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PANDA CONCIERGEChina
PANDA CONCIERGEChina

Food

How to find a good restaurant rather than a tourist trap

Restaurants with an English menu and a tout at the door are almost always worse and dearer than the ones nearby — and Dianping is how you find the ones nearby.

6 min readUpdated: 4 September 2026🔥 Popular
photo: a narrow street of eatery signs, a queue of locals at one of them

Where to look

Dianping (大众点评) is the local directory of venues with reviews. It is what Chinese people actually use, and it holds an order of magnitude more data than the foreign services you are used to.

Meituan is the same plus delivery and vouchers. Often it is the same venue with the same listing, simply in a different app.

The interface is Chinese but usable without the language: photographs, numbers and the map speak for themselves, and the name and address can be copied into a translator or a map.

How to read a listing

  1. The rating

    The scale goes to five. Anything above 4.5 with a large number of reviews is dependable. A flat 5.0 on two dozen reviews is a reason to be wary.

  2. The number of reviews

    This matters more than the score itself. A thousand reviews at 4.4 beats thirty at 4.9: the first is a settled reputation, the second is chance or a bought score.

  3. Average spend

    The figure next to 人均 is the average spend per person. It is the most honest guide to price: the photographed menu may be out of date.

  4. Customers’ photographs

    Look not at the promotional shots but at the ones customers have posted. They show the real portions and the real room.

  5. The queue

    Popular places have an electronic queue in the app: take a number remotely and arrive for your slot. A queue of locals at the door is a good sign, not a reason to walk away.

Tip

A simple rule in the street: look at who is inside. A place full of locals at lunchtime will almost never disappoint; an empty room with English-captioned photos in the window almost always will.

A few more things worth knowing

Vouchers on Meituan and Dianping are a real discount rather than bait: a fixed-price set often costs less than the same dishes off the menu.

Booking a table is less common in China than waiting in the queue. Popular places in the evening often take no reservations at all.

Tipping is not the custom. It is not expected and often not understood; money left behind may be chased after you to the door.

Many places close between lunch and dinner, roughly from two until five. The opening hours in the listing are accurate.

Checked: 4 September 2026

Editor: The PANDA editorial team

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