Best brunch in Chinatown: The weekend starts here

Dim Sum Go Go

A red-and-white color scheme spruces up this Chinatown dim sum joint, where dumplings (more than 24 types) are the focus. A neophyte-friendly menu is divided into categories like “fried,” “baked” and “steamed”; to avoid tough decisions, order the dim sum platter, whose artful array of ten items includes juicy steamed duck and mushroom dumplings and the offbeat, slightly sweet panfried dumplings filled with pumpkin. Prices are a bit higher than at your average dim sum emporium.

Jing Fong

• Critics choice

For some, Jing Fong might be intimidating: It’s marked by giant escalators, a vast dining room and walkie-talkie–toting waiters marshalling diners. But it has remarkable dim sum. The shrimp shumai with glass noodles is exceptional, as is the ground pork and shrimp wrapped in a big black mushroom. The freshness and originality of its most mundane offerings keep people coming back for more.

Nom Wah Tea Parlor

• Price band: 1/4
• Critics choice

New York's first dim sum house opened in 1920 at a crook in Doyers Street known at the time as "the bloody angle." That Chinatown passage bore witness to the grisly havoc of the Tong gang wars—shootings and hatchet murders—but the bakery and tea shop had a sweeter reputation: Its almond cookies and moon cakes were legendary. For more than three decades, the Choy family ran Nom Wah, but in 1974, Ed and May Choy sold the operation to longtime manager Wally Tang, who started there

Vegetarian Dim Sum House

• Price band: 1/4

After ambling past Chinatown shop windows displaying glistening ducks and flopping fish, vegetarians will be relieved to step into this meat-free haven—even if the dark-green carpeting and pale-green walls call to mind a corporate office. The menu offers excellent and convincing mock-meat dishes, including delicate “shrimp” dumplings (made with rice flour, yams and tofu), crispy, slightly sweet sesame “chicken” (deep-fried bean curd skin) and Peking “spareribs”—yams doused in a