14 Red Flags At Chinese Restaurants You Should Never Ignore

Chinese food is one of the most popular cuisines in the United States, and it's highly likely that you have a Chinese restaurant — or maybe several — near you. However, perhaps because of the food's immense popularity and the sheer amount of Chinese restaurants, they can vary significantly in their quality. A good Chinese restaurant will serve fresh, authentic cuisine, and offer up variety without compromising the quality of its food. On the other hand, a substandard one will likely be dishing up meals that feel tired or uninspired, and hoping that their clientele won't notice.

Given that there are tens of thousands of Chinese restaurants across the U.S., there's no reason to settle for a bad one — but how do you tell which ones are worth your time and money before you hand over any hard-earned cash? Well, while online reviews and word of mouth recommendations can help, you can also get wise to some telltale red flags. Learning some of the key signs that a Chinese restaurant may not be the best can help you avoid making a bad decision, and will also allow you to keep an eye out for some of the common traits that good Chinese restaurants share.

Dim sum is a popular Chinese meal that most of us have tried certain dishes from. Traditional dim sum is composed of various plates of small dishes like dumplings, buns, and rice noodle rolls, which are ordered for the table and shared out amongst the group. It's a social, communal way of dining, and many Chinese restaurants in the United States offer it, as well as incorporating its dishes into their main menu to order separately or as a side.

However, if you see a Chinese restaurant advertising a dim sum menu as a dinnertime option, then you might want to be wary about choosing it. Traditionally, dim sum is served during the daytime, usually as a brunch or lunchtime option. While different restaurants stop serving it at different times, you'll usually find that the cut-off time is around 4:00PM. Plus, dim sum is intended to be a lighter meal, instead of a heavy one that you might eat at the end of the day. As such, if the Chinese restaurant you're considering is claiming that you can enjoy the meal at dinner, it's not that it won't be a delicious place to eat. It's just that it may well not be offering the most authentic dim sum experience.

Location isn't everything when it comes to Chinese restaurants, but it can be a significant factor in the place you're choosing. If the Chinese restaurant you're considering is in the middle of nowhere, that doesn't mean that it won't have great food, but it may well mean that your dining experience is hindered by having to get there and back. Additionally, Chinese restaurants in less populated areas that primarily serve non-Chinese communities may have adjusted their menus to cater to more Americanized tastes, and you may not end up with the best meal possible.

Generally speaking, opting for a Chinese restaurant in an area that has an established Chinese community could be a better option. Choosing a restaurant in a city's Chinatown, for example, allows you to eat in the heart of a community, where eating establishments typically focus their output to cater to the very people who may live and work in the vicinity. This may not be a hard and fast rule, as some Chinatowns can have restaurants that are more tourist-focused, and other areas can have absolutely incredible Chinese restaurants — but if you're stuck for a choice, think about where the restaurant is.

If you're in any doubt about how good your Chinese restaurant is, check out the menu. Does it have dishes listed in Mandarin or Cantonese anywhere, or is everything purely in English? If it's the latter, it might be a clue that your meal may not be the best. Although there are plenty of Chinese restaurants in America that list their dishes solely in English, it can be a sign that the food itself has also been Americanized. If you're traveling, it may also be a clue that you're about to eat in a total tourist trap and be subject to a combination of poor food and high prices.

It's worth remembering, however, that some restaurants may have a separate menu written in Mandarin or Cantonese that has the same dishes — so this may not mean that the food is bad or inauthentic. Plus, printing menus in English is a necessary move for a lot of Chinese restaurant owners to cater to folks who don't speak Mandarin. However, the presence of other languages is a clear indication that the joint you're in caters to Chinese diners. That's usually a sign that the food's gonna be good.

Like most other national cuisines, Chinese food is astonishingly broad and wide-ranging. There are eight individual culinary cuisine traditions in China, each of them with their own distinctive flavor profiles and cooking techniques. Cantonese cuisine, for instance, commonly employs wok-frying and steaming to cook its dishes, like Cantonese sticky rice wrapped in lotus leaves. It tends to be light on spice and centered around meat. Fujian cuisine, on the other hand, tends to use vegetarian and seafood ingredients, and has a heavy focus on umami flavors and light dining experiences.

Chinese cuisine is therefore not a one-size-fits-all experience, but many restaurants in America tend to focus their output on more recognizable American-Chinese dishes. Hey, don't get us wrong, these are delicious — but they can feel somewhat interchangeable from restaurant to restaurant. Therefore, a lack of regionally-specific options may indicate a lack of focus on the part of the owner, and it might be worth trying to find restaurants that demonstrate some kind of speciality (even if they also have those classic dishes on the menu). It's easy to go too far with this, though. Keep in mind that if the restaurant you're in is promising options from every Chinese culinary tradition, it could be trying to overstretch itself.

When it comes to restaurants, vibe is everything. So next time you walk into a Chinese restaurant, take a beat to feel out how the staff are acting. Does it seem like they're rushed off their feet and overly stressed, or is there an air of calmness about the place? If it seems like the wait staff are struggling to cope and praying you don't wanna eat there, it's likely a sign that you shouldn't. Not only will you end up eating in an environment that feels frantic and stressful, but there's also a higher chance that you'll end up with a meal you didn't order, or one that doesn't taste good.

It's no secret that waiting tables can be a stressful job, but good restaurant owners will do whatever they can to mitigate this stress for their staff. Unfortunately, a lot of owners and managers will cut corners by reducing team sizes or shortening breaks, and they may also not be incorporating things like speedy booking systems which can ease pressure on staff. This may help their bottom line, but it contributes to a dining experience that isn't great.

Chinese food in America has seen an extraordinary evolution in its 150-or-so year history. Throughout the 20th century, however, there was a real push for Americanization, with restaurant owners increasingly making Westernized versions of their dishes to fit American tastes. Nowadays, it's much easier to find Chinese restaurants that serve authentic versions of classic meals, but there are still plenty of them out there that either serve Western-focused dishes, or else fill their menus with American classics.

However, this is a pretty good sign that those restaurants aren't going to care that much about the quality of the food they're serving up, and instead are trying to appeal to as wide an audience as possible. While you might be craving a burger or some fries to go with your chow mein or jiaozi, you don't need us to tell you that the former dishes are not Chinese. Sure, the restaurant may well make incredible Chinese dishes, but you wanna go somewhere where the menu is focused and specific, right? The only exception to this rule is if the restaurant has a kids menu, and if so it's slightly more permissible to have American dishes they'd be more familiar with.

Chinese buffets are a great way to try out loads of dishes in one go. However, it's fair to say that there are a lot of substandard ones out there. Like most cuisines, Chinese food doesn't fare especially well in buffet settings for longer periods, and certain dishes can become dried-out and unpleasant as they sit there for hours under the heat lamp.

However, dry and old-looking food can indicate a larger problem with the restaurant. If the restaurant staff are allowing the food to become desiccated and lose too much moisture, it might be a sign that they don't necessarily care about what they're dishing up, or the enjoyment of their clientele. You may therefore be eating in a place that's neglecting stuff elsewhere, like the quality or the hygiene of the food. Speaking of hygiene, you should also keep an eye out for some other buffet red flags like a lack of sneeze guards, poor inspection grades, or a generally dirty restaurant. Little clues like large serving trays or a lack of utensils can also reveal that you're in a slightly dubious place.

As with any other cuisine out there, Chinese food can vary significantly in price, with some dishes coming in at higher costs than others. This cost generally reflects the price of the raw ingredients, as well as the time and skill required to make certain dishes. That's why you should always be wary when items that are traditionally pricier are suspiciously cheap. This could indicate that the restaurant you're about to dine in is either cutting corners or is buying its items in frozen or prepackaged form.

There is some logic to doing the latter, of course. Some Chinese dishes, like Peking duck, take a lot of time and a high degree of technique to make properly, and the ingredients used to make them aren't always cheap. Other dishes like dumplings or steamed buns can require a fairly lengthy process that chefs may not be able to devote themselves to every single day. However, you have to ask yourself whether you'd rather get a substandard version of these dishes, or pay a little bit more to get them freshly-made somewhere else.

Soy sauce is an essential ingredient in Chinese cooking, and is one of the primary ways to flavor and season countless dishes. However, when it's proudly on display on every table, in supersized bottles, you should be a little wary. Soy sauce can be used to add saltiness to dishes once they're done, but putting bottles on each table is basically the restaurant's way of saying you need to add flavor to its food, which a lot of people will end up doing. "A lot of people just add soy sauce to everything they eat," says co-owner of Starry Kitchen Nguyen Train to HuffPost. "You should try the food first."

Tran goes on to say that, "If there's a huge bottle or it looks like it's replenished a lot, that might be a sign. You might not even see it that often at an authentic restaurant." More authentic places may offer a wider variety of condiments, or else leave the condiments off the table entirely, so you can focus on the flavor of their food. Plus, a lot of restaurants will bring you the condiments or sauces you need for each dish, like dipping sauce for dumplings, instead of putting it down before your meal even starts.

It's fair to say that judging a restaurant by who else is eating there isn't an exact science. Sometimes the folks eating there will be influenced by the time of day it is, or if there's a sudden influx of people who might not be typical customers (which is true of more touristy locations). However, if you've walked past or been into a Chinese restaurant several times and noticed that the clientele are usually or always non-Chinese, it could be a sign that it's not the best place to eat.

Although it's a slight generalization, the lack of any Chinese customers in Chinese restaurants could indicate that the food there is inauthentic or unappealing, and could be overly Americanized — or it might just be bad. If you do suspect that it's because the restaurant serves more Americanized fare, confirm this by checking out the menu to see what's on offer. Alternatively, do your research online instead of walking into the first place you see. There are some incredible Chinese restaurants in every state, so you never have to travel too far for a quality meal.

One of the best ways to know that you're in a good Chinese restaurant, and one of the quickest and brightest red flags you can spot to indicate that you're not, is right in front of you when you sit down. Good Chinese restaurants will use correct place settings that correspond with the food you're being served, while bad ones will likely not pay much attention to them at all. In addition to a regular plate, your place setting should also have an empty rice bowl, a smaller bowl to one side, and a teacup. It should also come with a flat soup spoon and a pair of chopsticks.

The regular plate is used as a receptacle for other dishes which are then brought to the table, which in traditional restaurants are placed on a Lazy Susan in the middle. Interestingly, Lazy Susans are a relatively modern invention in Chinese cuisine culture, and only really took off in the 1950s after allegedly being pioneered as a way to prevent contagious illnesses several decades before. However, the Lazy Susan encourages a sociable way of eating, with shared dishes rotated around to each diner. If there isn't one, it could indicate that the restaurant doesn't fully embrace the communal vibe that good Chinese restaurants try to create.

If you haven't had much practice with chopsticks, there's no denying that they can be a little tricky. However, that's no reason to not try to use them in a Chinese restaurant — and if they're not present at all, it could be a big red flag. Chopsticks are a standard utensil in China, with the first examples of them dating back over 3,000 years. It's said that their popularity is partly down to the Chinese philosopher Confucius, who favored them over knives thanks to their bluntness, which brought suggestions of peace and harmony.

Chopsticks are so commonplace in Chinese restaurants that the lack of them is pretty concerning. If you're presented with a knife and fork instead, it might be a sign that the restaurant is about to serve you a Westernized meal, and giving you Westernized cutlery to eat it with. It may also flag that the restaurant in question doesn't trust that you can use them, which again indicates that they may not trust you with particularly authentic food.

We're gonna be honest, folks: We love fortune cookies. We love the pop of fun they bring to the end of a meal, we love the messages inside them, and we also love their sugary, slightly vanilla-tinged flavor. However, there's no denying that they're not strictly Chinese. Fortune cookies, with their iconic shape, are actually Japanese in origin. They were brought to America by Japanese immigrants who ended up opening restaurants serving Chinese food. Chinese American restauranteurs and manufacturers quickly caught on, and soon they ended up as a staple in Chinese restaurants.

So why are they a red flag? Well, because fortune cookies are a Westernized version of a Chinese dessert, and therefore could indicate that the rest of the menu is gonna be pretty Western too. It's not an issue if you like them, of course. However, we'd recommend looking for more traditional desserts like bingfen, douhua, or water chestnut cake.

Dumplings are one of the most popular items in Chinese restaurants, and whether you're ordering them as part of dim sum or a side, they always go down well. If the dumplings on your restaurant's menu are simply referred to as "potstickers," though, you might wanna watch out. The term "potstickers" refers to a specific type of pan-fried dumpling and comes from the Cantonese word "wor tip," which quite literally translates to "pot stick." This English translation may be pretty straightforward, but what a restaurant flags by opting for the English term over the Cantonese one is that they're likely aimed at an American audience.

Plus, it's important to remember that there are loads of different types of Chinese dumplings. Jiaozi, siu mai, and har gao are just a few of the kinds of popular dumplings out there, and they all have their own flavors and textures. If the restaurant you're in only has potstickers, it will again show that they're just sticking to what Americans will know, as opposed to offering a broader range of food.