It may not be America’s oldest Chinatown like the one in San Francisco nor is it intimate and walkable like the one in Boston. But Houston’s Chinatown, commonly known by locals as Asiatown, has much to attract lovers of diverse cultures. Built on a stretch of Bellaire Boulevard in the southwestern part of Houston, sandwiched by Fondren Road and Texas 6, you’ll need a car to explore the vast expanse where the Chinese and Vietnamese majorities meet with people whose families came from Malaysia, Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines, Korea, and Thailand.
The Chinese population of Houston didn’t start out so far from downtown. In fact, the original Chinatown was in the neighborhood known as EaDo — East Downtown. The westward expansion didn’t begin in earnest until the 1980s. Some trace its roots to the 1983 debut of Diho Market, the first Asian supermarket on Bellaire, quickly followed by several more, including Hong Kong Food Market, which now stands in the Hong Kong City Mall, a centerpiece of the neighborhood that binds the Alief neighborhood, often known as Little Saigon or Viet-Town with more easterly, more heavily Chinese Sharpstown.
But dry facts do nothing to whet your appetite and that’s precisely what a discussion of Houston Asiatown should do. That’s because the seemingly infinite dining options sprawl on for more than six square miles. Even in a city of more than 13,000 restaurants, Asiatown is unusually packed to the gills with stellar places to eat. This article is an introduction to some of the best places to do it.
Get around Asiatown for an unforgettable food crawl
The two best ways to get to Asiatown from outside Texas both involve flying. Small William P. Hobby Airport is between 30 and 40 minutes away by car, while heading over from George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH) will take an average of 10 to 20 minutes longer…