This site has accumulated fifty guides to ordering Chinese food, published one or two at a time and listed in the order they were written, which is the least useful order there is. This page arranges them by the decision you are actually making.
Start here if the menu is unfamiliar
Two guides do most of the work. Chinese food for beginners covers how a menu is organised and what to order first. The menu glossary translates the vocabulary — the section names, the dish names and the small markings that matter.
If the sheer length is the problem rather than the words, why Chinese menus are so long explains the pattern underneath and the fastest way to read one.
Working out what to order
The decision most people are actually stuck on. These take it in order.
- Beef, chicken, pork or seafood — picking a section.
- Brown, white, garlic and black bean sauce — picking a preparation.
- Szechuan and Hunan — the words that signal chilli.
- What house special means — the section people skip.
- Dishes worth trying — if you always order the same thing.
The dish comparisons
For the moments when two things on the menu look the same and you cannot tell them apart: lo mein and chow mein, fried rice and lo mein, chow mein and chop suey, General Tso’s and orange chicken, Mongolian beef and beef with broccoli, wontons and dumplings, egg rolls and spring rolls, and white rice and fried rice.
Section by section
Each part of the menu has its own guide: chicken, pork, seafood, vegetables and tofu, soups, appetizers, lo mein, fried rice, mei fun, sweet and sour, dinner specials and the American section.
How much, and for how many
- How much to order per person.
- What comes with each section — so you do not order a starch twice.
- Ordering for a family.
- Organising a group order.
- Where the menu goes furthest.
Placing the order
The mechanics, which nobody explains and everybody has questions about: when to order, what you can change, direct or through an app, why they ask for your number, changing or cancelling it, and what to tip.
If you have a dietary requirement
Three guides, written to the same standard: this site can tell you what the menu says, and only the kitchen can tell you what is in the pan. Allergies and Chinese takeout, ordering vegetarian, and MSG and what the evidence says.
After the food arrives
- Delivery or pickup — what each does to the food.
- If the order is wrong.
- Storing and reheating.
- What to do with the containers.
- Sending a meal to someone else.
How to use this page
Nobody is going to read fifty guides, and there is no reason to. The sensible approach is to treat this as an index rather than a reading list: find the section that matches the thing you are stuck on, read that one guide, and ignore the rest until they are relevant.
Most of them take about five minutes and end with a short answer at the top and the reasoning underneath, so the first paragraph is usually enough if you are in a hurry.
The three questions that come up most
If you only want the answers rather than the guides, these are the three that get asked most often and the short version of each.
- How much food per person? Roughly one dish each for a small group, fewer as numbers rise, because the dishes are shared. Large sizes for a table, small for one.
- Does rice come with it? With the entrée sections, yes. With the noodle sections, no — except chow mein, which does.
- Which dishes are spicy? Go by the marking on the menu rather than the reputation of the dish. Several of the ones people assume are mild are marked spicy here.
What is not here
Equally worth saying, so nobody spends time looking for something that was never written.
- No recipes. This is a guide to ordering, not to cooking. Plenty of other sites do the cooking well.
- No nutrition figures. Nothing on this site is in a position to tell you what is in a dish by weight, so it does not try.
- No reviews of other restaurants. A restaurant ranking its competitors is not a useful thing to read.
- No claims about ingredients that have not been checked. Where the menu does not say, the guides tell you to ask.
How these guides are written
Worth stating plainly, since it explains why some questions get a firm answer here and others do not.
- Anything about this menu is checked against it. Section names, dish names, sizes and the spicy markings are taken from the current menu rather than from memory.
- General culinary explanation is kept separate from claims about this kitchen, and labelled as such.
- Ingredients are not guessed. Where the honest answer is that only the kitchen knows, the guides say so rather than filling the gap.
- Sources are linked where a claim needs one, and they are chosen to be checkable.
The practical consequence is that the guides will occasionally tell you to ask rather than giving you an answer. That is deliberate.
The ones that are just interesting
Not every question is practical. Why restaurant Chinese food tastes different covers wok heat, the folded white box was never Chinese, and bourbon chicken is named after a street in New Orleans. All three are part of the same story: American Chinese cooking is its own cuisine rather than a copy of another one.
The local one, if you are nearby: how lunch specials work in Orlando.
Frequently asked questions
Where should I start if I have never ordered Chinese takeout?
With the beginner’s guide and the menu glossary. Between them they cover how a Chinese menu is organised and what the words on it mean.
How do I work out how much to order?
The quantity guide covers portions per person, and the group guide covers the logistics once you are ordering for more than a household.
Which guides cover the dishes themselves?
The dish comparisons and the section guides — beef, chicken, pork, seafood, vegetables, noodles and rice each have their own explanation.
Are these guides specific to this restaurant?
Partly. General culinary explanation applies anywhere; anything said about dishes, sections or markings is checked against the current Panda Li’s Kitchen menu and labelled as such.
The bottom line
Start with the beginner’s guide and the glossary if the menu is unfamiliar, the quantity guide if you know what you want but not how much, and the mechanics section if the food is already decided and the questions are about ordering it.
Every guide here is written against the current menu.
Browse the full menu