Dol Ho Restaurant

Still our favorite to go spot for beef balls and black bean spare ribs. When you're tight on time, their to-go is items with rice is a solid choice. Me and Pops get these two items. Their hot sauce is made in house and definitely a delicious add on to food.

Service is quick, when this place is packed, you might end up sitting on same table with strangers. When you get tea, get the Bo Lay (puer) only for the OGs.

The vibes nice, fast pace and semi loud. definitely one of the best hole in the wall spots in SF Chinatown.

-ig BlackTigerEats

For as long as I've been going to Chinatown in San Francisco, I've been coming here. I basically grew up in this building and have many memories. I recently came back here during a visit and although a lot of time has passed since I was a little kid, a lot of the sights, sounds, and especially food was the same.

The most popular thing and my favorite thing to get here are the spare ribs with rice ($6). They top it with a seasoned soy sauce on top which I could drink by the gallon because it's so good. I usually ask them to pour more of it because it goes really well with the rice. Some other favorites are the chicken feet and the beef balls. Our food came out super quickly even though they were understaffed.

If you don't want to sit down, you can buy dim sum at the counter. Note that there's a $10 minimum for credit and debit cards, but if you're coming here (and Chinatown in general) it might be easier to just bring some cash.

Cheap, fast and comfort food. Put your expectation aside, Pretending you're eating somewhere in the dirty alley in Mong Kok in Kowloon Hong Kong.
Give time until they clean the table first, otherwise you will end up with sticky elbows.
Even though it is cheap, Do not over order.
One item on rice and two individual items are more than enough for one person. I got carried away and over ordered one extra item and I walked like a pregnant lady after that lol.
I recommend the steamed beef on rice, steamed meatball and spare ribs in the black bean sauce.
Just be open minded and go along with the experience.
Bring cash, don't bring your in laws.

I wanted to go somewhere that has a sit down. Us East coast ppl usually likes to go early. Sadly San Fran opens up at 11am which falls in line for brunch. Found this hole in a wall kind of spot. It's a self seated kind of place where locals just know what they have. It's Cantonese base so, brush up on it if you want to be serve properly.

As for food. I'm not sure if it's what we've ordered or what. But the stuff that we had was a bit on the saltier side and the quality was over cooked. But at the same time. Base on the largely elder focus customers. I feel like it fits the bill for them.

IMO. If you're 70 and over this would be the spot for ya! That or if you like heavy handed salty dishes.

When I get older I can only hope you can find me here too. This establishment is the community tea house full of senior people mostly from Pings.

Although it was raining today It made it the best day for me to go to CT. Tons of free parking everywhere
The service was above and beyond top notch. The new lady was very observant and attentive . Refilled our tea and brought food in a timely manner.
Stay away for the shrimp crepe and get the cilantro crepe. This place is known for their rice plates.
Try the chicken rice or patty rice with salted fish.
And their house chili sauce is Devine
The ambience is as authentic as it gets
Don't go to koi palace
Support Dol Ho instead

You order the dim sum via menu and they'll bring out the dishes. I would recommend bringing a Chinese speaker, you'll have better luck ordering food.
Favorite Items: Spare Rib over Rice and Shrimp Crepe

This can house a big group decently. Environment wise, this is a straight up hole in the wall place, so the tables are a little sticky, but seemed clean enough?

Parking is horrendous, but its SF, not the restaurants fault.

Stumbled across this unassuming spot around the corner of the main street while doing a dim sum crawl that mostly involved wandering the streets of Chinatown and popping into wherever the sights and smells took me. Initially unsure, I was relieved when I heard the chatter of cantonese around me and felt the warmth of the giant towered steamers by the window that gusted over me with each moving order.

Thankfully the food itself was also great! I bought the dim sum to-go so it was a suspenseful wait. I loved what I ordered but it sounds like I need to come back for the spare ribs - with the unbeatable prices and none of the unnecessarily long lines swarming Good Mong Kok, I definitely will be :)

+ fried taro puffs (4.5/5): Surprisingly so good! Lightly fried, delicious and flavorful meat filling that complements the creaminess of the taro well. Tastes good reheated too. Oof craving this one already...

+ pork and vegetable buns (4/5): Meat to breading ratio could be higher but I liked how soft, fluffy, and mildly sweet the breading was. I believe the vegetable was cabbage. From the menu, I thought I was buying 1 big bun for $3.75 but 1 order was actually 3 buns the size of my palm!

Delicious, cheap, and extremely quick dim sum. You know you're in the right place when literally all the other people dining in the restaurant are elderly canto folks and the menu looks like it was typed on Microsoft word 2005. Small dishes were $5 each and large dishes were $6 each. My favorite was the pork spare ribs which I felt was better than the pork spare ribs at almost every other dim sum joint I've been to. The other items we ordered were also delicious but did not necessarily stand out as much to me. We were shook by how the food would come out literally 1 minute after ordering. Street parking is hard ofc bc Chinatown SF but there are some decently priced garages nearby!

Wanted my friend to have dim sum in Chinatown while we were visiting, but the two places I had in mind were either closed or the line was too long, so, looking on Yelp, we decided on Dol Ho. This is certainly a local place with a very distinct local flavor!

We sat at a table that was more or less connected to another table. The waitresses and patrons had to reach over us to give and get their food and whatever else they exchanged. All this was done with smiles, so all we could do was enjoy the exchange and smile, too!

We ordered a few dishes to share and everything was tasty. We had the ha gow, siew mai, stuffed eggplant, a fried meat or shrimp dumpling, and another dumpling that was wrapped in sai fun (my favorite, but I'm not sure what it was called!!). Prices were really good and we were stuffed. We even had plenty left over to take home for lunch the next day!

Didn't know at first, but you have to walk up to the counter when you're ready to pay and they'll add everything up and take your payment! As others have said, absolutely no frills!!

This is more for the feeling of nostalgic than anything else. We found out this gem almost 30 years ago. It's not the fanciest place. But it absolutely brings back good old time memories. It's like travel back in time and everything is the same.

Spare ribs rice still good. My favorite is the rice rolls. Beef balls and turnips cake are great. We got an order of sesame balls to go. Total is $27. Isn't it a steal?