Online reviewers regularly award Great Wall Cuisine, located north of the city near Glendale, accolades for having the best dim sum in Phoenix. In fact, the recent closures of China King and Golden Buddha restricted our review of the city’s five best dim sum restaurants to only four establishments. Though Phoenix has a long history of routing Chinese produce from San Francisco and Los Angeles to local Chinese-owned grocery stores, this legacy alone hasn’t been enough to sustain a contemporary culinary scene. Without a large local Chinese American community, the dim sum in Phoenix is fairly lackluster. » Read more: Our Ultimate Dim Sum Menu Guide with Pictures and Translations Today, Phoenix has neither a Chinatown nor any particular concentration of Chinese Americans, with the pace of new arrivals driven by the ebbs and flows of local professional employment opportunities. Following World War II, the community dispersed throughout the metropolitan area, all but abandoning the former downtown Chinatown. The community grew during the first half of the 20th century and opened a network of Chinese-owned groceries throughout the Phoenix area.

Laborers working on the Southern Pacific Railroad established Phoenix’s first Chinatown during the late 1870s. Though Phoenix is yet to become a thriving regional hub of authentic Chinese cuisine, a small number of solid dim sum restaurants dot the city like welcome water stops in the heart of the Arizona desert. Whether it’s the sunshine or spring training that brings you Phoenix, take comfort that you’ll be able to satisfy your dim sum craving.

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