Don’t you feel upset when you cannot eat the best and delicious food in a restaurant. Or, imagine that you did a lot of research online to locate a good restaurant, you still felt disappointed when you try a dish in it. I had similar experience that I mentioned above. As a Chinese who Living Philly for almost three years, I had touched a lot of “minefields” when I tried to find the best Chinese restaurant. In this blog, I would like to share 5 tips which collected from my own experience to help you finding the best and authentic restaurant in Philadelphia.

1. Know your taste

Chinese food is so diverse that a great number of people cannot differentiate the different cuisines. There are Sichuan style, Shandong style, Shanghai style, or Cantonese cuisine, etc.. Each of them had different flavors and cooking techniques. For instance, Sichuan food is famous for its spicy and using heavy condiments. In this situation, people who cannot endure the pungency or had a gastropathy better not to eat this kind of cuisine; instead, he can try the lite flavor food: Cantonese cuisine. 

I think this is a really important point. Once, my friend Katy went to a Sichuan restaurant and then she had a bad stomachache because she barely eats the spicy food. Know your taste and eat a comfortable food in a Chinese restaurant will offer your tongue an excellent experience. Do not enforce yourself to eat the food that your body cannot afford and it would greatly affect your eating experience.

A little reminder: If you really want to try the Sichuan food, but you cannot endure the intense pungency. You should negotiate with the staff when you are ordering. The staff would tell the chef not to put too much hot pepper and condiments. 2

2. Use Internet and Applications correctly

I believe most of you would use the Internet or Applications to find the good restaurant. Like, typing “the best Chinese restaurant in Philly” in Google. Then Google would pop up a lot of websites that tell you which restaurant is good. However, sometimes it would “mislead” you to go to the wrong place. 

A great amount of website, besides some individual blogs, would get money from restaurants when they publish “recommend list” on their website. Their purpose is to promote and help restaurant attract more customers. I cannot say that the restaurant did such a thing is bad at cooking, but I believe the authentic and great Chinese restaurant do not need advertisement to attract people. They use flavor to attract people.I personally recommend an application called “Yelp”. In this application, you can check most of the Chinese restaurants and other’s comments about those restaurants. Chengdu Famous Food is one of my favorite restaurants in University City. In the picture, you can take a look at its price, menu, style, business hour and so one.  Also, below the information part, there are plenty of comments from others who tried this restaurants. It is really useful. 

3. Ask your Chinese friends or Follow the step of elder people

Attention! This is really direct and useful method, that is, asking your Chinese friends. They are the people who can really tell which restaurant can do the better dishes. I am a good example to illustrate. I had tried most of the Chinese restaurant near University City and Chinatown and I knew which one is better and which one is worse. Every time my friend can get my best advice to select the Chinese restaurants.

Also, according to Food & Wine’s Jasmin Sun, “A good way to find new delicious things to try is to just look around and see what the old people are eating”. Elder people always own more experience than us, even in food finding area.

4. Avoid “Panda Express”

It can tell that Panda Express is really popular in the United State and a lot of American like eating its food. However, the food in here is not authentic Chinese food. The dishes in there are like the combination of Chinese and western food. So, you can eat the food in there, but you cannot enjoy the real Chinese food.

5. Check the location and the restaurant’s atmosphere

I believe another significant factor to find a good Chinese restaurant is its location. It can say that the restaurants near Chinatown would not lose their frame compared to others. Huge amount of Chinese people live in there which force the restaurant make the food better to fulfill their taste. Meanwhile, according to Spoon University’s Sharmaine Ong, “If the restaurant is decorated with red and gold designs, large fans, and a shrine with incense and oranges, it’s probably authentic”. As a Chinese, I can tell it is quite true. The Chinese believe three meals a day is indispensable so that they would like to put great effort on decorating the eating place in a traditional way.

Now It’s your Turn

Those five tips came from my daily experience. For finding the best restaurant, I tried a lot of restaurants; I have been lied from the website. I hope my tips can help you avoid those situations and you can enjoy your Chinese food travelling.

-Luanyue Sun