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Over the weekend Buzzfeed published an online version of S.F.-based Lucky Peach magazine's new guide to dim sum, which appears in the latest issue (number 5) all about Chinatown. The online version is pretty damn comprehensive, with plenty of text and a complicated classification system involving phrases like "Chicken Buns: Leavened wheat dough wrapper family" and 16 symbols denoting everything from the preparation technique to whether it's likely to be spicy.

See also:
- M.Y. China: S.F.'s Most Expensive Dim Sum
- San Francisco's Top 10 Dim Sum Restaurants
- We Dare You to Watch This Video Without Getting Hungry for Chinese Food

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Tamara Palmer

Pork and black truffle juicy dumplings at M.Y. China.

We live in a magical land called the Sunset, where delicious dim sum dumplings can be had for 50 cents apiece, so paying $18 for five dumplings is definitely a seismic shift. That's the price of the pork and black truffle juicy dumplings at M.Y. China (845 Market), which opened December 3 in the Westfield Centre.

See Also:
- This Holiday Season, Give The Gift of Dim Sum Earrings
- Wonderland's Red Oil Wonton Is a Carnivore's Must
- Two-Dolla Holla: Sticky Rice Balls at TC Pastry

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Chantal deFelice

Hang Ah Tea Room earrings.

All through December, SFoodie is bringing you local gift ideas for the food obsessives in your life.

The crafty site Etsy is a great place to go when you're looking for a creative present for your food-obsessed friend who has it all. A search for "San Francisco food" or "Bay Area food" turns up a lot of one-of-a-kind finds.

Case in point: These paper and wood earrings ($28) by Chantal deFelice depict the Hang Ah Tea Room, San Francisco's oldest Chinese restaurant, which opened in 1920.

See Also:
- Hog Island Oyster Co. Now Accepting Limited Holiday Mail Orders

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Tamara Palmer

Red oil wontons at Wonderland.

Wonderland opened in the Lower Haight in July, a welcome spot that fills a big void for Chinese food on Haight street. The menu is a spiral-bound miniature binder that, like many places of its ilk, contains a dizzying amount of choices, including a whole section devoted to meatless chicken and a sauce on the side "healthy" corner of steamed items. This is a vegetarian-friendly place for sure, but if you're eating meat, one appetizer worth ordering is the red oil wonton.

See Also:
- Shanghai Tries to Break a Restaurant Curse
- House of Nanking vs. Chef Jia's: Different Shades of Chinese American Cuisine

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Phil Carter

Rice Paper Scissors' Katie Kwan and Valerie Luu.

Rice Paper Scissors Dim Sum Brunch

Where: Mission location revealed to ticket buyers on the day of event

When: Sunday, June 24, 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 2-5 p.m. seatings

Cost: $10 reservation ticket; menu items $5-8

Rundown: Katie Kwan and Valerie Luu typically focus on Vietnamese fare but this weekend they are busting out their little plastic stools for a warehouse party featuring an à la carte menu of small Vietnamese and Chinese plates. The former includes items such as pho cuon and pho cuon chay (beef or mushroom pho rolls), bap xao (butter-braised corn with dried shrimp), and xoi ga (claypot chicken with sticky rice), while the latter is repped by turnip cakes, Chinese long beans with housemade XO sauce, tea eggs, and salt and pepper prawns. Since the exact location is an old-school rave-style secret until Sunday, it's best to procure tickets in advance.

Buy tickets via Eventbrite

W. Blake Gray

Pan-fried chive dumplings

​What better way to spend a weekend morning than over dim sum? Waitresses keep offering you tidbits of pork and shrimp, your endless pot of tea gets refilled without asking if you leave the lid up (there's a veteran tip), and at almost every place on this list, six people can eat until you're bored, full or both for less than $20 a person.

San Francisco ain't Hong Kong or Singapore, but for dim sum outside of Chinese-speaking metropoli, we've got it pretty good. A couple months ago SFoodie brought a wine writer from New York to one of our favorite places and he said, "Wow, we don't have dim sum like this," and not because we made him eat chicken feet. Though when you get to number 5 on this list, we strongly suggest that you do.

The best dim sum in San Francisco is not found in Chinatown. Instead, look north of Golden Gate Park, although top spots are found as far afield as Daly City. And a warning to vegetarians, as well as people persnickety about service: You'll be happiest at the places with the fewest Chinese diners. Because for the rest of us, the best way to find a new favorite dish is to not ask questions, but point at it and dig in.

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Photos by W. Blake Gray

Pea sprout & white nuts in broth

Whenever we hear of a dim sum restaurant -- heck, any restaurant -- that has people milling around outside waiting to get in, we're intrigued.

Such is the case on Sundays at River Side Seafood Restaurant. If you don't get there well before noon, you're going to wait, unless you're a party of two.

It's not a huge room: there are 14 round tables, three booths, and exactly one table for two. Not many couples go to dim sum, apparently, at least on the southern edge of the Sunset. So we waltzed right in, past at least half a dozen large groups.

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Photos by W. Blake Gray

"Crude Drugs Chicken Feet"

We admit that we ordered Crude Drugs Chicken Feet as a joke. Was the joke on us? They turned out to be the best chicken feet we've ever had.

And it made Golden Gate Dim Sum Seafood Restaurant feel like quite the find. We ran "best dim sum" through Yelp's search engine and this restaurant came up 49th in San Francisco, which just goes to show how undiscerning Yelp is, but of course we knew that.

While we wouldn't bring our Aunt Myrtle here, Golden Gate is a fine, cheap, second-tier place to bring dim sum veterans or friends who are new to the whole experience.

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W. Blake Gray

We saw this menu and of course we had to order No. 46. We think drugs are simply too refined these days. Who needs heroin, for example, when you can have opium?

So how was the dish? We had an extreme reaction. We'll tell all in the next installment of our ongoing series of reviewing dim sum restaurants.

We noticed that nobody in the Bay Area was reviewing dim sum restaurants on a consistent basis. Guidebooks all plug Yank Sing; many also note Ton Kiang. But how about those tiny places on Clement Street or in Chinatown where people mill outside waiting on Sunday afternoons? Dim sum is an integral part of this city's food culture, but getting the straight dope on restaurants after the top names has been impossible, until now.

We promise, we'll tell you all about Crude Drugs Chicken Feet, as soon as we recover. In the meantime check out these dim sum restaurants we've already reviewed:

Lee Hou

South Sea Seafood Village

House of Banquet

Happy Garden

Yet Wah

Photos by W. Blake Gray

Shanghai dumplings

We wound up at Happy Garden because Good Luck Dim Sum across the street had a long line, and we felt like sitting down.

Happy Garden has a dim sum menu. And we ordered from it. We were hungry. Only after we ordered and began paying attention to what everyone around us was eating did we realize our mistake.

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