13 Best Chinese Restaurants in Barcelona

If you only eat at one Chinese place in Barcelona, make it this one. Chen Ji is a bright, no-frills canteen on Carrer d'Ali Bei in Fort Pienc, packed tables, open kitchen, queues on the pavement at weekend lunch, and it's where a lot of the city's Chinese community actually eats. The cooking leans Qingtian home style with Northern, Shanghainese and Cantonese touches: hand-pulled noodles, guotie, xiaolongbao, fried rice cakes. It's cheap in the best way, with most plates under €8 and a whole meal rarely topping €25. There's a Chinese-language menu with jellyfish salad and duck tongue if you ask. Come hungry, come early, bring cash, and order more than you think you need.

Shanghai is the grand old name of Chinese cooking in Barcelona. The Kao family opened it in 1976 in Sant Gervasi - la Bonanova, and it's still theirs: José María Kao runs the kitchen, his brother Luis built the 800-label wine cellar, and the cooking is rooted in the family's Shandong heritage. José María shops the Boqueria daily, which tells you how seriously they take sourcing. The Peking duck is the must-order, and the dim sum is genuinely refined, siu mai with trout roe, grilled prawn dumplings. It's a proper sit-down occasion rather than a canteen, around €60 a head, and it's listed in the Repsol guide. The walls are lined with photos of the family alongside half of famous Barcelona. A classic for good reason.

China Crown is the top end of Chinese dining in Barcelona, the place to go when you want the full banquet treatment. Executive chef Felipe Bao runs an imperial-style kitchen in la Dreta de l'Eixample, building dishes around centuries of Chinese gastronomic tradition, and it's Repsol Recommended. The signature is the Imperial Peking Duck, carved and served with ceremony, €90 whole or €55 half. Around it sits a serious xiaolongbao programme, including versions with Iberico pork and foie or with squid ink and truffle, plus dishes like lobster in Nanyang red curry and steamed sea bass with garlic and Sichuan chilli. It's the priciest spot on this list and the most theatrical. Save it for the meal that needs to feel like an event.

Out of China has been a reliable Eixample all-rounder since 2002, run by the Wong sisters as a family operation in l'Antiga Esquerra de l'Eixample. The kitchen does southern Chinese home cooking built around rice rather than wheat: hand-made dumplings, Peking duck with pancakes, steamed and pan-fried dim sum, sweet-and-sour stewed pork ribs, curry prawns with courgette. They make a point of cooking without MSG and sourcing locally where they can, and there are gluten-free options, which is rarer than it should be in this category. It's friendly, affordable, around €25 a head, and it's the kind of neighbourhood place you end up going back to. A safe, genuinely good first stop in the Eixample.

Melo-Jia cooks Wenzhou-style food from coastal Zhejiang, where seafood and fish do a lot of the work, and it's one of the better dim sum lists in the Eixample. The menu is long and rewarding: jellyfish salad, a beef salad dressed Sichuan style, a big spread of dumplings (xiaolongbao, shaomai de marisco, truffle xiaolongbao), and bigger plates like Dongpo-style braised pork belly and the golden lion's-head meatball. There's a dim-sum-and-duck set menu at €36 per person if you want someone else to do the ordering. Prices land around €20 to €30 a head. It's a good middle ground, more ambitious than the canteens, more relaxed than the banquet rooms.

Río Dragón is the one worth the trip uphill to El Guinardó, and the only northeastern-leaning kitchen on this list. The cooking works in the Sichuan and Manchurian traditions, unpretentious classics done well: noodles, dumplings, the kind of staples that anchor this style of menu, with vegetarian options too. It's a neighbourhood spot rather than a destination room, prices in the €25 to €35 range, and it earns its place here on the strength of the food and the regional angle, given how few Dongbei-leaning kitchens the city has. The owner reputedly does a magic trick, which is a fun bonus but not the reason to come. Come for the noodles and the dumplings.

He Cheng has been making its noodles, dumplings and raviolis by hand every day since 1997, in El Camp de l'Arpa del Clot, following family recipes. This is Qingtian home cooking, and the house raviolis are the thing to order: a potato-starch dough gives them a slippery, chewy texture you rarely find outside Qingtian. The other signature is the pata de cerdo al estilo Qingtian, pork leg marinated for more than 24 hours before slow-cooking. The menu is enormous and cheap, most dishes well under €10, and it runs the full range from noodle soups and fried rice cakes to frogs' legs and a marisco hotpot for the table. Under €25 a head, and a genuine specialist in a style most people never get to try.

Yue Lai is a low-key home-style kitchen in la Dreta de l'Eixample with a sprawling, mostly bilingual menu and prices that barely move the needle. The cooking swings between Wenzhou-style dishes and proper Sichuan heat: hand-pulled noodles, pan-fried dumplings made to order, a long list of cold starters (marinated veal, jellyfish salad, spicy shredded pig ear), and chilli-oil beef and mapo tofu for the spice crowd. Most plates sit under €10, and the dumplings come in 6 or 10-piece portions so you can graze across a few. It's the kind of place that rewards going with a group and ordering wide. Unfussy, cheap and genuinely regional.

DaZhong sits in the Fort Pienc cluster and casts a wide net across Chinese regional traditions, Sichuan, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Cantonese, so the menu covers a lot of ground rather than one single style. You'll find Chinese-style dumplings, noodle dishes and fried rice, and the whole roast duck is a showpiece worth ordering for the table. It's a solid, broad-appeal choice if you're with a group that can't agree on a region: someone wants noodles, someone wants something fiery, someone wants duck, and DaZhong can do all three. Less of a specialist than its Fort Pienc neighbours, but a dependable all-rounder in the city's Chinatown corner.

Kao Dim Sum is the Kao family's dim-sum-focused spot in Sarrià-Sant Gervasi, with chef Josep Maria Kao bringing three generations of Chinese-Catalan expertise to a menu built around hand-made Cantonese dumplings and sharing plates. The line-up is what you want from a dedicated dim sum bar: xiao long bao, siu mai, red prawn dumplings, foie-filled wontons, Vietnamese nem rolls, plus bigger plates like fried duck with hoisin, sweet-and-sour ribs and stir-fried zhao mien noodles. It runs around €50 a head. If you want the Kao kitchen's polish in a more focused, dumpling-first format, this is the one. A specialist pick for when dim sum is the whole point.

Chi Nanit is the Shanghainese specialist of the list, a family kitchen in la Vila de Gràcia run by Jun Mei and built around hand-made dumplings and noodles. It's the reincarnation of the beloved Nanit, and the cooking sticks close to Shanghai-region technique rather than the usual Western-Chinese template. Order the shrimp shaomai, the xiaolongbao, the hot-pot soups and Shanghai chicken, plus chef Quim's mains like Gong Bao chicken and tofu in vinegar sauce. Prices land in the €26 to €50 range, a step up from the canteens but reflected in the care. If you want Shanghai dumplings done by people who clearly love the style, Gràcia is where to go.

Uniko is a Shanghai dim sum specialist in l'Antiga Esquerra de l'Eixample, and the headline is the xiaolongbao: the chef reportedly has more than 30 years of practice making them. The menu runs deep into Shanghai and Sichuan staples, sheng jian pan-fried buns, hand-made noodles, salt-and-pepper pork loin, yu xiang rou si (Sichuan-style pork strips), and a long list of wonton soups. Prices are very gentle, around €25 a head, which makes it an easy go-to when you want serious soup dumplings without the occasion-dining price tag. The room is simple and the focus is squarely on the dumplings and noodles. For xiaolongbao specifically, it's one of the city's best-value picks.

Casa de Waipo spans three Chinese regional traditions on one menu in la Dreta de l'Eixample, which means a meal here can swing from mild to fiery depending on what you order. Zhejiang cooking brings the lighter, fresher eastern-coast flavours; Sichuan brings the chilli oil and tongue-numbing pepper; and Cantonese covers a broad, ingredient-forward southern range. It's a budget-authentic spot, most dishes under €10, with regional specifics worth seeking out: the Songsao fish broth, osmanthus dumplings, twice-cooked pork with spicy vegetables, and a run of pork-intestine dishes for the more adventurous. A good-value way to taste across three regions in a single sitting.