The Twin Cities Chinese scene runs in two corridors: Eat Street in Minneapolis and the University Avenue stretch through Frogtown into the Midway in Saint Paul. The deepest Sichuan menus are out in the suburbs, the dim sum lives in St. Louis Park, the hand-pulled noodles are in Frogtown, and one Eat Street institution has anchored the whole conversation since 1987. This list is being built; if we missed your spot, send a tip.
Tammy Wong has run this Nicollet Avenue room since 1987. The dining room was renovated and reopened in 2023, the menu still anchored on cashew chicken and lemongrass beef and a steady following that has watched the neighborhood change around it for almost forty years. The wine list is deeper than you would expect.
Read full entry →Chef Jessie Wong's North Loop room serving wok-fired Sichuan, dim sum, and family-recipe dumplings in a more contemporary setting than the strip-mall standards. The mapo tofu and the dan dan noodles are both the order.
Read full entry →Hand-pulled noodles made in view of the dining room on the University Avenue corridor. Biang biang, knife-cut, beef noodle soup, and a deep dumpling list. The kind of place you walk in skeptical and walk out a regular.
Read full entry →A University Avenue Cantonese room that has been doing it the same way since 1991. Salt-and-pepper preparations, clay pots, the kind of menu that rewards ordering the things on the special board. A quiet local following that does not need the metro to discover it.
Read full entry →The original Plymouth room and a Suburban Avenue sibling on the east side of St. Paul, both running the same Sichuan-leaning menu. Cumin lamb, dan dan noodles, dry-fried green beans. Office-park location belies the kitchen.
Read full entry →A hot-pot focused offshoot of the long-running Little Szechuan, with rolling broth pots and an extensive add-in list. Bring three friends and an appetite for a long table.
Read full entry →A Dinkytown fixture for decades with a live seafood tank in the dining room and a menu that leans Cantonese. Popular with the U of M graduate-program crowd for a reason.
Read full entry →One of the few full dim sum cart services in the metro. Weekend service pulls a steady crowd. Get there before noon on Saturday or accept a wait.
Read full entry →A strip-mall room near the France Avenue corridor with a long bilingual menu. Fish-fragrant eggplant, twice-cooked pork, dry-fried green beans. Worth the south-metro drive.
Read full entry →David Fong Jr. opened this Savage spot in 1996 to carry forward the family menu after the original David Fong's in Bloomington closed in 2022 after sixty-four years. The cashew chicken and the egg foo young are still cooked the way grandfather wrote them.
Read full entry →If we missed your spot, tell us. Your pick joins a running tally of reader recommendations. We read every submission and work the strongest ones into the list. We do not publish your name or email.