Soup dumplings, Cantonese barbecue, Taiwanese hot pots, and so much more.
Written by Carlos C Olaechea & Ryan Pfeffer
Sadly, most aficionados of chewy, bouncy noodles, sticky char sui, dim sum, and other Chinese dishes know that the good stuff is in Broward County (probably one of the few things we envy about our northern neighbor). But that doesn’t mean Miami is completely devoid of great Chinese food. Hidden among our croquetas, carne asada, and griot are places making excellent soup dumplings, Cantonese barbecue, delicate Hong Kong pastries, Taiwanese hot pots, numbingly hot Szechuan dishes, homemade tofu, and so much more. Here are Miami's best Chinese restaurants.
Long Gong may look like a generic strip mall restaurant, but it’s unique in that it specializes in dishes from Guanxi, unlike most of the restaurants on this guide, which serve food from Guangdong (a.k.a Cantonese food). So there are things on the menu at this casual University Park spot you literally won’t see in any other Chinese restaurant in Miami. A meal here can include a clay pot of hearty braised pork belly and crispy fried taro wedges, delicate scrambled eggs with tomatoes in an umami gravy, and cold shredded chicken drenched in a spicy, numbing chili oil. Ordering the Guilin rice noodles, though, is non-negotiable. It’s a famous dish from the owner’s hometown and includes a bit of tableside showmanship as a server pours a sweet and savory beef broth seasoned with Chinese five spice into a tureen of noodles and mixes in sliced beef, peanuts, and scallions before doling out portions into individual bowls.
This casual yet lively spot is the only Taiwanese restaurant we’ve found in Miami. The University Park restaurant specializes in hot pots—but not the d.i.y. kind. Instead, you select one of Hi Pot’s cauldrons filled with all sorts of texturally interesting things that cook at the table over portable gas burners. The Taiwanese supreme spicy hot pot—our favorite—includes over 20 ingredients like instant ramen and tofu puffs. If that sounds too busy, they also have simpler pots. But everything is customizable, including the broth’s spice level. One cauldron can easily feed two hungry and/or hungover FIU students. The Taiwanese popcorn chicken and the stinky tofu—classic Taiwanese night market snacks—are must-order appetizers. Just make sure to leave room for tong sui, a refreshing dessert soup, especially the mango sago.
The name of this tiny North Miami Beach vendor inside iFresh is a tad misleading. It’s not the seafood that brings us here—it’s one of Miami’s absolute best Peking duck and soy sauce chicken. Both birds are juicy and flavorful right down to the bone. They also prepare deliciously sticky spare ribs and rotate a few other roasted meats on the menu. You can also browse through iFresh—one of Miami’s best Chinese supermarkets—or grab a drink at Mi Tea right across the hall while you wait for your order. It's a food court, so there's plenty of seating, but it’s not a terribly exciting atmosphere and most people do takeout.
Kon Chau is a great restaurant just off Bird Road, right near Tropical Park. They have American dishes like chow mein and chop suey, as well as more traditional dishes like clay pot casseroles, light Cantonese vegetable dishes, and one of our favorite versions of west lake soup in Miami—featuring ground beef, egg whites, and a pile of fresh cilantro. They also serve some of Miami's best dim sum all day, with a handful of dumpling options like shrimp and pork shumai and green tea mushroom dumplings. The very good steamed roast pork buns are worth ordering too.
On any given night at 163rd Street's King Palace, you’re bound to find large round tables of people gathered around a lazy susan full of Chinese-style barbecue. This is definitely the place to get great char siu and Peking duck, along with crispy pork belly and soy sauce chicken. However, if you’re looking for more than an endless supply of roast meats, the drunken chicken or jellyfish (both served cold) are ideal ways to start the meal. The stir-fried scallops with lily bulbs and sliced lotus root with Cantonese sausage, bacon, and ham are also two excellent things to order alongside your barbecue feast.
Dumpling King in North Miami is one of the best spots for Chinese dumplings in town. The main attraction is the xiao long bao, steamed soup dumplings that burst in your mouth like mini water balloons filled with lava-hot deliciousness. Besides xiao long bao, Dumpling King also makes great pan-fried dumplings with a crisp layer of lacey crust. You won’t have to worry about still being hungry afterward—the pan-fried dumplings are huge and stuffed generously with chicken, pork, beef, or vegetables, and the soup dumplings are just as filling. Dumpling King is very chill, and works great for easy weeknight takeout or a casual dine-in dumpling feast.
This Bird Road spot has a huge menu of Chinese classics, but the reason we come here is for the dim sum, which they’ve been doing since 1984. This fantastic buffet on wheels consists of over 50 dishes, so pace yourself. Dim sum plates range from chicken feet to egg custard tarts and all kinds of dumplings and buns that we don’t have the space to name here. But there are a few standouts, like the plump pork-and-shrimp siu mai. The shrimp rice roll is excellent and slippery and we point and order it every time we see it roll by. And those baked roast pork buns are perfectly round and smooth balls of sweet dough with a center of delicious roast pork. Also, Tropical Chinese is just a Miami classic—and one that we still love.
This is one of the best restaurants for solid Cantonese dishes around FIU South Campus. It has two airy dining rooms and plenty of big round tables with lazy susans perfect for sharing all the dishes you’ll want to order here. Start with a big bowl of slivered pork and pickled mustard green soup, then follow it up with chewy e fu noodles in a savory brown sauce, a beef and daikon clay pot, and some of Miami’s best traditional Cantonese sweet and sour pork—with perfectly thin and crispy slices. If you see it on the rotating menu, absolutely order the crispy salt and pepper homemade tofu, which looks like a pile of jumbo cheese doodles that literally melt in your mouth like pudding.
We know that telling you to go to the Fontainebleau for Chinese food is like telling you to drive to Coral Springs for a croqueta, but hear us out. Besides having one of the most gorgeous dining rooms on this guide—a dark labyrinth of latticed wood and cushioned banquettes—the dishes here are actually expertly prepared and very tasty interpretations of Hong Kong-style Cantonese food. The Peking duck is solid, and we really love the house-made chunbing pancakes that come with it. The basket of vegan dim sum is as delicious as it is pretty, and you should 1,000 percent get a side of the house XO sauce. It’s a very pricey spot (even if you do avoid the $35 valet by parking in the municipal lot next door) but Hakkasan is good, and also seems to attract the least insufferable of the Fontainebleau tourists.
This Fontainebleau spot (the neighborhood, not the hotel) does some really good Cantonese barbecue. With the exception of one small high-top table on the sidewalk, they’re strictly a takeout operation. The pipa duck—a spatchcocked version of Peking duck with a much crunchier exterior—is a dish we’ve only seen at Hakkasan (for several times the price) and is worth ordering. King Duck’s crispy pork tastes like chicharrón that got a makeover. And you should definitely get a side of Cantonese pickles to balance out the meats’ richness—we like the green papaya. But the best thing to get here, especially if you’re not feeding a crowd, is the house special rice noodles: stir-fried thin rice noodles with a touch of savory seasoning topped with lap cheong sausage and an assortment of meats, including that amazing crispy pork.
As you may have noticed, there aren’t a ton of dim sum options within the City of Miami. That’s one reason why Foodies, a casual spot on the northern edge of Downtown, should be on your radar. Another reason is that the food is good. They not only offer a selection of dim sum dishes like dumplings, pork buns, and beancurd skin roll—but also have Szechuan dishes that are hard to find in Miami, period—like mapo tofu and Szechuan pepper soft shell crab. If you plan on ordering any of that, don’t be shy about telling them you want it spicy. If your server senses any spice hesitation from you, you won’t get that numbing tingle one expects from a proper Szechuan dish.
The food at Sang’s is a mixture of traditional Chinese and Chinese-American food, and they do both equally well. They make an excellent General Tso’s chicken, which they call General Cheng’s. Please order that—but there are also solid Cantonese stir-fried noodle dishes like chow fun, with wide rice noodles seared in a wok with slices of beef. They do dim sum service from 11am-4pm during the week and 10:30am-4pm on the weekends, offering some good steamed shrimp and leek dumplings, shumai, and too many other things to name here. It's pretty quiet inside, but they have some round tables great for groups.
Mary Ann Bakery is a takeout-only Cantonese bakery and North Miami Beach institution that’s been around for decades. Everything here is delicious. But their savory baked buns are what we really love. The char siu bao is excellent and features a fluffy, slightly sweet dough filled with chopped Chinese barbecue pork. The curry beef bun is another must—the sweet dough is a perfect vehicle for the spicy ground beef filling. For dessert, get a bag of mini palmiers (a.k.a. elephant ear cookies) or a pastel green-hued pandan Swiss roll. The staff is friendly and always willing to answer any questions. And if you end up loving this place as much as we do, you can even order your next birthday cake from here, with layers of sponge cake sandwiching whipped cream and fresh fruit.
This North Miami Beach spot is one of the best places to get mapo tofu in Miami: tender cubes of soft tofu in a spicy, garlicky sauce jam-packed with the aroma of pixian doubanjiang, a fermented broad bean and chili paste from Szechuan. It also gives you that nice, tingly sensation in your mouth from the addition of Szechuan peppercorns. The dan dan noodles are another regional specialty that CY does well: bouncy wheat noodles in a spicy sauce with ground meat and pickled mustard greens. The dining room is a little fancier than some of the other Chinese restaurants on 163rd Street, and it can feel like you’re at a formal banquet, which is fitting for the quality of the food here.
This Kendall Cantonese restaurant serves dim sum every day from 11am to 3pm, but Sunday is the best day to come for the full push cart experience. The big dining room has a 3D wall installation of two phoenixes looking over the lacquered dark wooden tables, where you’ll see a mix of abuelitas who lunch and aunties meeting for a cup of tea, a few bao, and some gossip. South Garden serves great baked roast pork buns with a generous amount of char siu filling, along with solid fun gor. But do not leave without getting an order of steamed lava buns filled with salted egg yolk custard. It strikes a perfect balance between savory and sweet.
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