Look for regional specialities. “At most restaurants—depending on the region—you already know what the greatest hits are,” says Huang. Find out what a restaurant’s specialty is before going to eat there, suggests Ng. “For instance, a Shanghainese restaurant will probably have soup dumplings and scallion pancakes. It also probably wouldn’t be a good idea to order a Shanghainese dish at a Cantonese restaurant.” Be exceptionally wary of restaurants that serve things that are totally off-base, says Huang. “You don’t want to eat sushi from a Sichuan restaurant.”
Ask about the other menu. “This is America, so there’s almost always an English menu,” says Ed Schoenfeld, restaurateur and owner of NYC’s RedFarm. To find the most authentic dishes, find out if there is a separate Chinese menu and if it has different items than the English menu. To figure out if there are different dishes on the Chinese menu, says Schoenfeld, compare the number of items on each menu. If the English and Chinese menus appear to be different, then “look for unfamiliar dishes, which should be less Westernized and therefore more authentic.”
The emblematic street food of Sichuan province and a favorite of night markets throughout China, red-hot dan dan noodles are named for the poles that street vendors in the city of Chengdu once used to cart their cooking pots and equipment. Dan dan mian are bowls of fresh wheat noodles and minced preserved vegetables flavored with an incendiary blend of chili oil, Sichuan peppercorns, dark and light soy sauces, rice and black vinegars and fragrant, dark sesame paste. No two cooks make it exactly the same way, but what remains constant are pleasantly chewy noodles and that fiery, red-hot sauce.
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