Kunming Restaurants

Gingko Elite Restaurant
This restaurant sports modern décor and serves excellent Shanghaiese and Yunnanese cooking. The multilevel, high-design space seats 200 in small, tasteful private rooms sleekly done in wood and glass. Try delicious cold rice noodles and pan-fried goose breast with abalone sauce. The restaurant even bottles its own Western-style wine (with labels by contemporary Chinese artists).
Address 16 Cuihu Dong Lu, Kunming, 650031
Phone 0871/516-6972
Salvador’s Coffee House Restaurant
This low-key cafe is good for snacks and conversation. It’s beanbag chairs and couches in a cozy loft space, serves as Kunming’s unofficial headquarters for every sort of bohemian, the sort of place where a half-dozen Chinese kids sporting Mod haircuts and looking like early Beatles can sit next to soldiers from the People’s Liberation Army and no one bats an eye.
Address 76 Wenhua Xiang, Kunming, 650031
Phone 0871/536-3525
Shiping Huiguan Restaurant
This restaurant, serving spicy dishes from the Dian region in a traditional setting, is on an alley south of Cuihu Park and one of the city’s best remaining examples of traditional architecture open to the public. Housed in a historic travelers’ lodge of wood and stone, with a dramatic tiled roof of swooping eaves, the restaurant has tables in two courtyards and private rooms separated by sliding lattice screens. Typical Yunnanese dishes like sliced beef caked in chilies and peppercorns are excellent, but the real reason to come is to see one of Kunming’s greatest relics, the kind of place that so much of China is far from anxious to preserve.
Address 24 Zhonghe Xiang, Kunming, 650031
Location Beside Green Lake Hotel
Phone 0871/362-7222
Cannes Cafeteria
Address Cui Hu Bei Lu 78, Kunming
Location Green Lake
Phone 0871/519-9696
Jinbi Chun Restaurant
One of the best dining experiences in town, this restaurant combines the wonderful ambience of a 130-year-old Chinese mansion with delectable local Dian cuisine. This two-story gray-brick building just south of Jinbi Square has private dining rooms arrayed around a once-open courtyard. Red Chinese lanterns and beautifully carved wooden doors and lattice windows set the right mood. Specialties include zheng lao nangua (steamed pumpkin), jinbi yan huoxia (spicy prawn sashimi),and supi guanguan ji (chicken soup with puff pastry). The restaurant should have an English menu by the time you read this.
Address Da Huajiao Xiang 5, Kunming
Location Dongsi Jie
Phone 0871/364-1663
Baita Daiwei Ting Restaurant
For a refreshing change of palate, this ethnic Dai restaurant, decorated comfortably with rattan furniture and batik prints, serves delicious favorites that include yezi qiguo ji (coconut chicken), huoshao ganba (barbecue dried beef), zhutong rou (pork cooked in bamboo), and hunhe chao (fried mixed vegetables). A variety of local beers and wines are available to complement your meal.
and supi guanguan ji (chicken soup with puff pastry). The restaurant should have an English menu by the time you read this.
Address Da Huajiao Xiang 5, Kunming
Location Dongsi Jie
Phone 0871/364-1663
Baita Daiwei Ting Restaurant
For a refreshing change of palate, this ethnic Dai restaurant, decorated comfortably with rattan furniture and batik prints, serves delicious favorites that include yezi qiguo ji (coconut chicken), huoshao ganba (barbecue dried beef), zhutong rou (pork cooked in bamboo), and hunhe chao (fried mixed vegetables). A variety of local beers and wines are available to complement your meal.
and supi guanguan ji (chicken soup with puff pastry). The restaurant should have an English menu by the time you read this.
Address Da Huajiao Xiang 5, Kunming
Location Dongsi Jie
Phone 0871/364-1663
Baita Daiwei Ting Restaurant
For a refreshing change of palate, this ethnic Dai restaurant, decorated comfortably with rattan furniture and batik prints, serves delicious favorites that include yezi qiguo ji (coconut chicken), huoshao ganba (barbecue dried beef), zhutong rou (pork cooked in bamboo), and hunhe chao (fried mixed vegetables). A variety of local beers and wines are available to complement your meal.
Address Shangyi Jie 143, Kunming
Phone 0871/317-2932
Mama Fu’s Restaurant
All the Chinese and Western staples are here: fried noodles, fried rice, pancakes, apple pie, sandwiches, pizzas, and spaghetti. The restaurant bakes its own breads. Several doors down, the Fu Mama Mianguan offers a wide variety of noodle dishes, including hongshao niurou mian (beef noodles), shanyu mian (noodles with eel), and yindu gali ji mian (curry chicken noodles). Thanks to its proximity to the Camellia Hotel, the restaurant is very popular with foreigners.
Address Baita Lu 219, Kunming
Location across from the Kunming Hotel
Phone 0871/311-1015
Qingniao Restaurant
This popular restaurant has two outlets. The one at Dongfeng Xi Lu is squirreled away in its own alley with alfresco dining on the lovely patio. Unfortunately, it suffers from usually overenthusiastic, not always melodious karaoke aficionados, who can put a damper on a quiet candlelight dinner. The cafe, Xiao Ximen Qingniao on Cui Hu Nan Lu, is quieter and cozier. Food at both is consistently decent. The menus offer pizza, steaks, and basic Chinese fare familiar to foreigners (kung pao chicken, garlic eggplant).
Address Dongfeng Xi Lu 127, Kunming
Location Qingniao Laowu, buildings 1 and 2
Phone 0871/361-0478
Yuquan Zhai Sushi Restaurant
The largest vegetarian restaurant in town, located diagonally across from the Yuantong Si, is a clean, low-key, and foreigner-friendly place where Buddhist chants play softly in the background. All the dishes here are made from vegetables, tofu, or soy products but have been known to fool even the most discerning of meat eaters. Try hongshao shiziqiu (a mushroom ball in soy sauce), cuipi ya (crispy fried mock duck), and cuipi ruyi yu (crispy mock fish in sweet-and-sour sauce). The staff is attentive and helpful.
Address Pingzheng Jie 88, Kunming
Location 2nd floor
Phone 0871/511-16572