The dim sum restaurants around Washington, DC are generally solid, though they’re defined as much by their flexibility and mobility in service of the local Chinese American community, as they are by their culinary excellence.įormerly located just across the Potomac River from DC, China Garden used to be your closet, most Metro-accessible dim sum option.

In fact, you’ll really only find dim sum in DC proper at two places, Tony Cheng’s and the Ping Pong chain. Without a stable, longstanding urban Chinatown, the local dim sum scene exists almost exclusively in the suburbs, similar to what you have in a city like Atlanta. » Read more: Our Ultimate Dim Sum Menu Guide with Pictures and Translations Today, the Chinese American community is most concentrated in cities like Falls Church in northern Virginia and Rockville and Silver Spring in Maryland. Chinatown residents remained in this new area until beginning to move to the DC suburbs following the city’s race riots in 1968.

As the Chinese American community has decamped for the suburbs over the years, the local dim sum scene has followed to nearby commuter cities in Virginia and Maryland.Įstablished in 1851 on Pennsylvania Avenue, the original Washington, DC Chinatown was relocated by the government in 1929 to an area between 5th and 7th Street, Northwest, to make way for the Federal Triangle Project.

As its east coast neighbors in New York and Boston continue to thrive, the Chinatown in Washington, DC has shrunk to the size of a single city block near downtown.

China green dim sum menu