That eating in a Chinese restaurant is much more than just ordering spring rolls and three-delicious rice is something that, at last, the people of Barcelona are beginning to understand r. The Chinese food that most of us ate in our childhood, in restaurants that greeted us with a suggestive bowl of shrimp bread, was a small deception (delicious, of course), an adaptation that the first generations of Chinese immigrants made so as not to hurt our unadventurous palates. No, sorry, the one you were told was the best Chinese restaurant in town was not so good.
But as we were saying, the food of the Asian country is much more than that. If it is ridiculous to reduce Spain to a paella and if there are as many croquette recipes as there are grandmothers, what about limiting a country of a billion people (with their corresponding grandmothers) to a dish of chicken with almonds? Chinese cuisine is as complex as its country is big, and, fortunately, today we have several restaurants in Barcelona to peek into that complexity.
And as the complexity is difficult, we wanted to make a list of what we consider the best Chinese restaurants in Barcelona to take a real walk through the Asian country. They are not all that are, but many of the ones we like. We are sure that you also know of a secret and delicious one near your home, and we are waiting for you to tell us about it so we can run to try it.
Shanghai the fief of the Kao family, deans of Chinese food in the city
Perhaps the most famous Chinese restaurant in Barcelona. Or at least one of the first. Or, at least, one of the most similar to a gastronomic restaurant. Shanghai is the restaurant of the Kao family, deans of the food of their country of origin in Barcelona, with a chain of restaurants in the city of which this is the jewel in the crown. Open since 1976 in the upper Zone, it elevates Chinese gastronomy to an experience far from what we usually think of when we think of Chinese food.
Here the cliché of the cheap menu flies: the average price is 40€, but you are sure to return home with the pleasure of having tasted quality and authentic Asian food. One of the best Chinese food restaurants in Barcelona.
📍 Carrer del Bisbe Sevilla, 48.
He Cheng
A restaurant that surprised us with its Chinese-style pork peus, as we discovered in the video above. They are made with soybeans and fried to give them a crunchy texture on the outside and gelatinous on the inside. It is in Sant Pau and prepares typical dishes of the Qintiang region.
📍 Carrer de la Independència, 361.
Out of China, chinese comfort kitchen
You’re strolling through the Eixample and suddenly you come across a Xian warrior who announces that you’ve just found the “best Chinese restaurant” in town. Who can resist that? The thoughtful interior design, which avoids the usual excess of traditional Chinese restaurants, also helps. If we know that the restaurant has been open in Barcelona for 20 years, all the better.
Out of China is, as its name says, a place out of China, where both the decoration and the food let us know that we are in a restaurant in Barcelona but with Chinese cuisine, where the menu is made to show, with careful elaborations, and looking for, as they say, “comfort cuisine”, where everyone feels comfortable (and eats well). A place with vegan and gluten-free options for anyone to feel at home eating Chinese food, outside of China.
📍 Carrer d’Aribau, 112, Barcelona
Chen Ji, the first Chinese, Chinese
The first cliché is true at Chen Ji: it is a Chinese restaurant where most of the customers are Chinese, so if you expect their dishes to be adapted to the Western palate, you’d better change your choice. And if the Chen Ji fulfills the topic that we commented, it is partly because it is in the particular, peculiar and reduced Barcelona’s China Town.
Chen Ji was the first of a wave of Chinese Chinese, Chinese food restaurants cooking food for Chinese Barcelonans looking for their original cuisine, not crappy adaptations. Now it is a little overcrowded, but some of its dishes, such as handmade pasta or Guo Tie (meat wrapped in a thin dough) are to ask for marriage.
📍 Carrer Ali Bei, 65, Barcelona
Uniko, eggplants for pilgrimage
Uniko is one of those stories that we like. Or not, depending on the prism through which you look at it. A Chinese food restaurant is born in the depths of Castillejos Street (next to the Encants), away from it all, and makes his way through the jungle of the loudmouth armed with a dish that makes everyone salivate: Sichuan-style eggplants.
With such a simple vegetable dish as its flagship, Uniko has already opened two locations and has welcomed all the important gastronomic journalists in the city. Delicious, creamy, spicy… Its star dish is worth the trouble, but the rest of its menu, with all kinds of homemade dishes, are worth the trip to the depths of the Eixample, to discover that Barcelona can still keep gastronomic secrets.
📍 Uniko – C. de los Castillejos, 208
📍 Uniko 2 – C/ de Còrsega, 206
China Crown memoirs of Imperial China
We know little of the great imperial China, but it is not difficult to imagine the complexity, sophistication and luxury to which the gastronomy of one of the most important empires in history could have reached. Now, in Barcelona, it is possible to travel back in time and sit, even for a few hours, at the table of a great Chinese emperor.
This is the objective of China Crown, a restaurant located in the also stately Casa Calvet. To elaborate their menu , the chefs have recovered classic recipes of the imperial cuisine, to serve them here with the pomp it deserves. A restaurant that is not cheap, because the life of emperors is not, but eating like the ruler of an empire is priceless.
📍 Carrer de Casp, 48
Memories of China the most classic option
If you are looking for a place with a discreet decoration, you’d better look elsewhere because, in this restaurant, everything is done in a big way (impressive is the figure of the Buddha-woman that runs along one of the walls). Legend has it that if you eat here, you become allergic to Asian fast food chains and fried food.
Memories of China recently participated in the TV3 Program Joc de Cartes, and although it did not win, it opened the door to a classic Chinese restaurant, another of the city’s deans, where we found the dishes and decor we were looking for, but with a touch of class in the kitchen.
📍Carrer de Lincoln, 17
Bund 18, the best secret of the Sagrada Familia
The Shanghai Bund can be defined by completing three clichés: here the service is regular, it is full of Chinese people and whoever claims to like Chinese food might rethink some things if they come here. Peculiarly and in spite of being almost touching with the Sagrada Familia, it is not overcrowded.
Just by saying that it does not have its own website, we say it all. A place that is a secret for foodies who are looking for that, gastronomic secrets in places where it may seem that there are none, such as the Sagrada Familia neighborhood. The ten soups on the menu and some show xialongbao with handmade pasta are just some of its attractions.
📍Carrer de Lepant, 288
Spicy Soul Hot Pot, discovering the hot pot
The hotpot is one of the unknown Chinese wonders in Barcelona. One of its most popular dishes, which consists of having a steaming pot in the center of the table with different broths in which you dip all kinds of foods that are ordered separately.
In this way, lunch ends up being a mixture between the products we cook in the broth and the broths themselves, which end up enriched with these products. A brilliant and fun lunch idea that makes a group lunch a real treat.
Fortunately, this way of eating is becoming more and more common in the city thanks to places like Spicy Soul Hot Pot, which turn the experience into something fun thanks, among other things, to the fact that a robot brings us the food we order. An ideal way to get started in this great way of making soup.
📍Carrer del Consell de Cent, 303
Jia Xian, the authentic Chinese food experience
Jia Xian has no website, no instagram, no need for it. His restaurant, a rarity in the Parallel the restaurant welcomes Chinese customers who don’t need social networks to find the place because they have already done so thanks to word of mouth. Nor do they need translation to understand a menu of genuine Chinese cuisine, which comes, specifically, from the southwest of the country, and is a lesson that eating foreign food is not to seek flavors that suit our palate, but to dare with experiences that take us away from our comfort zone.
Jia Xian looks more like a hotel than a restaurant. This is because most of the tables are in private rooms, reserved with rotating tables where large groups gather to order shared dishes that, as tradition dictates, look for the food to leave a good impression. From rarities like duck tongues (a luxury in China) to simple dishes very well executed like homemade noodles, eating at Jia Xian is an authentic experience that is crowned, by the way, in the best way: each reserved room has a private TV with, attention, microphones and karaoke.
av. del Paral-lel, 102, 08015 Barcelona
Da Zhong, the place of celebrations
In a small city like Barcelona, secrets fly fast. Chen Ji, as we said before, is already overcrowded, so if you want to avoid the queues, take a look in front, where Da Zhong is. There, in a giant place, you can fit all the Chinese food modalities you want to do, but if what you are looking for is, specifically, to celebrate an occasion, this is the place.
Da Zhong has great private rooms and giant tables where you can gather a group to eat those majestic dishes that come out of the kitchen, vegetable fondues and huge plates of homemade pasta, tasty vegetables… Anyway, if you want an authentic group experience to reach a collective pleasure, this is the place.
📍 Carrer d’Alí Bei, 34
Creperie Bar Xianhui Jie 2
Crepes are not only typical of France, but are also part of Chinese street food. That said, they are a little different and are savory and have all kinds of toppings, ranging from meat or soy to sautéed vegetables instead of being filled with chocolate or ham and cheese.
The Xianhui Jie 2 Creperie Bar is a very authentic place where you can try this typical breakfast from the north of the country accompanied by various soy drinks and dates. The local offers options take-away, as it is a dish that is usually taken to go, but if you prefer you also have the option to sit at one of their tables and have a traditional Chinese breakfast in full.
📍Avinguda Meridiana, 307
📍Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes, 480
Maji Beef Noodle, the queen soup
As they say: “One step away from Lanzhou”… from Trafalgar Street. Maji Beef Noodle has just opened to bring to Barcelona what is said to be the most famous ramen in China, the “Lanzhou Beef Noodle, one of the most typical dishes of the province of Gansu, in Lanzhou, in northwest China, on the banks of the Yellow River.
Their soup is a consistent beef escudella, with wheat noodles, served in a giant bowl. A hearty and rich soup that can be accompanied by quaint and authentic starters such as cucumber salad or pig’s feet served as a cold sausage. Maji has, in addition, another feature that it shares with some other Chinese food places: everything is ordered through the app and the public unfriendly to chatter abounds here, silent, making comfortable anyone, alone or not, who decides to quietly reflect on life with his gaze lost in the depths of a comforting bowl of soup.
📍Carrer de Trafalgar, 50