Weekend mornings on Convoy Street, the parking lot at Jasmine Seafood Restaurant fills up before 10 a.m. That alone tells you something. This is where San Diego’s Chinese community has been coming for dim sum since the 1980s, and the room — big, loud, round-tabled, with the particular controlled chaos of carts weaving between chairs — looks and operates exactly the way it should.
Jasmine sits in Kearny Mesa, San Diego’s de facto Chinatown, anchored by a stretch of Convoy Street dense with Vietnamese pho spots, Korean BBQ joints, and Chinese bakeries. The restaurant is large enough to seat several hundred people, and on Saturday and Sunday it uses all of that space. Families span three generations at a single table. Older couples read Chinese-language newspapers while they eat. The carts come around fast, and the aunties pushing them don’t slow down for anyone who can’t decide quickly.
The har gow — shrimp dumplings — are consistently well-made, with thin translucent wrappers that hold without tearing. The siu mai, pork and shrimp, arrive hot and dense. Turnip cake (lo bak go) gets ordered off nearly every cart that carries it. Cheung fun, the rice noodle rolls, come with barbecue pork or shrimp; the version with XO sauce is worth flagging down specifically. Egg tarts appear in the last rounds and disappear almost immediately.
For anyone unfamiliar with the cart-service format: dishes come to the table in small steam baskets or on plates, and a server stamps a card to track what’s been ordered. The tab at the end is typically modest — dim sum for two runs $25–$40 before tip depending on how aggressively the carts are flagged down. For four people with real appetites, figure $60–$75. It’s one of the better food values in the city.
Jasmine also does dinner, with a full Cantonese seafood menu that includes whole fish, Dungeness crab, and lobster prepared several ways. The dinner room is calmer and requires actual planning — the seafood is priced by the pound and the kitchen handles large groups well. But the dim sum service is the main draw and the main event.
Going on a weekday avoids the worst of the weekend crowd. Weekday dim sum runs from about 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., and the selection is narrower than weekends but the wait is essentially nonexistent. Weekend service starts at 9 a.m. and the room is at capacity by 10:30; arriving before 10 or after 1 p.m. helps. Large parties should call ahead, though walk-ins are common and the host stand manages the flow efficiently.
What separates Jasmine from comparable spots elsewhere in the county isn’t any single dish — it’s the sustained consistency over decades and the fact that it still draws the local Chinese community who know exactly what they want and know they’ll get it here. That’s the clearest measure of a restaurant doing its job right.
Jasmine Seafood Restaurant is at 4609 Convoy Street in Kearny Mesa. Validated parking is available in the adjacent lot.
