Palette Tea House
Palette Tea House sits in Ghirardelli Square. The family behind Koi Palace in Daly City and Dragon Beaux on Geary runs it. James Yuen Leong Parry sharpened his dim sum here before he opened the Happy Crane, which the Chronicle ranked No. 61 in the Bay Area in 2026. The pork and duck puffs come shaped as little black swans.
Why go
Jason Halverson cooks for Hi Neighbor Restaurant Group. He keeps a core order of nine dishes here: supreme crab dumplings, pork and shrimp siu mai, lotus leaf sticky rice wrapped around abalone, Peking duck, wagyu beef chow fun. With a bigger group he adds the whole crab in garlic butter and the lobster with ginger and scallion. Those last two are banquet dishes and they change what the meal is.
This card runs expensive for dim sum. Lobster-filled dumplings and abalone siu mai sit near Ibérico pork char siu under a cognac glaze. Radish cakes and slippery rice crêpe rolls with XO run alongside.
Order this / avoid
- Order: the salt and pepper calamari and the salted egg lava bao, which Paolo Bicchieri says not to miss.4
- Order: chile oil and spicy mustard at the same time as the food, before anything lands.
- Avoid: the rainbow soup dumplings.
What locals & experts say
- Jason Halverson, chef at Hi Neighbor Restaurant Group, in the San Francisco Standard, April 2026:
Waiting on condiments mid-bite is a mistake you only make once.
1 - The MICHELIN Guide California inspector:
This buzzy dim sum restaurant may call the heart of Ghirardelli Square home, but it is hardly a spot just for tourists.
3 - Monique An, owner of Crustacean and fifty years in this city, in the San Francisco Standard, November 2025: this is where she takes out-of-town guests for dim sum, and she puts them on a cable car afterward.2
Good to know
- Getting in: the restaurant runs its own bookings and asks you to contact it directly.
- Where: 900 North Point Street, up in the plaza at Ghirardelli Square.
Verdict
should-visit — Come as six if you can.