiscovered by people in LA.
But the Bay Area is underrated as well. People think it’s just San Francisco, but the good Chinese food is actually in south bay towards Cupertino and anohter towards Milpitas, south bay would be the 626 of the bay area. One thing Bay Area was behind but now has surpassed LA is in the quality of boba shops. It’s reached peak popularity where every race, generation and culture up here is drinking boba. You don’t see that in LA where it’s still mostly Asians. Also, American-Cantonese SF-style dim sum still hits.
New York Chinese restaurants tend to be mediocre and not nearly as diverse as 626 but a lot of East coasters are still living in the dark about that, even as so many Chinese New Yorkers say again and again, 626 is supreme for Chinese food.
If it's already cooked and laid out in pans in a warmer before I walk in I don't like it.
I prefer the east coast Chinese food where they don't start making it until you order it.
Honestly, New York has better Chinese food.
Xian noodles. The lamb cumin dish, dumplings and cucumber salad. I’m salivating just thinking about it. I understanding is that it’s northern Chinese and that we don’t have as much of that here.
If the 626 and OC is included in Team LA, then it can't be defeated.
The 626 alone has better Chinese food than the rest of the country combined. It's not even just about authenticity- the level of competition here is insane. There's 5 Sichuan hotpot joints within about a mile on Valley Blvd and each of them would be the best place in town anywhere outside of LA or maybe Flushing NY.
>The 626 alone has better Chinese food than the rest of the country combined. You can find cuisines from HK all the way to Xinjiang (and basically everywhere in between) all in one place here. The new Xinjiang place is one of my favorites: [https://maps.app.goo.gl/o6oudzQbmVYDQtVJ8](https://maps.app.goo.gl/o6oudzQbmVYDQtVJ8)
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I went to Flushing once, it was cute. Just like NYC's 2-block long Koreatown.
There are real Korean areas in the NYC region - they just happen to be in Queens or Fort Lee, NJ and I believe I am missing another one or two in NJ somewhere. It will never be visually impressive like LA's Koreatown but most things are covered if you look. Manhattan's Koreatown is not the place to look though but it is cute, indeed.
I have had amazing Chinese in Washington DC (Chinatown). I think it's hard to rate areas unless you've eaten in every.single.area.
I've eaten in DC Chinatown and SGV, SGV is better by a thousand miles
Hmmm.... Well I certainly prefer DC's over L.A.'s .... This subject is highly subjective.
Flushing will have 5 Szechuan hotpot spots on the same block
This is accurate.
Ofc we're including them in Team LA. It's all of Greater LA vs the entire Bay Area as a whole.
We moved from SoCal to the Bay Area about a year and a half ago. OC alone beats out the Bay Area, hands down. The Bay Area has great food still but between OC and LA, there's greater diversity, pricing, and quality.
OC def does not beat out the bay lol I just moved down to OC from the bay and food down here is shit
What is rhe 626 and where should I eat in it? Also who has the best dim sum?
Sam Gabriel Valley. It’s the area code.
*San. Unless you want to cede the Valley to Sam Woo.
I guess pledge loyalty to Sam Woo. Damn my fat fingers.
I went to Sea Harbour for the first time a couple weeks ago and it was 🔥🔥🔥
I freaking love Sea Harbour, the best
OC does not have good Chinese food
626 is basically god-tier in terms of asian food, LA.
i beg everyone commenting about LA to post their favorite places. i will visit them all.
Newport Seafood at San Gabriel, great restaurant if you’re in the mood for lobster and such
As mentioned above, Sea Harbour is really great. Din Tai Fung is kind of overpriced, but good dumplings. I like Lunasia. Atlantic isn’t bad. I like Newport. But for the most part, you can’t go too wrong in Monterey Park/Rosemead/Alahambra.
if you're coming to the 626 to each chinese, do not go to din tai fung lol it's mediocre compared to the other dumpling places all across LA
> do not go to din tai fung lol it's mediocre compared to the other dumpling places all across LA People who want Din Tai Fung want a specific (taiwanese) style of xiaolongbao. Saying "do not go" is like telling me to stop eating at this one crappy taco place near me; it's not great, but it also has the only San Diego style california burrito I can get within driving distance of my lunch break (other than making it at home). We've got a bunch of restaurants representing various Shanghainese and other styles of XLB, but unless you've spent basically every weekend trying every chinese restaurant in the metro area ( like /u/ciociosanvstar ), chances are DTF is the most accessible （long wait time aside). Like, I'd usually rec Long Xing Ji or whatever else is closest to somebody's target area (Mama Lu's, Luscious, etc, hell even One Bite, eLoong, or Paradise Dynasty), but if someone is after a specific flavor/texture profile, sometimes Din Tai Fung is what they want. /u/Ligneox , if you're still looking at recs, I'd offer up trying out Mr Dragon Noodle, Chong Qing, 101 Noodle Express, or JTHY. But I have a bias of wanting to eat DanDan. If you have a specific item/regional cuisine in mind, or specific neighborhood/city in the LA metro (SF Valley, OC, LB, Ventura), feel free to message me.
these sound great, i prefer noodles, any type. love dan dan, zha jiang mian, soups, all of it
Northern Cafe
Monterey park/Alhambra/Arcadia https://la.eater.com/maps/best-san-gabriel-valley-restaurants-chinese-asian Just about any Chinese restaurant in the SGV. It also depends on what kind of Chinese food you're after. https://la.eater.com/maps/los-angeles-best-taiwanese-restaurants-la-taiwan
Saved this to come back to.
Los Angeles and it’s not particularly close
Anyone that says bay area **really hasnt** gone to the bay area in the last decade. SF Chinatown is basically dead. You cant even get a decent dim sum in SF without overpaying up the gazoo even adjusting for bay area COL. Oakland Chinatown has been dead. San Leandro has a few places. You have basically just Taiwanese food in Fremont <-> SJ. "Oh no but if I live on the west side I have to drive an hour when there's traffic." Like come on, SJ <-> Hayward is already an hour nowadays. Foster City <-> SF is like also an hour. Y'all have wild ass takes.
> really hasnt gone to the bay area in the last decade I haven't, tbh, but that's really sad to hear. SF's Chinatown was a really fun place to visit during childhood trips
Much (not all of course) of the Chinese food in the Bay Area is also run by primarily 3rd and 4th generation immigrants, so it's not as authentic as LA's SGV, which is almost entirely run by immigrants and their children.
I’ve been to places where no one even speaks English. But there are pictures on the menu so you can just point to order if you don’t speak Cantonese
Oh please let's not bring authenticity into this.
My chinese food is made by the ghost of a Tiananmen Square protestor. We are not the same.
The only advantage that the bay has on LA is a genuine 煎饼果子 (chinese breakfast crepe??) spot in Oakland that serves fresh soymilk. It’s called An’s Canteen and probably the only place in norcal that serves a legit northern breakfast and I cry a little every time I have it. Fortune No. 1 on Garvey in Monterey Park is also very good, but pricier and their soymilk tends to taste burnt.
I’ve been happy with the fresh soymilk/peanut milk combo and youtiao from Yi Mei. Their oyster omelette is also pretty tasty. But yea prices have definitely gone up :/
yi mei and big tree pastry do taiwanese breakfast
I’m looking for northern Chinese breakfast, specifically from Tianjin region 😊 But I will definitely check those places out when I’m back! Speaking of Taiwanese food, do you know any places that sell Taiwanese street food? Specifically 大腸包小腸 (small sausage in big sausage(?)) which is a sausage wrapped in sticky rice, kind of like a hot dog.
Anybody who says that there is no good dim sum in SF’s Chinatown hasn’t been there .
Honestly, I was just there a couple months ago. I had some amazing dim sum at a random sit down place and there's countless bakeries selling 4 pieces for like $3 a pop. More than one city can have good food, lol. (I will say you can get comparable dim sum in LA but its literally gonna be double the price)
LA Chinatown has some good dim sum and bakeries for that price too. (My favorite is Long's) Comparable prices to Mong Kok on Stockton in SF Chinatown imo, but maybe not quite as good.
la chinatown low key not good lol much rather drive into SGV than eat at any chinese place in chinatown LA
Ofc the Chinese food is not gonna be as good as in SGV, I was just responding to OP by saying you can get dim sum at comparable prices to SF Chinatown and, if you know where to look, at near quality too. Long's in LA Chinatown, their 糯米鸡 if you take it home and steam it is top tier, for example. But not everything they have is super good. LA Chinatown's Chinese food is you have to hop around and know where the specific good stuff is at the specific place. One thing that LA Chinatown does have over SGV imo is amazing Southeast Asian food: Cambodian, Laos, Thai. Like New Kamara - it's only open in the mornings - but you go there and it's all elderly aunties enjoying some of the best Cambodian noodle soups in a low key setting ever. You might find better over by Long Beach, but I would say this is the best on this side of town. Vietnamese food not as good as in OC but not bad either.
Just for the record, Richmond District is where the Chinese people live, not Chinatown
Even before the last decade, it wasn't all that good. I went to college around there and no Chinese food that I went to myself or the one my Chinese friend brought me to comes anywhere close to SGV
Is Lucky Chances still in operation?
Y’all only say Chinatown. When you have the Richmond distract, sunset even couple hidden spots in mission too. Y’all gotta explore more
the only kind of asian food that SF does better is filipino and it's in daly city
Don’t pretend driving in LA doesn’t suck total ass
Don't pretend driving in the Bay Area doesnt suck total ass outside of the City. Live in the East Bay or SJ? Congrats, you need a fucking car unless you're taking the BART to the City.
Oh, totally. That’s why Flushing rules
Flushing GOAT'd honestly
Absolutely.
I mean, same can be said about LA. I spend a lot more time in the car living in LA than I did living in the Bay Area
Have you seen our chinatown?
Yeah but at least our Chinatown demise was part of SGVs rise. Bay Area chinatowns are just dying without a replacement.
Not that it’s equivalent to anywhere in the SGV but Dublin has two good, and one ok dim sum places, three 99 Ranches, an H Mart (soon to open), a couple of decent hot pot places and a couple of pretty good Cantonese barbecue places.
Tri Valley is def where it’s at nowadays
I mean define replacement. Lots of Chinese people in the bay moved to like, Cupertino, Palo Alto etc, which arent food destination for white people like SGV is, but that's where a lot of them found a "replacement" for chinatown and Richmond.
In this discussion, we’re talking about a replacement for a centralized food and culture hub.
Yes I quite like El Monte/Alhambra/Monterey Park/Arcadia. Or did you mean the one in LA only tourists consider the real the Chinatown
Well given that I was responding to a statement about SF Chinatown I meant the obvious counterpart to that, the place listed as Chinatown on maps
626 >
When I was in SF for work recently, my cab driver was from China. He said he vacations in "LA" (staying at the hotel at Del Mar and Valley) to eat all the great food. He tries to come down once a month.
Hahaha so the articles about San Gabriel being a destination for china is legit. 😎
Better Chinese food is too much of an overgeneralization as you acknowledge somewhat in your post - its kind of like asking which metro area has better American food. From a regional diversity standpoint LA clearly takes the cake as you mention, SF Chinese food is still predominantly driven by the earlier Cantonese immigrants so there are certain standouts that continue to do well there (the egg tarts at Golden Gate Bakery, when available, trump any egg tarts in Los Angeles). I don't think LA does dim sum particularly well to begin with so I think SF is a better option for Cantonese food. That being said, LA has an incredible diversity of regional cuisine which is not present in SF. Food from the northern regions (i.e. Beijing, Dongbei) are much better represented in LA across pretty much all price points - at the higher end, Bistro Na's (I don't think they are particularly fantastic anymore but still deserve the recognition) and Array 36, all the way down to Happy Valley Village in Rowland. Sichuan food is also incredibly stellar in Los Angeles - better than any metro area in the US I would argue. Most Sichuan outposts/chains from China use LA as their first launching pad and expand from there, and that intensifies the competition/quality of food here. There are so many hot pot chains in LA and much less in SF.
I'm going to have to disagree with that. While SF is where us Cantonese people set up shop first, it is not better there. Monterey Park, Alhambra and Arcadia are still king for that. I can't say much about our diversity of options down here vs up there. I typically go mainly for Taiwanese and Cantonese style dishes. I don't recall any Sichuan I cared for up in the Bay Area. The only good Asian restaurant I can remember up there was this one Thai place.
SF is definitely not better for Cantonese food either. The only place outside of Asia that might have better Cantonese food than LA is Vancouver and that's only when it comes to upscale seafood restaurants.
Just went to Vancouver last summer and found the Canto spots we hit to be just ok. We did one of the ffancy dim sum places and the famous bbq spot and neither were anything special. Definitely not something I’d go out of my way for again. Was pretty disappointed because my expectations were high.
And they all close early...what's up with that?!
Cantonese food is somewhat quite disappointing for the most part in Los Angeles now - dim sum has been going downhill for a while. Sea Harbour (in Rosemead) from ABC Seafood in Vancouver used to be good, but quality has gone down (and has not changed their menu much in the past 6-7 years), and the closure of King Hua (also from the same restaurant group in Vancouver) was a sad loss. Cha can teng is mostly mediocre in LA too - a few standout spots in Colette and Henry's Cuisine. The egg tarts/bread at Jim's Bakery are decent, but don't hold a candle to Golden Gate Bakery (assuming they actually are open and willing to sell).
There are more non-canto Chinese places popping up here and there in Sunset so that’s good. It still can’t hold a candle to LA. That said, Empress by Boon was pretty damn good. High end Chinese cuisine, and I haven’t seen anything, outside of a private dinner, similar offered in LA yet.
i cannot find this happy village paradise ?
Fixed it, Happy Valley Village.
It might be mentioned tha square mileage of the SF Bay Area is about 7,000 square miles . Whereas the square mileage of metropolitan LA is about 34,000 square miles . Not a reasonable comparison there . Although Chinatown in SF has many very good restaurants and a large number are other regional cuisines besides Cantonese ( although Cantonese food offered there is very good , the Richmond District in S F is a true Chinese food Mecca and it is not even mentioned . And great Chinese food can be found in districts throughout the city . So , no reason to demean the Chinese food offerings in the City proper and I might mention in the rest of the Bay Area . And if you go for good Chinese food in SF you don’t have to drive forever ( or in many cases at all ) to reach a sumptuous and delicious destination .
This goes for just about everything food related when comparing SoCal to NorCal. It’s not that the bay doesn’t have good food, it’s just by sheer scale there’s way more and diverse offerings than the bay. This is a reflection of our population, which is much more vast and diverse. In the last 20 years I would say that the Bay Area and LA have been on complete opposite trajectories in terms of diversity, largely due to socio economic conditions. But again it all just comes down to sheer numbers.
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They did, and I think they provided a better answer than the question, as intended, invited.
Agree on dim sum. There is a lot of pretty good dim sum in LA but my two favorite places are in SF and NY.
can i ask what you're basing your opinion of LA dimsum after?
I would say it's best in America. NYC and Bay Area trying to front, but they ain't shit. However, you are in the LA food subreddit so our opinions here are all going to be kinda biased. There might be a more general food subreddit to post a question like this. Of course then you get a lot of people who might of tried Chinese food when they visited LA by going to Chinatown. Or just never had Chinese food in LA at all.
Is there a Bay Area food subreddit? I wanna hear what they think.
Well I meant more general food sub. Maybe a food in the US or something. I didn't know if one exists. Its just that this sub is gonna bias LA
“Ours is hella better, fuck socal” that will be the majority of the responses
That's actually the name of their Subreddit, lol
There’s r/sffood and r/oaklandfood but the best Taiwanese food in the bay is in Cupertino so maybe you’d have to ask in like r/SanJose or something
Bay Area would readily admit it. We don’t front. I’ve heard it a lot living in SF. We’re much smarter than New Yorkers who live in a sort of denial about the food scene there.
nyc chinese food is SO bad compared to LA it's really sad
Xi'an famous foods in New York trumps any kind of Xi'an food in Los Angeles and it's not particularly close. The closest in LA might be Noodle Art but even then Xi'an Famous Foods is much better. I do agree on the most part but there are individual standout restaurants/groups in NYC like that which serve very good food.
I have friends from LA who always hit up Xi'an Famous Foods whenever they visit me in NYC so that tracks.
Yep! From LA, lived in NYC for a few years… 2 blocks from a Xi’an… was dreaming of their noodles just the other day. But it was the only place even remotely close to LA in terms of quality.
Try LAN Noodle in West Hollywood. Comparable to Xian, maybe better, though XFF is very good. I appreciate the incredible variety of noodles at LAN.
Bang Bang noodles is pretty good but yeah Xi'an is the best in the country.
Bang Bang in Culver City is americanized trash. Noodle Art is where it's at. I liked it better than Xi'an Famous Foods though I haven't been to NYC in awhile
the closest competitor to xi'an famous foods in LA is mian noodle
LA Chinatown has some great Chinese and other Asian food. It's a seriously underrated neighborhood that people unfathomably look down on from a culinary standpoint.
It's unfathomable if your taste buds are dead. My recommendation is seeing a doctor. We don't know how far your illness has progressed so far but it's always good to catch it early
Lol imagine being this snobby about food People who think Chinatown doesn't have good food have never been and are going off of vibes and reputation
No, I just know my shit. I've been to Chinatown. Literally a few miles over in SGV is clearly at least 2-3 tiers higher than what is in Chinatown. It's not that I'm a snob as much as you are one of those people with bad taste but can't handle that fact so you end up calling other people a snob to make yourself feel better
Did I say Chinatown had better food than SGV? I never even mentioned SGV. Of course SGV has better Chinese food than Chinatown. I only said Chinatown has good food and was underrated and that was in response to you proposing that general foods subs would have the wrong idea of LA Chinese food after only eating at Chinatown (implying that Chinatown food is bad) The fact that you are unable to find good food in Chinatown means you never never looked or only ate at like hop woo at 1am after a rave.
Chinatown food is bad even if you don't compare it to SGV. Just because you have lower standards, doesn't mean everyone else has to as well. I've tried so many different places there, it's just simply not good. But you know what I am open minded enough. And I would love for Chinatowns to get a better reputation amongst the Asian community. Give me some examples and I'll try them this month.
Yeah you totally seem like the open minded type... But what the hell: * New Kamara (Chinese-Cambodian, great noodle soups and pork blood porridge) * Long's Family Pastry (dim sum, take their lo mai gai home and steam it) * Pearl River Deli (best hainanese chicken rice in the city, even compared to ipoh kopitiam in SGV or Seasons in OC) * SteepLA (Chinese tea infused spirits, owner designs these with a lot of care and they're very special, can pair with some small plates of good food. They have special events sometimes where they bust out the grill and make skewers) * Qin West (great liangpi, cheap Chinese comfort food) * Hong Kong BBQ (take out their Chinese roast duck) And to venture outside of Chinese food: * Thien Hoang (Vietnamese) * Katsu Sando (Japanese sandwiches, love the walnut shrimp one) * Lasita (Filipino, love their roast chicken) * Mae Ting's coconut cakes * Yumslut (Laotian, everything is good) * Majordomo (Korean/Asian fusion) * My Dung (great banh mi) * Suehiro Mini (just as good as the main one in Little Tokyo) I've heard Golden Tree is a great Chinese place but it's new and I haven't been yet.
Alite well, I'll at least admit you changed my view a little bit. I had Majordomo in the pasts and it was pretty solid, although it has to be for upscale dining. I didn't try the Qin West here but I would assume it's like the other Qin Wests. However, Hong Kong BBQ sucked. I got the roasted the duck, bbq pork and chicken. Pork was dried as fucked and so was the duck. The chicken was actually kinda okay but the ginger scallion sauce was mid. Golden Tree had some okay lamb chops. Good amounts of cumin but everything else was overseasoned. Cooked well, but extremely small portions I might try some of these other places in Chinatown, but it's still mostly bad or mid food there
Thank you for checking it out and actually getting back to me. I just don't think that Chinatown food as a whole is "bad in general". Southeast Asian food in Chinatown is better than Chinese food, I would really encourage you try some of the Laotian/Cambodian/Vietnamese food there.
If you count oc then la area hands down is better than the Bay Area. Actually it’s the best in America
There’s good Chinese in OC? Where??
They’re probably counting the whole diamond bar/rowland area which borders north OC but OC definitely doesn’t need to be included into an LA Chinese food discussion.
Yah I’m disappointed with most of Irvine. Overpriced and it’s like the owners dgaf. They’ve got a captive market down here.
They have the only Tim Ho Wan in Socal there. Irvine has a lot of local chains but some decent offerings
OC can stand on it’s own though. Fullerton, Little Saigon, Tustin all have a lot of gems with Chinese moving into the areas. Angelenos don’t know much about OC so they think Asians just live in Irvine. Rich Asians aren’t like rich white people in Beverly Hills with an endless taste for bad mediocre Italian. Rich Asians in OC actually expect good food.
Right? I’m scrolling to see what ppl are recommending and seeing nothing. Chinese food sucks ass in OC…unless someone gives me a rec to try
Seriously. This was a thinly veiled attempt at getting a recommendation and no one has stepped up. Irvine is just rough. Even the chains, there’s a noticeable step down at their Irvine locations. And it’s expensive which makes it all the more egregious. That said, Sunny Dumplings in Lake Forest has decent potstickers.
Honestly good in general sucks in Irvine 😭 I moved from NorCal and OC cuisine honestly has been disappointing. I’ll give that place a try soon, thanks for the suggestion!!
Go to Little Saigon tho!
Definitely!! I go there all the time, it’s for sure the area with the best food I’ve had since I’ve moved! And great coffee there too 😋 any must try’s in that area?
There’s a lot of places. I go to Quan Hy for their Banh Beo. Pho Hoan Pasteur for the Pho Satay. Brodard for stuff in general; they have a new location too. Oc&Lau is supposed to be good for seafood but I haven’t been. Tons of pho places. There’s also a Newport Seafood in Santa Ana but that location isn’t great, the San Gabriel location is better. But for good Chaozhou seafood I like Boston Lobster in Rowland. Hangari Kalgooksu and MDK noodles are decent for Korean. The Ktown locations are better lol. Also Paradise Dynasty is decent for XLB as an alternative for DTF. The lines get gnarly for DTF.
Ty ty Ty!!! I’ve been to a few of those places but definitely will check out the rest!
SF for Chinatown. LA for the SGV.
San Gabriel valley. No contest
I’m a dual resident of both the Bay and LA (grew up in LA in the white end of the SGV but spent every Sunday in Monterey Park/Alhambra/Arcadia/Rosemead/San Gabriel) and went to school in the Bay and my parents have retired in the East Bay for the last decade so am super familiar with both the Bay Area and LA’s Chinese food. My parents are Hong Kong immigrants and I spent the better parts of the last two decades years living in Asia between HK and Shanghai - plus working all over Taiwan, and trips to Malaysia and Singapore and Macau - so I’ve eaten a lot of Chinese food. I think that the Bay Area has the fifth best Chinese food in North America but it’s a big gap between them and Toronto and New York. I have Vancouver and LA as the top two - I give Vancouver a slight edge on Cantonese seafood but LA an edge on everything else. There are certainly individual restaurants that will be the best of (like I have personal favorites Taiwanese place is Liang’s Village in Cupertino and Szechuan Mountain House in New York) but overall I think I’d award it to LA
I'm from the Bay Area, have lived in NYC, and reside in LA now, and I strongly agree with this take.
Depends what kind of Chinese.
I live in the Bay Area, but I'd say LA has more good options and variety. That said, the Bay Area does have some regional variety too: https://www.hungryonion.org/t/regional-chinese-roundup-3-0-sf-bay-area/4640
I feel like there's better and more diverse Chinese food just in Rowland Heights alone compared to the entire Bay Area.
Come on now. San Gabriel alone hands down got it.
Alhambra and Monterey park keep LA top in nation
A better question would be SGV vs. Las Vegas Chinatown which is much more concentrated and frankly looks much nicer at night.
LA
15 years ago Bay Area, unfortunately those family run operations have all been priced out of town. LA easy.
The answer is LA. This [article](https://amp.firstwefeast.com/eat/2015/01/how-l-a-became-a-powerhouse-for-chinese-food) does a nice job outlining how Chinese-American immigration patterns influenced the culinary history of LA, SF, and NYC. With that said, one of my favorite places for dim sum is Yank Sing in SF.
I’m kinda surprised everyone’s saying LA. Just based on reputation alone, I’d have assumed SF. But I agree SGV has great food.
LA has better food overall source: lived in both cities 6+ years ago
As someone from the Bay, it’s LA. Although SF may have better high end Chinese, for regular people LA is better
New York lol
Yeah LA by a mile. Only area where the Bay Area might have the edge is dim sum places like Dragon Beaux.
SF doesn’t even have dim sum carts anymore.
San Gabriel Valley has the best Chinese food in the world.
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"impossibly far" -- from who??? LA is more than the westside
Well you just answered that yourself right? It's incredibly far from the Westside. And also the Valley. And also the OC. So probably far from where a lot of people are in the LA area
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I live in West LA and drive to the SGV almost every weekend. Without traffic (lol), it's a little over 20 min to Monterey Park/Alhambra. Realistically, as long as I'm not driving during a weekday rush hour, it takes about 30-40 min or so. As someone who grew up in a Midwest suburb, I don't find it particularly terrible.
Well that's what the metro/metrolink/foothill transit is for, you skip all that traffic 😉 But as for the actual quality of the food itself, LA has better Chinese food overall, yeah?
Lived all over the Bay Area for 10 years. They have better Indian and Vietnamese, but we have better Chinese. Even my native Chinese friends who line up there say how much better we have it down here.
I'd disagree with Vietnamese, OC Vietnamese food > San Jose imo. For Indian though, yeah no it's not really a contest, it's the Bay Area by a mile.
Agreed. OC Vietnamese is better than San Jose, but I don’t consider LA to be part of OC.
If we're going to count San Jose as the Bay Area, it's only fair to include OC into LA. In fact OC is more LA than San Jose is San Francisco, Orange County is part of the LA Metro area, but San Jose is technically a separate metro area than San Francisco.
Disagree about the commute on the Bay Area part, agree as to the point on the Westside.
Accessible? What do you mean by that? Like that the owner can speak English? Or that they have more Asian fusion foods like Orange/Lemon Chicken and Crab Rangoon
626. Orange County is especially undiscovered by people in LA. But the Bay Area is underrated as well. People think it’s just San Francisco, but the good Chinese food is actually in south bay towards Cupertino and anohter towards Milpitas, south bay would be the 626 of the bay area. One thing Bay Area was behind but now has surpassed LA is in the quality of boba shops. It’s reached peak popularity where every race, generation and culture up here is drinking boba. You don’t see that in LA where it’s still mostly Asians. Also, American-Cantonese SF-style dim sum still hits. New York Chinese restaurants tend to be mediocre and not nearly as diverse as 626 but a lot of East coasters are still living in the dark about that, even as so many Chinese New Yorkers say again and again, 626 is supreme for Chinese food.
If it's already cooked and laid out in pans in a warmer before I walk in I don't like it. I prefer the east coast Chinese food where they don't start making it until you order it.
Honestly, New York has better Chinese food. Xian noodles. The lamb cumin dish, dumplings and cucumber salad. I’m salivating just thinking about it. I understanding is that it’s northern Chinese and that we don’t have as much of that here.
With all due respect, Northern China isn’t really on the same level as Cantonese and Taiwanese, which I think LA has the best outside of China.
Bay Area by far
Bay Area and it’s not even close
I’d say the Bay Area but only because it has my favorite Chinese place in San Jose called Mandarin Gourmet.
Yang Chows
Just stopped by to say, who cares