Best Dim Sum Restaurants Worldwide

Dim sum is a discipline, not a dumpling platter

Dim sum (點心, "to touch the heart") is the Cantonese small-plates meal eaten with tea, and the act of eating it has its own name: yum cha, literally "drinking tea." It is a Guangdong invention, refined in the teahouses of Guangzhou and Hong Kong over more than a century, and at its best it is one of the most technically demanding categories of cooking in the world. A serious dim sum kitchen runs more like a pastry brigade than a wok station: a single har gow has a skin made from wheat starch and tapioca flour that has to be rolled paper-thin while hot, folded into a dozen or more pleats by hand, and steamed for a precise window before the skin tears or toughens.

The global flattening of Chinese food turned dim sum into a brunch buffet — a wheeled cart, a stamped card, a plate of dumplings held warm under a lid. That format is a wonderful, sociable thing, and it is not the ceiling. The ceiling is a fine-dining Cantonese room where every dumpling is folded to order, steamed the moment you ask for it, and judged on the translucency of the skin and the snap of a single whole prawn inside. This guide is about that ceiling, and about the institutions, old and new, that have carried the format across the world.

The four signals of a serious dim sum kitchen

1. The har gow skin and its pleats. The crystal shrimp dumpling is the single most-quoted test in Cantonese cooking. The skin is wheat starch and tapioca, kneaded with boiling water and rolled thin enough to read the pink of the shrimp through it; tradition holds the pleats at thirteen or more, folded by hand so the dumpling holds its shape through the steam. A skin that is gummy, opaque, or split has failed before you taste it. At Lung King Heen, the dim sum brigade runs a separate chef per dumpling type for exactly this reason.

2. Made to order, not held warm. The difference between a great dim sum lunch and a merely pleasant one is whether the kitchen folds and steams each order on demand or pulls it off a holding cart. Steam waits for no one: a siu mai that has sat fifteen minutes under a lid is a different, sadder dish than one that reaches the table ninety seconds out of the basket. Every fine-dining dim sum room has abandoned the trolley in favour of a paper menu and made-to-order service.

3. The bun, the dough and the char siu. The char siu bao is a yeast-and-baking-powder test. The dough should rise into a cloud that splits open at the top rather than a dense lump, and the filling should be real char siu — honey-and-five-spice barbecued pork with a lacquered edge — chopped, not a sweet paste. The newer baked "molten" barbecue-pork bun, with its sugar-crackle top, is now a second test of its own. A kitchen that gets the bao right has its fermentation and its roast meats in order.

4. Range, freshness and the tea. A serious room moves beyond the famous four into cheung fun (silky rice rolls poured fresh), lo mai gai (sticky rice steamed in lotus leaf), steamed spare ribs with black bean, congee cooked down for hours, and a dan tat, the egg tart, with a crisp lard pastry. The tea is not an afterthought: a proper yum cha offers a real selection — pu-erh, tieguanyin, chrysanthemum, jasmine — and tops the pot without being asked. Breadth and the tea service separate a kitchen from a dumpling counter.

From the Guangzhou teahouse to the three-star cart

Dim sum began as roadside refreshment for travellers and traders on the Silk Road's southern routes and matured in the teahouses of Guangzhou, where the practice of taking tea with small bites became the social ritual of yum cha. Hong Kong inherited and professionalised the form through the twentieth century, building the cart-service banquet halls — Lei Garden, Maxim's Palace, Luk Yu Tea House — that defined the format for millions and exported it through the Cantonese diaspora to every Chinatown on earth.

The fine-dining tier is a more recent invention. Lung King Heen at the Four Seasons Hong Kong (two Michelin stars; the first Chinese restaurant ever to earn three, in 2009, which it held through 2022; chef Chan Yan Tak) made dim sum a luxury lunch worth flying for, and Tin Lung Heen at the Ritz-Carlton (two stars, on the 102nd floor of the ICC) and T'ang Court at The Langham (three stars) followed. The most significant export is A. Wong in London (two Michelin stars; chef Andrew Wong), whose "Touch of the Heart" dim sum tasting made the case that the form could carry a two-star room outside Asia — the first Chinese restaurant outside Asia to hold two stars, awarded in 2021. At the other end, Tim Ho Wan in Sham Shui Po earned a Michelin star in 2010 as the cheapest starred restaurant in the world and now carries a Bib Gourmand, proof that the technique and the price tag are separate questions.

The global dim sum map

Hong Kong

The home ground. Lung King Heen at the Four Seasons (two Michelin stars; the har gow and the baked barbecue-pork buns are the reference) is the apex dim sum lunch. Tin Lung Heen at the Ritz-Carlton (two stars; harbour views from the ICC tower). T'ang Court at The Langham (three stars; the most classical Cantonese register). Fook Lam Moon in Wan Chai (the "tycoons' canteen" since 1948; the institutional Cantonese baseline). Lei Garden (the citywide group that sets the everyday fine-dining standard). Duddell's in Central (one star; the art-world dim sum lunch). Tim Ho Wan in Sham Shui Po (Bib Gourmand; the world's most famous cheap dim sum). DimDimSum and One Dim Sum for the casual end.

London and Europe

The strongest dim sum scene outside Asia. A. Wong in Victoria (two Michelin stars; chef Andrew Wong; the "Touch of the Heart" dim sum tasting is the most ambitious in the West). Yauatcha in Soho (Alan Yau's modern teahouse; the contemporary dim sum that brought the format upmarket in Europe). Hakkasan at Hanway Place (one star; the dim sum lunch in the original 2001 room). Royal China in Bayswater (the weekend-queue Cantonese institution). Phoenix Palace near Baker Street (the old-school banquet hall). On the Continent the dim sum tier thins out fast; Paris and Amsterdam have competent Cantonese rooms but no two-star equivalent.

New York and the Americas

Nom Wah Tea Parlor on Doyers Street (the oldest dim sum house in New York, open since 1920; the original-recipe egg roll and the har gow are the institution). Tim Ho Wan in the East Village (the Hong Kong export; baked barbecue-pork buns at casual prices). RedFarm on the Upper West Side and in the West Village (Joe Ng's modern dim sum; the Pac-Man shrimp dumplings). Jing Fong (the last of the great Manhattan banquet-hall cart services). Golden Unicorn in Chinatown. In Toronto, Lai Wah Heen is the refined two-cart standard; in Vancouver, Sun Sui Wah and Kirin anchor one of the best dim sum cities in North America.

San Francisco and the West Coast

Yank Sing at Rincon Center (the white-tablecloth institution; the Shanghai dumplings and the har gow set the city standard). Mister Jiu's in Chinatown (one Michelin star; chef Brandon Jew's modern Chinese-American room reworks the dim sum canon). Palette Tea House (the modern Cantonese with dumpling-cart theatre). Good Mong Kok (the cash-only takeout legend on Stockton Street). In Los Angeles, the San Gabriel Valley — Sea Harbour, Elite, Lunasia — is the densest fine dim sum in the United States.

Singapore, Sydney and Asia-Pacific

Crystal Jade Golden Palace in Singapore (one Michelin star; the modern Cantonese group's flagship). Yan at National Gallery and Hai Tien Lo at the Pan Pacific (the hotel-Cantonese standard). Swee Choon (the beloved late-night dim sum institution). In Sydney, Mr. Wong (the Merivale Cantonese basement; the city's dim sum benchmark) and Marigold in Chinatown for the cart service. In Melbourne, Flower Drum (the Cantonese institution since 1975; the Peking duck and the dim sum lunch are the city's gold standard). Tim Ho Wan outposts run across the region.

What's not dim sum

A supermarket bag of frozen dumplings is not dim sum. Dim sum is defined by the made-to-order steam and the teahouse context; a microwaved frozen har gow is a dumpling, and a perfectly nice one, but it is not the dish a Cantonese kitchen builds at the moment you order it. The whole point of yum cha is freshness on demand.

The all-you-can-eat dumpling buffet held warm under heat lamps is a different format. It is a sociable, generous thing and it is not the fine-dining product. Dim sum at the level of Lung King Heen or A. Wong is judged on a dumpling that reaches you ninety seconds out of the basket; a tray that has sat under a lamp for twenty minutes has already lost the argument on texture.

The bao-bun trend item — the folded gua bao stuffed with pork belly that swept Western menus in the 2010s — is Taiwanese street food, not Cantonese dim sum. It is delicious and it has its own lineage; it simply belongs to a different tradition than the steamed char siu bao of a yum cha cart.

Xiao long bao, the soup dumpling, is Shanghainese, not Cantonese, and not strictly dim sum. It is one of the great dumplings on earth and it appears on many dim sum menus by popular demand, but a kitchen that leans on xiao long bao is signalling a Jiangnan register rather than a Cantonese one. The distinction matters when you are judging a Cantonese dim sum room on its own terms.

The "pan-Asian" platter that puts har gow next to gyoza, edamame and a California roll is not dim sum either. The format is a hotel-buffet convenience, not a cuisine; no single kitchen trains in all of those traditions at once, and the dim sum on such a menu is almost always the weakest item on it.

The vocabulary

Yum cha — Cantonese 'drinking tea' — the meal and social ritual of taking tea with dim sum, usually at brunch or lunch.

Har gow — Crystal shrimp dumpling; a translucent wheat-starch-and-tapioca skin folded in 13+ pleats around a whole prawn. The benchmark test of a dim sum kitchen.

Siu mai — Open-topped steamed dumpling of minced pork and shrimp in a thin egg-wheat wrapper, often crowned with crab roe.

Char siu bao — Barbecue-pork bun; a fluffy steamed or sugar-crackle baked bun filled with honey-and-five-spice char siu.

Cheung fun — Silky steamed rice rolls poured fresh and filled with shrimp, beef or char siu, dressed in sweet soy.

Lo mai gai — Glutinous sticky rice with chicken, sausage and mushroom, steamed in a lotus leaf that perfumes the rice.

Dan tat — Cantonese egg tart; a crisp lard or puff pastry shell holding a just-set egg custard.

Lo bak go — Pan-fried turnip (daikon) cake studded with dried shrimp and Chinese sausage, crisp outside and soft within.

Char siu — Honey-and-five-spice Cantonese barbecued pork with a lacquered edge; the filling standard for bao.

Congee — Long-simmered rice porridge, the soothing anchor of a yum cha table; jook in Cantonese.

Xiao long bao — Shanghainese soup dumpling — thin-skinned pork dumpling filled with gelatinous broth. Not Cantonese dim sum, though often served alongside it.

Gua bao — Taiwanese folded steamed bun stuffed with braised pork belly. Street food, not Cantonese dim sum.