The menu that defeated me, and the one that did not
My first proper Chinese menu was a laminated booklet in a Guangzhou restaurant, twenty pages, no pictures, and about three hundred dishes. I spent fifteen minutes on it and ordered fried rice. Across the room, a family of four was eating things I could not name, and I have thought about that meal for years, mostly because I am certain I missed something.
Chinese menus are not cryptic by design, they are just built on a different logic. Once you see that logic, a lot of it opens up. Names follow patterns, ingredients are named by category rather than by species, and there are about fifteen characters worth learning that tell you what kind of thing is going to arrive. You will still get surprises. But you will stop guessing between “fried rice” and “fried rice”.
This guide covers how menus are structured, the character families that do the most work, how dish names are assembled, the famous dishes whose names lie to you, and what to do with a QR-code menu. For the conversation rather than the document, how to order in a Chinese restaurant covers the meal itself, and our Chinese food phrases guide has the spoken version.
Four kinds of menu, and what each one means
The format tells you a lot about the restaurant before you read a word.
- QR code on the table. Now the default in most city restaurants. You scan with WeChat or Alipay, a menu appears in your phone, you tick dishes and pay in the app. The good news is that these often have photographs and sometimes an English toggle. The bad news is that you need a working payment setup. Our payment guide for China covers this, and it is worth doing before you sit down hungry.
- Laminated booklet with photos. The tourist-standard format, common near sights. Photographs make it easy and the food is often mediocre. Not a rule, but a correlation I have found reliable.
- Wall menu or a board with prices. Usually a small place that does twenty things well. Ask what is good today, because the board may not list the best dish.
- No menu at all. The best case, if you handle it right. You go to the counter or the fridge, point at raw ingredients, and they cook them. This is how a lot of the best food in China is ordered, and it requires no reading whatsoever.
How the sections are organised
Chinese banquet logic divides a meal into categories, and the menu reflects that. The headings, in the order you will usually see them:
| Section (pinyin) | What it is | Order from here when |
|---|---|---|
| liang cai | Cold dishes, dressed and served at room temperature | You want something to start with. Popular in summer and in the north |
| re cai | Hot dishes, the main body of the meal | Always. This is the core of the order |
| tang / geng | Soup, or a thicker stewed pot | Cantonese meals especially. Soup can be a course rather than a starter |
| zhu shi | Staples: rice, noodles, buns, pancakes | At the end, or not at all. Rice arrives late in a southern meal |
| yin pin / jiu shui | Drinks, including beer, tea, and baijiu | Tea is often free and served automatically |
| zhao pai / te se | House specials, literally the signboard dishes | Start here. This is the restaurant telling you what it does best |
| shi jia | Market price, usually for fish and seafood | Ask the price before ordering. It can be substantial |
That zhao pai section is the one to read first in any restaurant you have not been to before. It is not a marketing exercise in the way “chef’s recommendations” often is elsewhere. It is closer to an accurate statement about what the kitchen is good at.
Characters worth recognising
You do not need to read Chinese to order, but a dozen characters turn the menu from opaque into partly legible, and it takes about an hour to learn them. These are the ones that appear constantly.
| Character | Pinyin | Means | Appears in |
|---|---|---|---|
| 肉 | rou | Meat, most often pork by default | Everywhere. If you see rou with no prefix, assume pork |
| 牛 | niu | Beef | niurou mian, beef noodle soup |
| 羊 | yang | Lamb or mutton | Skewers, northern and Xinjiang cooking |
| 鸡 | ji | Chicken | gongbao jiding, kung pao chicken |
| 鱼 | yu | Fish | suan cai yu, fish in pickled cabbage soup |
| 虾 | xia | Shrimp or prawn | Common in Cantonese and coastal menus |
| 菜 | cai | Vegetable, and also dish | On its own it usually means greens |
| 汤 | tang | Soup | Every menu. Also the word for hot as in tang mian |
| 面 | mian | Noodles | The northern staple |
| 饭 | fan | Rice, and also meal | chao fan is fried rice |
| 炒 | chao | Stir-fried | The most common cooking word on any menu |
| 蒸 | zheng | Steamed | Cantonese kitchens, and dim sum |
| 烤 | kao | Roasted or grilled | kao ya, roast duck; kao chuan, skewers |
| 辣 | la | Spicy | The one to look for if you want to avoid it |
| 素 | su | Vegetarian | su cai, vegetable dishes. Check for lard anyway |
Two radicals to notice, because they generalise. The fire radical, appearing on the left of characters like chao (炒), kao (烤), and shao (烧), means the thing is cooked with heat. It is a reliable tell: if you see that spiky left-hand element, something got cooked. The grass radical on top of characters like cai (菜) generally marks a plant. You will start seeing both after about two meals.
How dish names are built
Most Chinese dish names are a formula, and once you know it you can parse a great many of them.
The common shapes:
- Method plus ingredient: hongshao rou is red-braised pork, zheng yu is steamed fish, chao cai is stir-fried greens. This is the majority.
- Flavour plus ingredient: yu xiang rou si is fish-fragrance pork slivers, which contains no fish. The yu xiang is a seasoning profile of pickled chilli, garlic, ginger, and sugar.
- Place plus ingredient: Beijing kaoya, or any dish named for a town.
- Poetic or historical: fo tiao qiang, Buddha jumps over the wall, or hong shao shi zi tou, lion’s head meatballs. These tell you nothing and are usually worth ordering.
- Number plus thing: san bei ji, three cups chicken, named for the equal measures of soy, wine, and sesame oil.
The names that mislead are mostly in the second and fourth groups, so here is a short list of dishes whose names are actively unhelpful:
- Yu xiang rou si fish-fragrance pork. No fish. Sour, sweet, garlicky.
- Fu qi fei pian husband and wife lung slices. No lung in most versions, and no marriage. Cold sliced beef in chilli oil.
- Ma yi shang shu ants climbing a tree. Glass noodles with minced pork. The ants are the pork.
- Shi zi tou lion’s head. Large pork meatballs in broth.
- Ji du geng or any dish with du in the name. Du means stomach, and the texture is not subtle.
- Qing zheng plain steamed, which sounds dull and is usually the best way to eat a good fish.
Our Chinese street food guide covers the snacks whose names rarely appear on restaurant menus at all, and the dim sum guide decodes the cart system, which is a naming problem all its own.
Portions, prices, and how much to order
Chinese restaurant portions are generally larger than Western ones and are designed to be shared. The working rule for a table: order roughly one dish per person plus one, and add a staple at the end if people are still hungry. For two people, three dishes and rice is usually plenty. Four people, five dishes.
Prices on menus are per dish, not per person, and a typical mid-range restaurant runs 30 to 80 RMB for a meat dish, 20 to 40 for vegetables, and 3 to 6 for a bowl of rice. Anything marked shi jia is priced by market, usually live seafood, and you should ask before ordering, because a fish for four can run several hundred RMB.
Watch for the service charges and the small items that are not on the menu: tea, wet wipes, and the small bowls of nuts or pickles that arrive before you order. These are usually charged, usually cheaply, and are not a scam. You can refuse them.
Dietary reading
Menus rarely label allergens, and the categories are broader than you expect. Rou without a prefix is pork. Cai on its own is a vegetable dish, but the dish may still be stir-fried in lard or finished with dried shrimp. Su marks vegetarian dishes in Buddhist-influenced kitchens, and those are more reliable, though the word still does not guarantee a vegetarian broth.
Our vegetarian guide for China has the phrasing and the strategy for this, and it is the article I would read before the trip rather than during it. For halal, the word qingzhen (清真) on the shopfront or the menu header is the marker, and our halal food route through Xi’an and Xinjiang maps the places where that is easiest.
Quick facts
- Zhao pai means house specials, and it is the most useful section on any menu.
- Shi jia means market price. Ask before you order.
- Rou with no prefix means pork. Niu is beef, yang is lamb, ji is chicken, yu is fish.
- Chao is stir-fried, zheng is steamed, kao is roasted, hongshao is red-braised.
- La means spicy. Its absence does not always mean mild.
- Order roughly one dish per person plus one, and add rice or noodles at the end.
- Tea, wet wipes, and the pre-meal snacks are often charged. You can decline them.
- A restaurant with no menu at all is frequently the best one on the street.
Frequently asked questions
Can I get an English menu in China?
In tourist areas and in larger city restaurants, often yes. Elsewhere, no, and the QR-code menus increasingly have photos and occasionally an English toggle. Do not make an English menu a selection criterion. Some of the best food in China is in places where nobody has ever needed one.
What do I do with a QR-code menu?
Scan it with WeChat or Alipay. The menu opens in the app, you tick dishes, and you pay there too. This requires a payment setup that works, which our guide to paying in China covers step by step. If your payment does not work, ask for a paper menu, which most places still have behind the counter.
How do I know how spicy a dish is?
Look for la in the name and count the chilli symbols, which some menus use as a scale. When in doubt, ask for bu yao la or wei la. In Sichuan and Hunan, mild is still hot by most standards, and some dishes are structurally spicy and cannot be adjusted. Our Sichuan cuisine guide explains the ma la distinction, which is the other half of the question.
Why are some dish names so strange?
Poetic and historical names are a real convention, and they usually describe an origin story or an appearance rather than the ingredients. Ants climbing a tree is glass noodles with pork. Buddha jumps over the wall is an elaborate seafood and poultry soup. These dishes are often the house specials, so the strange name is usually a recommendation rather than a warning.
How do I avoid offal without reading the menu?
Learn the words: du is stomach, chang is intestine, gan is liver, xue is blood, and fei is lung. They appear in dish names directly. If you are unsure, ask you meiyou neizang, meaning does it have offal, and point at the dish.
Is it rude to point at what another table is eating?
No. It is normal. Wo yao zhege, I want that, with a point, is a completely standard way to order in China, and the people at the other table are usually pleased.
What is the difference between a cold dish and a hot dish?
Liang cai are prepared in advance, dressed, and served at room temperature. They arrive within minutes of ordering, which makes them useful when you are hungry. Re cai are cooked to order and take longer. Both are legitimate, and the cold dishes are where a lot of northern and Sichuan cooking is at its most interesting.
Should I order rice?
In the south, rice usually arrives at the end of the meal, after the dishes, and you may have to ask for it. In the north, the staples are noodles, buns, or pancakes, and rice may not be the default. Ordering a staple early is a northern habit that confuses southern kitchens slightly, and nobody minds.
Learn rou, niu, yang, ji, yu, xia, cai, tang, mian, fan, chao, zheng, kao, la, and su. Then walk into any restaurant in China, find the zhao pai section, and see how much of it you can now read. It will be more than you expect, and the rest you can point at.
If you want someone to build a food route around what you like, and to do the ordering with you, get in touch through the contact page.
Written by the ChinaTravelFood editorial team.
