10 Best Dim Sum Restaurants in Barcelona

Kao Dim Sum is the place most people in Barcelona name first when you ask about dim sum, and it earns it. Chef Josep Maria Kao brings three generations of Chinese-Catalan cooking to a menu built around handmade dumplings and sharing plates, so the steamer basket is the whole point rather than a starter. You can graze across crispy, boiled and steamed dumplings in one sitting: prawn and foie wontons, beef jiao zi, xiao long bao filled with pork belly and broth, siu mai topped with trout roe, and red prawn sao mai. There are bigger plates too, like fried duck with hoisin and stir-fried zhao mien noodles, but the dumplings are why you come. It sits up in Sant Gervasi on Carrer del Bisbe Sivilla, away from the tourist crush, which is part of the appeal.

Out of China is the all-rounder of this list, a family-run kitchen on Aribau run by sisters Chenqi and Chenming Wong that does southern Chinese home cooking built around rice rather than wheat. The dim sum comes steamed and pan-fried, and you can build a whole table out of it: handmade dumplings, pan-fried gyozas, crispy beef and curry dumplings, and crispy pork wontons. Order the steamed assorted dim sum to cover a few styles in one go, then push into the stewed pork ribs in dark sweet-and-sour sauce and the Peking duck with pancakes if you're hungry. The kitchen says it cooks without MSG and sources km0 ingredients where it can. Prices stay gentle, and finishing on mochi or the ice-cream pancake is the move.

Fan Dim Sum, up on Laforja in Sant Gervasi-Galvany, leans hard into the soup-dumpling side of things. The house specialty is xiaolongbao, the broth-filled dumplings you handle gently so you don't lose the soup inside, and the rest of the menu reads like a dim sum greatest-hits you can actually afford. The crystal-skin transparent jiaozi are the thing to order: a vegetarian-and-truffle version and a prawn-and-bamboo one, both four pieces for 9.90 euros. Around them you get pork, prawn and vegetarian jiaozi at 5.90 to 6.90 euros, siu mai with shrimp, fried wontons and baozi. The FU set at 7.90 euros is a smart way to taste a spread of four without committing to full baskets. Steamed or fried is your call on most of the dumplings.

El Bund 18 is a Shanghainese room near the Sagrada Família, and xiao long bao is the dish it's known for. Shanghainese cooking comes out of Shanghai and the Yangtze delta, a slightly sweeter, soy-forward style, and here it runs across lunch and dinner with wine, beer and coffee on the menu. The dim sum section is short and to the point: xiao long bao, wonton soup with pork, dumplings with pork and vegetables, and beef dumplings. What makes it worth the trip is the cold-starter spread that frames a proper Shanghainese meal around those dumplings, from kelp salad and cucumber to Wenzhou-style fish strips and homemade duck. Come for the soup dumplings, stay for the cold table, and you've got the most regionally specific dim sum experience on this list.

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Dos Palillos is the elevated outlier, and it belongs here because the whole concept was born from dim sum. Chef Albert Raurich, formerly of elBulli, built the place around the idea of Asian tapas, applying that technique to Japanese, Chinese, Thai and Vietnamese cooking grounded in local seasonal produce. It holds one Michelin star and two Repsol Soles, the only such markers in this entire pool. The main room is tasting-menu territory now, with the Menú Dos Palillos at 140 euros and the prestige Menú Tokusen at 175 euros, running through dishes like the Cantonese-style pork jowl, sea bass naresushi and hake in Japanese pil-pil. This isn't a casual basket-and-pass kind of meal, it's the dim sum idea taken to its most ambitious end. Book well ahead.

Shoronpo, in Gràcia on Carrer del Dr. Rizal, is the soup-dumpling specialist where the Japanese name for xiao long bao is literally above the door. Chef Keita Tanaka builds the kitchen around two things: shoronpo, folded and steamed to order, and ramen. The dumplings are the draw, with fillings that go beyond the classic pork to include foie gras and jamón Ibérico, a local twist that actually makes sense once you taste it. The signature tantanmen ramen, with a thick sesame-and-chilli broth and minced pork, is the bowl to fall back into once you've worked through a couple of steamer baskets. It's small, it's specific, and it does soup dumplings better than almost anywhere in the city. Worth the trip up to Gràcia.

Mosquito has been doing Asian tapas in the Born for years, and it's the easy, accessible end of this list. The carte is pan-Asian by design, pulling from Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean and Thai cooking, but dumplings and bao sit right at the centre. You order prawn or vegetable gyoza, char siu pork bao, squid bao and pork belly with hoisin bao, then fill in around them with smoked chicken wings, Cantonese chicken ribs and a ramen bowl. Most plates land under 17 euros, and a full spread runs comfortably under 25 per person, which is part of why it stays busy. It holds a Repsol Solete too. This is the spot for a relaxed, share-everything dim-sum-and-bao dinner without a reservation drama.

Dr. Zhang, on Sepúlveda in Sant Antoni, is the modern dumpling house with the widest hand-folded range on this list. The kitchen specializes in jiaozi, gyozas, wantons, shao mai, momos and bao, then frames them with pan-Asian dishes pulling from Chinese, Korean, Thai and Japanese cooking. The gyoza section is where it gets interesting: duck-and-date gyoza glazed with teriyaki, Korean spicy chicken gyoza with tamarind and mint, and a mixed-mushroom version with sesame-miso, most around 7 to 9 euros and offered pan-fried or steamed. Around them you can build out with dan dan noodles, red curry laksa, and corn ribs glazed with miso-lime butter. Plenty of items are marked vegetarian or vegan, which makes it an easy table for a mixed group.

China Crown is the top-end, dress-up-a-bit pick, an imperial Chinese kitchen on Casp under executive chef Felipe Bao, recognised as Repsol Recomendado. The dim sum here is treated as a refined course rather than a casual basket, and the xiaolongbao section alone is a reason to come: an imperial assortment, an Iberico-pork-and-green-asparagus version, one with Iberico pork and foie gras, and a squid-ink xiaolongbao with Iberico pork and truffle, all four pieces for 16 euros. The kitchen spans Cantonese, Sichuan and regional cooking, and the signature Imperial Peking Duck is served with full ceremony. If you want dim sum as part of a proper sit-down meal with range and polish, this is the table. Tasting menus run from 70 euros.

Melo-Jia, on Còrsega in the Eixample, cooks Wenzhou-style food from Zhejiang, a coastal region where seafood and fish do a lot of the talking. The dim sum reads like the work of a kitchen that folds for itself, not for a tourist menu: Xiao Longbao at 9 euros, Xia Jiao and seafood shaomai, a truffle xiaolongbao, a golden eel parcel, and a brothy beef-and-foie pouch. There's a mixed dim sum assortment if you want a quick lay of the land, and griddled jiaozi by the six. Around the dumplings, the Wenzhou half of the menu brings stir-fries, fish dishes and dressed cold plates like the Sichuan-style beef salad and dressed jellyfish. It's a quieter, more regional pick than the Cantonese houses, and that's exactly the point.