The Best Dishes I Ate in 2025

This week, we’re looking back on the best art, music, food, movies and more from the year. See our entire Best of 2025 guide here.

For this food writer, 2025 was all about finding new favorites: my favorite Peking duck house, build-your-own malatang counter, jjajangmyeon spot, and Lao restaurant inside a bowling alley (granted, a niche category) — all discovered in the course of this year. In a Bay Area food scene marred by crushing closures of longtime staples, it felt more important than ever to cherish and support the local restaurants I love.

Here, then, are 10 of my favorite new-to-me dishes from 2025, presented in roughly the chronological order in which I ate them. You could do a lot worse than start 2026 by eating your way through this list:

1. Smothered pork chops at Dimond Kitchen

2020 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland

Maybe I’m over-romanticizing the scrappy, convenience store parking lot setting of the meal, but nothing made me happier than the smothered pork chop plate I ate on the hood of the car at 10 o’clock on a Friday night. Everything hit just right — the juiciness of those bone-in chops; the deep savoriness of the gravy; the homey, impeccably prepared sides (rice, candied yams, jalapeño mac and cheese).

Located inside the Two Star Market in Oakland, this incredible soul food spot closed in May after the tragic death of chef-owner Carl Bolling. His daughter has been working on restarting the business.

2. Malatang at Zhangliang Malatang

2237 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley

In recent years, cafeteria-style malatang joints, where diners select raw ingredients from the buffet counter and pay by weight, seem to be proliferating faster than Chipotles. Here in the Bay Area, Zhangliang Malatang — a Harbin, China–based megachain — might just be the pinnacle of the genre. My family discovered the perpetually jam-packed Berkeley location in January, and it has probably been our most-revisited restaurant of the year. I always get the same thing: the deliciously umami-laden bone broth soup, medium spicy, bowl piled high with enough Fuzhou fish balls, tofu knots, thin-sliced meats and assorted veggies for the leftovers to last me at least one additional meal.

3. Spicy raw marinated crab at Ondam

2450 El Camino Real, Santa Clara

Also one the year’s messiest dishes. All told, though, my first foray into the recently TikTok-trendy Korean delicacy known as yangneom gejang was everything I dreamed it would be. I loved smooshing the crabs’ sweet, gelatinous, chili-sauce-tinged flesh over hot rice. It was the perfect bite — sauce stains on my pants notwithstanding.

4. Typhoon shelter soft-shell crab at Four Kings

710 Commercial St., San Francisco

This super-trendy Hong Kong–inspired spot is best known for signature dishes like its fried squab and XO escargot. But what I love most is the creativity of Four Kings’ daily specials board, which where I found this all-timer: inordinately succulent, batter-fried crabs topped with crispy fried garlic and basil, served with a swipe of garlicky aioli. We practically licked the plate clean, not leaving behind even a speck of the crunchy shells.

5. Pork katsu at Jungdon Katsu

120 E. Prospect Ave., Danville

6485 Hollis St., Emeryville

Every annoying American tourist comes back from a trip to Japan raving about how amazing the tonkatsu restaurants there are, and it’s true: You by and large can’t find that kind of high-end, dedicated pork cutlet restaurant here in the U.S. I thought that too, until I paid my first visit to Jungdon Katsu, where the pork cutlets are pounded, breaded and fried to order, yielding juicy tonkatsu with an outrageously airy and flaky crust. It comes out, as proper, on a wire rack, with rice, shredded cabbage and all the fixins. (Note: While Jungdon’s Danville location is temporarily closed due to a fire, its new Emeryville restaurant is now open for business.)

6. Jjajangmyeon and tangsuyuk at Gangnam Jajang

4390 Telegraph Ave. Ste. B, Oakland

I’m at the stage of my life when reliably delicious comfort food staples mean a lot more to me than splashy destination restaurants. That’s why I was so happy to discover Gangnam Jajang, a newish Korean-Chinese jjajangmyeon specialist in Temescal. The shop’s saucy, velvety black bean noodles are as satisfying as any I’ve had in the Bay Area, and the tangsuyuk (fried pork with sweet and sour sauce) is supremely crispy and well-seasoned. Bonus points for smart, efficient takeout packaging that prevents the noodles from getting soggy.

7. Peking duck at Boiling Beijing

649 San Mateo Ave., San Bruno

This year, for my daughter’s annual birthday tradition of going out for Peking duck, we tried this new-to-me San Bruno restaurant, where diners can watch the veteran duck master carve each bird through the kitchen window in the back. The hallmark here is the duck’s preternaturally crispy skin, cut into luxurious, fat-slicked shards that we couldn’t stop eating. And even though I’ve been eating Peking duck my whole life, Boiling Beijing introduced me to a few new wrinkles I’d never seen before: hawthorn jellies as a tangy-sweet condiment for the wraps, and a mound of plain white sugar that you use as a dip for the skin, the better to bring out the rich flavor of the rendered fat. (Pro tip: You have to call ahead to reserve a duck.)

8. Gozen set at Stonemill Matcha

561 Valencia St., San Francisco

Though it’s mostly known for its matcha drinks and fancy matcha desserts, this Mission District standby (which had briefly closed and was subsequently revived in 2023) now also serves what’s low-key the most lavish Japanese breakfast in the Bay. Available in limited quantities on weekdays only, Stonemill’s gozen set is a treasure box of seasonal delights. A summertime edition came with six tiny dishes, each one more elegant than the last: raw marinated salmon belly, bracingly vinegary spaghetti squash salad, silky-tender eel chawanmushi, agedoshi eggplant drenched in rich dashi gravy flecked with tiny salty fish, and more — plus miso soup and edamame rice on the side. The whole spread was very, very Japanese. And, of course, very delicious.

9. Hand-pulled noodles at Impression of Lanzhou

1657 Willow Pass Rd. Ste. A, Concord

It’s a good time to be on a Chinese hand-pulled noodle kick in the Bay Area — the whole scene is experiencing something of a renaissance. The best bowl I had in recent memory was at this strip mall noodle shop in Concord, sandwiched between a boba shop and a new-agey evangelical church. The restaurant serves a very traditional version of Lanzhou-style beef noodle soup: a clear, full-flavored broth, thin slices of beef and daikon, good chili oil, and a flurry of cilantro and garlic sprouts scattered on top. Of course the star of the bowl was the hand-pulled noodles themselves, which were about as thick as spaghetti (I’d chosen the default “thin” option) and had an exceptionally pleasing “QQ” bounce despite being so thin.

10. Laotian sausage and jeow som at Lucky Lane 33 Cafe

3501 Village Dr., Castro Valley

Here’s another case where I’ll fully admit that the charm of the location predisposed me to love the food. Still, who can resist the prospect of eating a full-on Laotian feast — nam khao, khao piak sen, papaya salad and all — while racking up strikes (or gutterballs) with your best bowling friends? Not me, clearly. But Lucky Lane 33 Cafe wouldn’t have been nearly as memorable if its Lao and Thai food wasn’t legitimately good — especially the well-charred fermented pork sausages, which were delicious when dunked in the shop’s wonderfully funky and tangy housemade jeow som.