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How to Read a Chinese Menu When You Speak Zero Mandarin

Photo menus, character radicals, and the four-ingredient trick that unlocks 80% of regional restaurant cooking.

Wen Liu8 min read

Photo by Vicky Ng on Unsplash

Read the menu like a structure, not a list

A Chinese restaurant menu is not a single list of dishes. It is a small grammar: 凉菜 (cold appetizers) usually come first, then 热菜 (hot mains), then 主食 (staples — noodles, rice, dumplings), and finally 汤 (soups) and 甜品 (desserts, often fruit). Within the hot mains, dishes are loosely grouped by cooking method — 炒 (stir-fry), 烧 (braise), 蒸 (steam), 炸 (deep-fry), 炖 (long-simmered), 烤 (roast or grill). Once you can see that shape, the rest of the menu reads like a sentence.

In larger cities, most menus will also have a separate section for the kitchen's 招牌 (signature dishes). If the room is busy, look at the tables around you and notice what is being carried out: those are the dishes that turn over fastest, which is usually a clue. In a tea house or a hotpot hall, the menu is often a paper checklist where you tick what you want and hand it to the server; mark the number of portions, not just the box.

The four ingredient characters that unlock most menus

Most regional restaurant cooking is built from a small set of characters. Learn these and you can guess what half the menu is. 鸡 is chicken, 鸭 is duck, 猪 is pork, 牛 is beef, 羊 is lamb, 鱼 is fish, 虾 is shrimp, and 蛋 is egg. On the cooking side, 肉 by itself usually means pork, 菜 is vegetable, and 豆腐 is tofu. Combine 牛 with 肉 and you have beef; combine 酸 with 菜 and you are looking at a pickled or sour-style vegetable dish; 麻辣 on its own is a flavor code for the numbing-hot Sichuan treatment.

Once you have the ingredients, scan the second character for the cooking method. 炒 means stir-fried, 煎 means pan-fried, 炸 means deep-fried, 蒸 is steamed, 煮 or 炖 is simmered, 烧 is braised, 烤 is roasted, and 凉拌 is cold-mixed. Put the two halves together — say 葱爆牛肉 (scallion-stir-fried beef) or 西红柿炒鸡蛋 (tomato-and-egg stir-fry) — and the menu starts to make sense even if you do not know a single other character on the page.

How to ask for what you actually want

Three short phrases will cover most situations at a Chinese counter. '有没有图片?' (do you have a picture?) gets you a photo menu or a phone screen with dish photos. '这个是什么?' (what is this?) pointed at a character you do not recognize will almost always get a patient explanation, often with a gesture toward the kitchen. '不要辣' (no spice), '少辣' (a little spice), and '微辣' (mild) let you dial the heat up or down without changing the dish itself.

If you have allergies, carry a small card written in Simplified Chinese. The most useful line is '我对 ___ 过敏, 不能吃' — 'I am allergic to ___, I cannot eat it' — with the allergen spelled in both English and pinyin. For vegetarians, '我吃素' (I eat vegetarian) is recognized almost everywhere, though in a small-town kitchen it is worth confirming that the broth and the oil have not been used for meat earlier in the service. Servers in most cities are used to the question and will point you to the right dishes.

About the author

Wen Liu writes for China Eating about regional Chinese food, street markets, and the everyday rituals of the Chinese table.

Published Jul 1, 2026. Estimated read time 8 minutes.

Frequently asked

Common questions

Is there an English version of the menu?
In major cities and tourist neighborhoods, usually yes — often as a separate bilingual booklet or a QR code on the table that opens a translated menu. Outside those areas, expect a Chinese-only menu. Asking for a picture menu ('有没有图片?') is the fastest workaround, because most casual restaurants have a WeChat album of their dishes.
What is the most common cooking method on a Chinese menu?
Stir-fry (炒) is the workhorse of everyday Chinese cooking, followed by steaming (蒸) and braising (烧) for slower, more savory dishes. Cold-mixed (凉拌) and quick-boiled (白灼) dishes are common in summer, and deep-frying (炸) shows up mostly for snacks and dim sum rather than full entrées.
Can I order a half portion?
In most regular restaurants, no. Chinese restaurants serve in family-style portions sized for the table, and you are expected to order a few dishes to share. In banquet-style restaurants and hotel dining rooms, a small (小份) or large (大份) option is sometimes available, but the standard move is to order one dish per person plus a starch and a vegetable.

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