Even before COVID, the restaurant never offered much in terms of ambience, but this is the probably the best Hong Kong-style cafe (cha chaan teng) food in the East Bay — especially if you have an affinity for Western-inspired dishes like red-sauce baked pork chop spaghetti. Everything seems like it’s priced a few dollars lower than it ought to be, but the best deals on the menu are the giant platters of thin, crispy chow mein, topped with heaps of vegetables, meat, and seafood.

The East Bay has been in need of a high-quality jiaozi, or boiled dumpling, spot, so it’s no surprise that this El Cerrito newcomer has been a hit since day one. The cold appetizers like the sliced pig ears are great, and the scallion pancakes are crisp and wonderfully oily. But the only move here is to order as many of the restaurant’s compact, two-bite dumplings as you might reasonably expect to eat. Fillings are varied and include delightful combinations you’d be hard-pressed to find elsewhere — zucchini, egg, and shrimp, for example. And the fact that most of the dumplings are also available frozen has been a real boon during the pandemic.

As its name suggests, Noodles Fresh specializes in Chinese noodles. The restaurant’s main point of distinction is that it doesn’t have any one regional focus, but instead seeks to introduce diners to a wide array of highly specific regional noodle dishes: Guilin rice noodles, Taiwanese beef noodle soup, and Yunnan “over the bridge” noodles. In particular, it’s one of the only Bay Area restaurants where you’ll find Jiangxi-style rice noodles — toothsome and delicious, especially when served stir-fried with flank steak, peppers, and a fiery chile sauce. The restaurant has a second location in downtown Berkeley.

Located in Richmond’s 99 Ranch plaza, Daimo has long been a late-night favorite among East Bay Chinese food enthusiasts. These days, the restaurant closes a bit earlier (at 11:30 p.m.), but it’s still a good bet for solid, inexpensive Cantonese takeout. Dim sum isn’t really the restaurant’s specialty, so savvy customers stick instead with its strong suits — jook, barbecue rice plates, and, especially, Hong Kong style wonton noodle soup.

With a staff and kitchen crew largely made up of defectors from China Village down the street (and a very similar menu), Sichuan Style has arguably surpassed its more well known neighbor when it comes to classic, tongue-numbingly spicy Sichuan fare like water-boiled fish. Standard orders include the fragrant fish fillet soup, surprisingly mild and soothing despite arriving to the table topped with dozens of chili peppers; the wok-charred cabbage; and the big, puffy round of sesame bread.

It’s tough to find dishes from the Hunan region in the East Bay, but this Albany newcomer has filled that void beautifully with its menu full of regional specialties like Chairman Mao stewed pork hock. In addition to the characteristically fiery dishes that Hunan is known for, Wojia also delves into the region’s smoky flavors — try the “special fried rice” with smoked pork or the smoky grilled pork chop dusted with cumin and crispy garlic. And the savory fried glutinous rice balls are an immediate showstopper.

The UC Berkeley campus’s best bet for Sichuan food delivers on tongue-numbing sensations, but the menu is so long that it can be easy to miss the strongest dishes: The classic water-boiled fish, slippery cold jelly noodle appetizer, dumplings in chili oil, and toothpick cumin lamb are all solid bets. It’s for good reason that, during pre-COVID times, the dining room was always packed with international students from China.

For big flavors in a sleek, modern setting with an impressive wine list, Great China is an easy choice. The Northern Chinese restaurant also happens to serve the Bay Area’s most amazing Peking duck, with thin pancakes — a surprisingly takeout-friendly offering — as well as juicy dumplings, impeccably cooked greens, and hard-to-find Korean-Chinese specialties like jjajangmyun.

This kitschy Hong Kong-style cafe offers rice plates, cheesy baked dishes, fried snacks, sandwiches, desserts, and so much more all day every day. Head here for milk tea in the afternoon, accompanied by condensed milk toast or a warm pineapple bun, served with a pat of butter in ice for a satisfying contrast in temperatures and textures.

The menu is unreasonably long at this Chinatown classic for Cantonese comfort food, so stick to the best stuff: congee (with doughnuts, of course), rice noodle rolls, roast pork, and roast duck.

One of a small handful of larger banquet halls and dim sum parlors left in Oakland Chinatown, Peony is serving both its dim sum and regular family-style dishes for takeout. The broad menu can be intimidating, but it’s got the kind of kitchen that’s equally comfortable cranking out classic har gow; stylish, modern animal-shaped steamed buns; and, for dinner, big entrees like Cantonese-style scallion and ginger crab.

This Chinatown newcomer is part of a small Bay Area chain specializing in the hand-pulled noodles, cumin-spiced kebabs, and stuffed meat pies that are characteristic of Uyghur cuisine. It’s a tiny, barebones spot, the kind of place where you can watch the aunties stretching out the noodles while you contemplate your order. Highlights include the dapanji, or Big Plate Chicken, a hearty Xinjiang dish that cooks of the Uyghur ethnic minority in that region have really gotten down to an art form. The version here features big chunks of meaty, bone-in chicken; soft stewed potatoes; and wonderfully chewy hand-pulled noodles. 

This is the most reliably excellent all-purpose Cantonese restaurant in Oakland. It’s open late (albeit not as late during the pandemic), and there are few duds on the menu despite its daunting length. Go here for classics like beef chow fun, crispy Hong Kong-style chow mein, barbecued meats, and shrimp over scrambled egg.

This scrappy, no-frills neighborhood lunch spot is the very definition of better than it needs to be, with a short menu of inexpensive rice plates made with fresh ingredients and a whole lot of skill with the wok. It’s probably best known for its Wednesday-only fried chicken special, which routinely draws such a big crowd that requires a little bit of advance planning to order. Another standout is the shrimp over egg (or its variant, the “David Special” — if you know, you know), which — like everything on the menu — goes great with the absurdly delicious house-made black bean hot sauce.

Prior to the pandemic, this Cantonese banquet restaurant was always swamped for weekend dim sum, with carts darting by full of siu mai, har gow, turnip cakes, and bao — now all available for takeout. You won’t find anything especially modern or unusual on the menu, but it’s a reliable favorite for the classics.

This little restaurant specializes in Shaanxi and Sichuan flavors, with a refreshingly tight menu of noodles, dumplings, and malatang (a Sichuan street food version of hot pot). Don’t miss the zha jiang and spicy, hand-pulled biang biang noodles. Best of all, nearly everything is less than $10.

The sister location to the much-acclaimed Daly City dim sum house, Koi Palace is the closest thing the East Bay has to the kind of upscale, modernized, destination dim sum more typically associated with the Peninsula — and, prior to the pandemic, it had the enormous weekend crowds to show for it. Now, the dim sum menu is available for takeout, with both frozen and freshly cooked options. Standards like rice rolls and har gow are done with style and more precise execution here, and, when available, the crispy-skinned roast pig is worth a special trip.

This vegetarian Chinese spot is helmed by a former Daimo chef with serious Cantonese cooking chops, so all the usual mock-meat preparations are a cut above. Dishes like the eggplant with vegan fish steak, the salt-and-pepper pumpkin, and the pan-fried tofu skin are as good as anything you’ll find at any of the area’s omnivore-oriented Chinese restaurants.

Bay Area diners have gotten so xiao long bao–obsessed that you’ll now find the soup dumplings at dim sum parlors and all kinds of other Chinese restaurants that have no affiliation with the Shanghai region from which they originate. Din Ding isn’t strictly a Shanghainese restaurant either, but it qualifies as a specialist: The handmade XLB here have delicate wrappers that bulge and jiggle from the juices contained within. It’s no wonder, then, that dumpling lovers from miles away make the pilgrimage, especially on the weekend.