Chinese Restaurant Menu Guide: Sections, Dish Numbers, Bilingual Names and Combo Pricing

A Chinese restaurant menu is a list of dishes organized for the way your guests order: by protein and dish type for American-Chinese takeout, by cooking technique for regional Sichuan, Hunan or Cantonese kitchens, and by steamed, fried and baked small plates for dim sum. The best menus pair clear sections with dish numbers, bilingual names, honest spice levels and allergen notes.

This guide is written for owners and chefs opening a Chinese restaurant or rebuilding a takeout menu, not for diners looking for a place to eat. It covers the two main menu architectures, when to number dishes, how to handle characters and English names, spice and allergen labels, MSG, combo pricing, and three sample structures you can adapt. If you came looking for a Chinese menu with pictures, the short answer is yes: photos help guests choose dishes they cannot name, and a digital menu makes them cheap to add.

How many Chinese restaurants are there in the US?

Roughly 36,800 restaurants in the United States serve Chinese food, by our calculation from Pew Research Center data. That makes Chinese food the most common cuisine among Asian restaurants and gives most American diners a clear expectation of what a Chinese takeout menu looks like, which is both an advantage and a constraint.

Pew Research Center analyzed 787,153 open US restaurants in SafeGraph data collected on March 23, 2023. It found that “some 12% of all restaurants in the United States serve Asian food” and that “nearly four-in-ten Asian restaurants (39%) serve Chinese food”. Pew does not publish a count of Chinese restaurants; multiplying 787,153 by 12% and then by 39% gives about 36,800, and that figure is ours.

For an operator, the number explains two things. Guests arrive with a mental template of the takeout menu, so departing from it needs signposting. And competition is dense, so a menu that is easy to read, order from and translate is a real differentiator.

American-Chinese vs regional: which menu structure fits your restaurant?

American-Chinese takeout menus are long and organized by dish type and protein, while regional menus are shorter and organized by technique or course. Choose the structure that matches your kitchen and your guests, not the one you think looks more authentic, because the structure decides how fast people find and order a dish.

Format	Typical sections	Menu size	Common mistake
American-Chinese takeout	Appetizers, Soups, Lo Mein and Chow Mein, Fried Rice, Chicken, Pork, Beef, Seafood, Vegetables, House Specials, Lunch Specials, Combo Platters	Long; often well over 100 items	Repeating the same sauce across five proteins until guests cannot see what is different
Sichuan or Hunan	Cold dishes, Stir-fries, Hot pot or dry pot, Fish, Vegetables, Noodles and rice	Medium	No heat or “numbing” guidance for guests new to the cuisine
Cantonese	Roast meats, Seafood, Soups, Claypots, Vegetables, Rice and noodles	Medium to long	Market-price seafood with no explanation of how the price is set
Dim sum	Steamed, Fried, Baked, Rice and congee, Desserts	Medium; priced per basket or plate	No photos for dishes most guests cannot name

Real menus follow these patterns. Din Tai Fung, a dumpling and noodle house, organizes its menu into sections such as Appetizers, Xiao Long Bao, Dumplings and Buns, Wontons, Greens, Noodles, Noodle Soups and From the Wok. That is a technique-led structure with the signature dish as its own section. Nom Wah Tea Parlor in New York describes itself as serving dumplings and dim sum since 1920, the classic small-plate model.

If you run Mexican or Italian food as well, the same logic of grouping by how guests think about a dish applies; see our Mexican restaurant menu and Italian restaurant menu guides.

Should you number the dishes on a Chinese menu?

Number your dishes if a meaningful share of orders comes by phone, at a counter, or from guests who may struggle with dish names. Numbers turn “the spicy chicken with peanuts, the dry one” into “number 14”, which is faster for staff and less embarrassing for guests. Skip numbers on a short regional menu where names are the point.

The rule that keeps numbering useful is simple: a number belongs to a dish, not to a position in the list. If adding a new appetizer shifts every number below it, regulars who order “the usual 32” get the wrong dish, and printed takeout flyers go stale overnight. Leave gaps between sections (appetizers in the 1 to 20 range, soups from 21, and so on) so new dishes slot in without renumbering.

On a QR or online menu, put the number at the start of the dish name, such as “14. Kung Pao Chicken”. Guests calling in can read it from the same screen your staff see, and search still works on the name.

Should a Chinese menu include characters, pinyin and English names?

Include Chinese characters if part of your audience reads them or if you serve regional dishes whose names carry meaning. A three-layer format works well: characters, then the pinyin or established English name, then a short plain-English description of the main ingredients. Each layer serves a different guest.

There are three practical levels:

1. Full bilingual. Characters, the English name and a one-line description. Best for regional menus and neighborhoods with Chinese-speaking guests.
2. English name plus contents. “Mapo Tofu: soft tofu, minced pork, chili bean sauce, Sichuan pepper.” Best for takeout menus aimed mainly at English speakers.
3. Description over translation. For poetic or figurative names, describe the dish instead of translating word by word, then keep the original name beside it.

Menu translation is harder than it looks, and machine translation struggles with exactly these dishes. Researchers presented the ChineseMenuCSI dataset at WMT 2024, describing it as “the largest for Chinese-English menu corpora”, built to study how culture-specific dish names break translation systems. Our multilingual menu statistics hub covers the evidence, and can AI translate a restaurant menu explains how to check an AI draft before it reaches guests.

How should you show spice levels and allergens?

Show heat on a simple 1 to 3 scale with a legend, and give every dish a short ingredient line that makes the main allergens visible. Guests who avoid heat or specific allergens make faster decisions when the menu answers their question before they ask, and staff spend less time checking with the kitchen.

For Sichuan dishes, explain the difference between chili heat and mala, the tingling, numbing sensation from Sichuan pepper. Many first-time guests mistake it for a reaction, so one line in the legend saves a lot of returned plates.

The FDA lists nine major food allergens: “milk, eggs, fish, Crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans, and sesame”. Sesame became the ninth on January 1, 2023, under the FASTER Act. Several of them hide in Chinese pantry staples:

Ingredient	Allergens it usually carries	Where it shows up
Soy sauce	Soybeans, wheat	Marinades, stir-fry sauces, dipping sauces
Oyster sauce	Oyster extract (a mollusk: a common allergy, though not one of the FDA nine), often wheat and soy	Stir-fried greens, beef and broccoli
Sesame oil and sesame seeds	Sesame	Cold dishes, dressings, finishing oil
Peanuts and peanut oil	Peanuts	Kung Pao dishes, satay-style sauces, frying oil
Egg	Eggs	Fried rice, egg rolls, wonton wrappers, batters
Shrimp, crab, dried shrimp	Crustacean shellfish	Dumpling fillings, XO-style sauces, fried rice

Treat the table as an operator checklist, not medical or legal advice, and confirm against your own supplier labels. Shared woks and fryers mean cross-contact is likely, so say so plainly rather than promising an allergen-free dish you cannot guarantee.

What should a menu say about MSG?

Say nothing about MSG unless you have a reason to, and never present “No MSG” as a safety claim. The FDA considers the addition of MSG to foods “generally recognized as safe” (GRAS), and notes that short, mild symptoms may occur only in some sensitive people who consume 3 grams or more of MSG without food.

The fear has a specific origin. According to the Science History Institute, “the MSG panic began in April 1968” with a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine, after which newspapers ran stories about “so-called Chinese Restaurant Syndrome”. The Institute’s summary of the research is blunt: “the vast majority of evidence suggests that MSG causes no harm.”

The label stuck to Chinese restaurants in a way it never stuck to other cuisines that use glutamate-rich ingredients. As Tia Rains of Ajinomoto told CBS News, “There’s not ‘Italian restaurant syndrome,’ or ‘Mexican restaurant syndrome.’” If some guests still ask, answer accurately per dish. If you do not add MSG, you may say so, but avoid implying that restaurants which do are unsafe.

How do you price combo plates and lunch specials?

Price a combo plate by adding the food cost of every component, including rice, sides and packaging, and then setting a price that lands food cost near your target. Combos and lunch specials drive volume, but they hide cost creep because each small side looks cheap on its own.

Here is a worked example with illustrative ingredient costs (our calculation, not market data):

Component	Food cost
Main (for example, orange chicken portion)	$2.50
Steamed or fried rice	$0.35
Egg roll	$0.45
Plate food cost	$3.30
Food cost at a $10.99 price	30.0%
Food cost at a $9.99 price	33.0%
Takeout packaging (+$0.40) at $10.99	33.7%

For a benchmark, the National Restaurant Association reports that food and non-alcoholic beverage costs ran at a median of 32.4% of sales in limited-service restaurants and 32.0% in full-service restaurants in 2024. A combo that sits near 30% before packaging leaves you room; one that starts at 33% will drift above the median once boxes, bags and sauce cups are counted.

Schedule lunch specials as their own section that appears only at lunchtime. Guests who arrive at 7 pm should not see a $9.99 plate you only offer at noon. Our restaurant menu pricing guide walks through the full method.

How do takeout and delivery change a Chinese menu?

Takeout and delivery change three things: the dishes that travel well, the packaging cost per order, and the margin you keep after third-party fees. Build your delivery menu as a subset of the dine-in menu, dropping crispy dishes that steam into softness in a closed box and anything that splits into a sauce problem on the way.

• Choose dishes that travel. Braises, fried rice, noodles and saucy stir-fries hold up; delicately fried items and soup dumplings often do not.
• Cost the packaging per dish. A soup container, rice box and sauce cup can add a visible slice to food cost, as the combo example shows.
• Price for the channel. Third-party apps take a commission on each order; our food delivery commission rates hub compares them. Your own ordering channel avoids that fee, though payment processing still applies.

Three sample Chinese menu structures you can adapt

These skeletons show section order and roughly how many dishes to place in each. Fill them with your own dishes and costs; they are starting points, not recipes.

1. Neighborhood takeout (about 80 to 120 dishes)

• Appetizers (8 to 12), Soups (5 to 6)
• Lo Mein and Chow Mein (6 to 8), Fried Rice (6 to 8)
• Chicken, Pork, Beef, Seafood, Vegetables (6 to 10 each)
• House Specials (8 to 10)
• Lunch Specials (10 to 15, lunchtime only), Combo Platters (10 to 15)

2. Sichuan or Hunan dining room (about 40 to 60 dishes)

• Cold dishes (8 to 10)
• Signature stir-fries and dry pots (12 to 15)
• Fish and seafood (5 to 8)
• Vegetables and tofu (8 to 10)
• Noodles and rice (6 to 8), heat legend with a mala note

3. Dim sum (about 30 to 50 items)

• Steamed (dumplings, buns, rice rolls)
• Fried and baked (spring rolls, turnip cakes, tarts)
• Rice and congee
• Desserts and tea, with a photo for every item

How do you run a Chinese restaurant menu online?

The simplest way to run a Chinese restaurant menu online is a QR menu that mirrors your printed sections, keeps dish numbers in the names, shows photos and a heat legend, and switches lunch specials on and off by the clock. Guests see the same numbers your staff use on the phone, and you update prices once instead of reprinting flyers.

Duckhub fits that setup, with one honest caveat about menu size:

• Plan for the long menu. The free Egg plan covers 70 products and 10 categories, which suits a regional or dim sum menu. A full takeout menu with 100 or more dishes needs the Duckling plan ($10 a month), which allows 2,000 products and adds QR ordering to the table plus online orders for pickup and delivery, with 0% commission.
• Numbers and photos. Dish numbers are simply part of the dish name, so “14. Kung Pao Chicken” works everywhere. Add a photo to each dish so guests can order what they cannot name.
• Bilingual names. Every plan supports several menu languages, so Chinese and English versions are one menu, not two print runs.
• Spice and swaps. Dish modifiers handle heat level and protein swaps without duplicating dishes.
• Lunch on a schedule. Each category has an availability schedule, so Lunch Specials appear only at lunchtime. Hide a dish when it runs out and it disappears from every guest’s phone.
• Your own AI for the copy. Connect your own ChatGPT or Claude to Duckhub to draft descriptions and translations; check every dish name and allergen line before you publish. Duckhub does not process payments, so guests pay as they do today.

Keep the sections familiar, give every dish a stable number and a clear description, cost the combos with their packaging, and a Chinese restaurant menu will be easy to order from and steady on margin.