Dragon Beaux Restaurant
Five xiao long bao in one basket, five colored wrappers, five different fillings, from black truffle and crab roe to beef in a beet-stained skin.
Why go
Julia Chen scored it 8.2 for the Infatuation in April 2023 and named the signature: You have ingredients like turmeric, squid ink, and spinach to thank for the colorful wrappers of this xiao long bao sampler, and Dragon Beaux's signature dish. There are five in one basket, and each one is filled with something different, from black truffle and crab roe to beef or pork. They're all great, but the one with beef inside a beet-tinted wrapper is the standout.
1 Three years later the room turned up in the San Francisco Standard's dim sum panel as a restaurant owner's own pick. Carrie Blease, who co-owns Wolfsbane in Dogpatch and runs its floor, filed this address under her favorite spot, and Lena Park wrote her answer up in the paper's words: Today, Dragon Beaux is one of her go-to spots, especially when she wants to satisfy a craving for soup dumplings.
Park names the salted egg yolk lava buns and the soup dumpling sampler as the two things Blease points people at.2 Every night the kitchen serves all-you-can-eat hot pot.
Order this / avoid
- Order: the Five Guys xiao long bao, then Blease's two picks, the salted egg yolk lava buns and the soup dumpling sampler.2
- Order: the jumbo scallop siu mai. Chen:
These meaty two-biters are crowned with a scallop on top, and steamed to perfection.
1 - Order: the hot pot at dinner, all you can eat, $45 as at April 2023. Chen on what that buys:
melt-in-your-mouth thin sliced pork belly, ramen or udon, a variety of seafood, wontons, and more,
alongside shaved-to-order beef tendon and squid.1 - Avoid: expecting a quiet table. The back room is a hall broken up with carved panels and the place is built for groups.
What locals & experts say
- Carrie Blease, co-owner and general manager of Wolfsbane, in the San Francisco Standard (Lena Park, 25 April 2026): her go-to for soup dumplings, named with this address. Park reports it and never quotes her, so the words are the paper's. The same panel entry records that her first dim sum was a crab claw at Ton Kiang, four blocks up Geary, which has since closed.2
- The Infatuation SF (Julia Chen, 18 April 2023), 8.2: on where it sits among its neighbors,
Dragon Beaux is where to go for dim sum in the Richmond when you want a fancier situation than Good Luck Dim Sum or Hong Kong Lounge.
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Good to know
- Timing: dim sum through the day, hot pot every night.
- Booking: worth making one for a weekend group.
- Getting there: Geary at 21st Avenue, in the Outer Richmond.
- Nearby: Hong Kong Lounge is four blocks east at 5322 Geary and has its own page here.
Verdict
should-visit — Five xiao long bao in a basket, each wrapper colored by a different thing and each one filled with something else, from black truffle and crab roe through to beef in a beet-stained skin. Julia Chen scored the room 8.2 for the Infatuation in April 2023, and in April 2026 the San Francisco Standard put Carrie Blease, who co-owns Wolfsbane and runs its floor, on the record naming this as where she goes for soup dumplings. A restaurant owner choosing a competitor's dumplings three years after a critic scored them is two votes that do not depend on each other. The hot pot at night, all you can eat with shaved-to-order beef tendon and squid, is a second reason to make the trip out Geary.