The lunar new year is upon us, which means fireworks, lion dancers, and red envelopes full of cash. But it also means heaping helpings of dumplings, bao, noodles, and plenty of other Chinese cuisine. And in New York City, there’s no better place to find the best that China has to offer than Manhattan’s Chinatown, Brooklyn’s Sunset Park, and Queens’ Flushing. Here’s our guide to where to eat and what you’ll find in each neighborhood as you make your Lunar New Year excursions (and we have a guide for those activities too!).
MANHATTAN
Manhattan’s Chinatown is the oldest and most famous of the major Chinese ethnic enclaves in the five boroughs, boasting restaurants that have been serving customers for almost a century. Cantonese cuisine, which hails from Guangdong province in southeast China, is the dominant style of food here, with dim sum, wontons, and Chinese-American staples like lo mein and chow fun prominent on menus. Fried and boiled dumplings of all sorts are also prevalent, particularly among the Fujianese restaurants that can be found all over East Broadway.
If you’re looking for dim sum, you’ve come to the right place. Among the many good options in Chinatown are Dim Sum Palace, Nom Wah Tea Parlor (the neighborhood’s oldest restaurant), House of Joy, Ping’s, Golden Unicorn, and Jing Fong.
The king of Cantonese food in Chinatown is the venerable Wo Hop, which has been in business since 1938 and serves the kind of old-fashioned dishes like chop suey and chow mein that long ago fell out of style on most Chinese menus. Equally good and classic is Wu’s Wonton King, which claims to have the best wonton soup in the city and has a good argument in its favor. More updated takes on Cantonese food can be found at Uncle Lou and Potluck Club.
When it comes to buns, there are no better purveyors in Chinatown than Mei Lai Wah and Golden Steamer. The former serves an unbeatable baked roast pork bun that also comes with pineapple to go with an expansive array of congees and rice noodle rolls. Golden Steamer, meanwhile, will satisfy any sweet tooth with their salted egg yolk, custard, and pumpkin steamed buns, but their savory options are also excellent. Other good bakeries in Chinatown include Harper’s Bread House, Double Crispy Bakery, and Tai Pan.
Dumplings-wise, there are more terrific choices than you could eat in a lifetime. Consider this a vote for Shu Jiao Fu Zhou, whose steamed and fried potstickers are borderline perfect and very affordable (as is their terrific plate of peanut noodles). Fried Dumpling and North Dumpling are both tiny, cramped establishments, but their dumplings are expertly made, delicious, and cheap. If it’s soup dumplings you crave, then head to either Deluxe Green Bo or Shanghai 21, both of which excel at xiao long bao.
Chinatown is also a great place to snag a cheap lunch on the go. Yi Ji Shi Mo serves huge and filling rice noodle rolls that won’t break the bank. Similarly, Taiwan Pork Chop House puts out a wonderfully spiced and grilled pork chop that will cost you just $2.50; add rice and a soup, and you’ve got a full lunch for half the price and twice the taste of a fast casual salad bowl. And at Wah Fung No. 1 Fast Food, $5.75 gets you a platter of rice and succulent roast pork as big as a brick, if you don’t mind waiting in line to get it.
Subway
Chinatown is served by several subway lines and stations: the B and D at Grand St, the F at East Broadway, the J and Z at Bowery and Canal St, and the N, Q, R, W and 6 at Canal St
FLUSHING
Welcome to the mecca of Chinese food. The biggest Chinese ethnic enclave in New York City (and possibly outside of China), Flushing offers virtually anything you could imagine from its many food courts, hotpot stands, cafes and dumpling shops. There is simply no end to the restaurants or types of cuisine here, but here’s a quick look at the best of what this area has to offer.
To sample something from every corner of China, go to New World Mall’s food court, where you’ll find three dozen different stalls selling everything from chongqing noodles to pan fried pork dumplings to Uyghur laghman to Sichuan malatang. Go with a group and assemble a meal family-style so that you can give everything a try. In a similar vein, New York Food Court is a smaller but no less diverse assortment of cuisines: Taiwanese steak, spicy Hunanese fish noodles, Shanghainese crab roe, stewed chicken from Taishan ... the list goes on and on.
Flushing is home to arguably the most well-known soup dumpling restaurant in the city: Nan Xiang Xiao Long Bao. Their special pork and pork-and-crab dumplings are the stars of the show, but if you can’t decide, get their Lucky Six sampler to try both. Shanghai You Garden is another local soup dumpling shop with a fervent fan base, where you can try 10 different varieties of xiao long bao, all of which come in different iridescent and Instagram-friendly shades of yellow and red and green.
There’s a lot of bang for your buck to be found in Flushing, too. The jian bing at Eight Jane in Busy Mall is filling, quick and cheap, making it a great low-cost breakfast. Joe’s Steam Rice Roll inside Landmark Quest Mall is a hefty plate — their signature roll has beef, beef sausage, pork, dried shrimp, eggs and vegetables in it — with big taste for just $10. White Bear is a beloved dumpling mainstay, cranking out wontons smothered in chili oil that regularly draw crowds and foodies, and you get a dozen for $10.
For a bigger sitdown meal, hit up one of the neighborhood’s top-ranked Sichuan restaurants: Szechuan Mountain House or Alley 41, both of which have menus loaded with spicy dishes that will put your tastebuds to the test. Dim sum is well represented at Asian Jewels. If it’s hot pot you’re after, Chong Qing Lao Zao is an enormous space decked out to look like a rural Chinese village. And for breakfast, you have to grab a table at Kong Sihk Tong, a Hong Kong-style eatery with a salted egg yolk lava French toast that might be the single best bite in all of Flushing.
Subway
Port Washington
Flushing's Chinatown can be reached via the LIRR or the 7 train at the Flushing-Main St station
SUNSET PARK
Brooklyn's original Chinatown is in Sunset Park, comprised largely of Fujianese immigrants who left Manhattan’s Chinatown in the 1990s because of rising rents and gentrification. Today, there are also ethnic Chinese enclaves in Bensonhurst and Sheepshead Bay, as well as along Avenue U in Gravesend. But Sunset Park remains the borough’s most well-known Chinatown, and one where you can find an impressive variety of hard-to-find cuisines from the lesser-known corners of China.
Among those regional specialties is guoqiao noodles, also known as crossing the bridge noodles, which come from Yunnan province in southwest China. For the uninitiated, consider this to be a Chinese version of chicken noodle soup, with giant bowls of broth larded with noodles, bean sprouts, and chunks of the distinctive black Silkie chicken. Two restaurants in Sunset Park specialize in guoqiao noodles: Yun Nan Flavour Garden, and Western Yunnan Crossing Bridge Noodles, both of which offer classic and alternative takes on this dish.
Eating off the beaten path is the best thing to do in Sunset Park. Food from Gansu province in northwest China is rare in New York or anywhere else in the United States, so you should make a stop at Dun Huang, which is all about lanzhou beef noodles in a gorgeous thin broth and spicy cumin lamb burgers with meat that practically melts in your mouth. At Hainan Chicken House, the kitchen has perfected the art of Malaysian poached chicken, served on butcher paper with steamed rice and a bowl of peppery broth. Sunset Park has two stellar Vietnamese restaurants, too: Ba Xuyen, where the banh mi can’t be beat, and Little Thanh Da. Or get colorful with the Taiwanese purple rice rolls at Nuan Xin Rice Roll, stuffed with grilled eel and mayonnaise for an intriguing combo of sweet and smoky.
Seafood is integral in Fujianese cuisine, and Eighth Avenue — the neighborhood's main drag — is full of fish markets selling most anything that can be found in the ocean. East Harbor Seafood Palace is a giant dim sum parlor that specializes in giant king crabs and Dungeness crabs as well as traditional Cantonese dumplings and roast duck. Chuan Tian Xia is an excellent Sichuan restaurant that has a wealth of fish prepared every which way on the menu and with enough heat in its dishes to leave your tongue tingling for days. BK Seafood Market is a casual joint where you can see your meal swimming around the giant tanks at the front of the restaurant. And closer to the border with Borough Park is Chong Qing Wharf, where seafood hot pot is the main attraction.
Hungry for dessert? The best Chinese bakery in all of New York might be Xin Fa, where the lines are long, and the choices are endless. The specialty here is the dan tat, the Chinese variation on the English custard tart or the Portuguese pastel de nata, which the bakery churns out by the dozen. Torched on the top to form a lovely crust, these pastries are as pretty to look at as they are a joy to eat. There’s also a Golden Steamer outpost here, if you have a hankering for sweet steamed buns.
Subway
You can reach Sunset Park via these lines, with the 8th Ave N station being the closest to Chinatown
Check out all of our NYC Chinatown Guides for more:
Chinatown - Manhattan
Chinatown - Sunset Park
Chinatown - Flushing
Plus, find out where to celebrate with our 2025 Lunar New Year Guide.
