Hunan cuisine is a hot (and spicy) recent entry to the area’s Chinese restaurant scene, with Dong Ting Chun proving to be a popular place in Edmonds. Fish dishes are featured on the extensive menu, including a namesake dish that’s a whole fish steamed with red chiles and onions. Pickled chiles, pumpkin pancakes, braised pork, and preserved egg are prominent on the menu; the mortar and pestle-pounded eggplant with bell pepper and century egg is a must-order.

The boiled dumplings at Little Ting’s Dumplings, both in Seattle and Bellevue, are juicy and delicious. They come in many varieties, from pork and fennel to chive and scallop to sea cucumber and pork. There are even occasional specials, like sea urchin dumplings. Ordering them pan-fried adds an extra layer of crispy goodness.

Enter through the doors of the Asian Food Center in north Seattle and you’ll immediately be drawn to the chile-laden dishes at Spicy Style of Sichuan. The boiled dishes, like the water-boiled beef, are gorgeous to look at and intense to eat (you’ll need bowls of rice on the side). There are dry pots with your choice of cured bacon, sizzling spicy squid, and various vegetables; an endless selection of entrees; and, for the adventurous, dishes like grilled black tripe, spicy trotter with mustard, stir-fried apple snail meat with chile peppers, chicken gizzards with pickled cowpeas, and spicy crispy pork tripe.

A modest little restaurant in Fremont, 19 Gold is a popular destination for Taiwanese food and bubble tea. The braised combination platters are a good place to start, featuring duck wings and pork intestines, but the main draw is the malatang bowls. They feature 19 different spices, hence the name of the restaurant, and you can order them with meat, seafood, vegetables, dumplings, and even udon noodles. The minced pork over rice or noodles is seemingly simple but spectacular. Unsurprisingly, 19 Gold is also a perfect place to sample the national dish of Taiwan: bone marrow-rich beef noodle soup with a slightly spicy kick.

Bellevue’s Dan Gui Sichuan Cuisine serves up a solid selection of items. Saliva chicken is a popular cold dish — the chicken is poached and placed in chile sauce that makes for a mouth-watering (hence the name) experience. Chile-mixed eggplant with preserved egg comes in a large mortar with a pestle provided to mash everything together until you get a funky mixture. The menu showcases numerous bowls of fish in broth; try the ma la tofu pudding with fish filets in a spicy and numbing broth. The seemingly simple dry pot cabbage shows off the skill of the kitchen, as the wok hei smokiness shines through.

This Chinese import is one of the best hot pot restaurants in the metro area. In contrast to most other places, which feature a large shared pot, diners at Bellevue’s Dolar Shop get their own individual hot pots — still with the option of a split bowl containing two broths. It’s the quality of the broths that makes Dolar rise above the others, whether it’s pork leg bone, mushroom, Szechuan hot and spicy, or tomato and oxtail. Items to add to the hot pot are impeccable, the sauce bar is forever customizable, and you can always count on a refreshing ice cream cone at the end of the meal.

Washington is one of only four states in North America where you’ll find the xiao long bao soup dumpling palace known as Din Tai Fung, which now has several Seattle-area locations including University Village and Pacific Place downtown. This Taiwanese import is a great place to explore a diverse menu of dumpling, noodle, and rice dishes. It’s almost hypnotizing to watch through the window as workers make the chain’s famous soup dumplings, which are as delicate and delicious as everyone says, and the shrimp and pork shao mai are arguably even better.

Mike’s Noodle House may be the ultimate in Chinese comfort food. For a quick and inexpensive meal, it’s hard to beat this Chinatown-International District shop’s bowls of wontons, dumplings, and toothpick-thin noodles. The place gets especially crowded on weekends when diners start their day choosing from a wide variety of congee bowls (choices include preserved egg, rock cod, and pork liver) paired with a youtiao (savory Chinese cruller).

One of the Chinatown-International District’s best-known and oldest restaurants, Tai Tung has been open since 1935 and is as solid as ever. Many Seattle legends have dined at Tai Tung — you can sit in the Bruce Lee Memorial Booth where his cut-out will watch while you eat his beloved beef with oyster sauce — and even international celebrities, like the late Anthony Bourdain, have visited the place. The extensive menu is full of classics from chop suey to egg foo young to chow mein, especially fun to eat family-style.

It’s easy to overlook this sliver of a storefront in the Chinatown-International District, but the sight of hanging meats draws people in, and you won’t be disappointed. The roasted duck has crackly skin, while poached free-range chicken comes with a bright ginger-scallion sauce. With an advance order, the restaurant will even set up a whole pig to go for your special occasion.

The tables are designed for evening hot pot service, but daytime dim sum is the real reason to go to Triumph Valley in Kent. It’s best to arrive before opening time on weekends to avoid the long lines of people who agree that this dim sum is better than what’s currently available in Seattle and Bellevue (though short of the quality that makes the drives to Richmond worthwhile). Order from a tablet on the table, with highlights that include crispy shrimp rice rolls, salted egg yolk mochi, and pan-fried dumplings with chive, shrimp, and pork.