The eight great regional cuisines, in one line each
| Region | What it is like | Order this |
|---|---|---|
| Sichuan | Chilli and Sichuan peppercorn together — málà, numbing heat | Mapo tofu, dan dan noodles, boiled fish |
| Cantonese | Steaming, roasting, gentle seasoning, seafood | Steamed fish, roast duck, har gow |
| Shandong | Northern, savoury, braises and wheat | Braised pork, scallion pancakes |
| Jiangsu | Sweet-leaning, refined, river fish | Squirrel fish, lion's head meatballs |
| Zhejiang | Fresh, delicate, wine-braised | Dongpo pork, beggar's chicken |
| Fujian | Soup-heavy, umami, seafood | Buddha jumps over the wall, fish ball soup |
| Hunan | Dry heat, chilli without the numbing | Chairman Mao's pork, stir-fried pork with chilli |
| Anhui | Mountain food, braises, wild herbs | Stinky mandarin fish, bamboo shoot dishes |
Heat is two different things
This is the most useful distinction in Chinese food and the one that trips up every newcomer. Chilli heat is the burn you know. Sichuan peppercorn is not heat at all — it is a buzzing, numbing, slightly metallic sensation that makes your lips tingle and changes how everything else tastes.
Together they are málà, and it is the signature of Sichuan cooking. A dish can be extremely málà and not actually very "spicy" in the chilli sense, which is why asking "is it spicy" in a Sichuan restaurant produces a confusing answer.
If you want to avoid the numbing but not the chilli, ask for no huājiāo (Sichuan peppercorn). That is a request a Sichuan kitchen understands and can actually do, unlike "not spicy".
Dishes that look like other dishes
Half the menu in a Chinese restaurant is stir-fried meat in a brown sauce, and the names tell you almost nothing about which is which. The differences are in the sauce base, the cut and the pickles.
- Mapo tofu and home-style tofu are both tofu in chilli bean sauce. Mapo has minced beef or pork and Sichuan peppercorn; home-style has no meat and often wood ear and bamboo.
- Twice-cooked pork and stir-fried pork with chilli are the same dish under two names — pork belly boiled then stir-fried with leek and chilli bean paste.
- Kung pao chicken and diced chicken with chilli both have dried chillies and peanuts. Kung pao is a sweet-sour stir-fry sauce; the other is a dry, saltier fry.
- Sweet and sour pork and guo bao rou are both battered pork with sweet-sour sauce. Guo bao rou is a Dongbei dish with a lighter, vinegar-forward sauce.
- Dan dan noodles and Sichuan cold noodles both have chilli oil and sesame. Dan dan has minced pork and is served warm; the cold version is dressed and eaten chilled.
How a Chinese meal is actually ordered
Dishes are ordered to the table, not to the person, and rice arrives as a neutral base rather than a course. For two people, two or three dishes plus rice. For four, four dishes, one of which should be a vegetable.
Every meal is built to balance: something fried, something braised, something green, something with a strong sauce. If you order four stir-fried meat dishes you have not ordered a Chinese meal, you have ordered the same dish four times.
The other convention worth knowing is that soup comes at the end in Cantonese cooking, not the start. Ordering soup as a starter gives you an odd look and a bowl of broth in the middle of your fried food.
Chinese menus do not describe food, they reference it. A dish name may be a poem, a joke, a cooking method or a person. "Mapo tofu" is named after a woman with a pockmarked face who sold it. You cannot translate your way to the plate.
The other thing that confuses people is that one name is not one dish. Sichuan and Cantonese versions of a familiar name can be different food entirely, and what an Australian Chinese restaurant serves as "sweet and sour pork" is a Cantonese-derived restaurant dish rather than something you would order in Guangzhou.
So a good Chinese food scanner leads with three things: the characters, the region, and what actually arrives.
Frequently Asked Questions
A tool that identifies a Chinese dish from a photo and gives you its Chinese name and pinyin, what the name literally means, the regional cuisine it belongs to, what is in it and how hot it is.