How to Find Great Restaurants in China - A Simplified Guide to Dianping and RedNote

Apps: Dianping 大众点评 / RedNote 小红书

Dianping Step-by-Step Guide (2025 version)

Dianping is China’s most popular app for reviews and recommendations. Similar to Yelp.

1️⃣ Search for the mini-app in WeChat/Alipay OR download the app “Dianping 大众点评” if you have a Chinese number.

2️⃣ You should see a prompt asking if you want to switch to the language to English. Click yes.

3️⃣ Next, you may need to click the button “See Translation” on the left hand side of the screen. Otherwise, most of the content may remain in Chinese. You should find it a lot easier to find the food you want. If you need to show it to a local person or the taxi driver, you can click the button again to change it back to Chinese.

4️⃣ Register with your number if prompted. In some cases, you might not need to register if you are only browsing. You should not need a Chinese number.

5️⃣ Your location should automatically be set - click the tab in the top left corner. If there is a pin next to the location, you have location services enabled.

6️⃣ On the main page, click the button for “Restaurants”. You will be presented with a list of restaurants. Some of them will be near to your current location, others will be further away. You can see the distance in metres or kilometres. If you want to search for places further away in the city, you can filter by district or use the search bar to find restaurants in a specific location (e.g. 南京路步行街 = Nanjing Road Pedestrian Street).

7️⃣ Use the tabs along the top row to filter the restaurants and narrow it down to the options you want. You can also browse ranking tables if you want to be inspired.

8️⃣ Each restaurant will have pictures of their menu items, taken either by the restaurant and by reviewers. You may need to click the content for it to be translated. The content is machine translated, so not all of it will make sense. If you like what you see, you can click the “star” button in the top right corner to save it to your favourites list. You can find your favourites list in the Profile tab on the main page.

9️⃣ To locate the restaurant, you can click the address on the restaurant’s page and a map with a pin will pop up. Use this for navigation.

1️⃣0️⃣ At the restaurant, you will usually be asked to order the usual way by scanning the QR code on your dining table. For smaller restaurants, you may need to point at pictures to staff.

If you have managed to register an account, you may able to buy special offers on the restaurant’s page in Dianping. For large chains, you might be able to use the coupons inside the mini-app (as long as the phone numbers for both the Dianping account and WeChat app match). If this doesn’t work, you might need to communicate with the waiter to scan the coupon as part of your order.

1️⃣1️⃣ Make payment through WeChat or Alipay as usual.

RedNote Step-by-Step Guide (2025 version)

➡️ RedNote is a social networking app that provides another method to find restaurants. Obviously, recommendations by other people are very subjective and not always reliable. Beware that some posts may be paid ads.

➡️ You can either search for restaurants by typing the name of the dish or by cuisine + location. The more specific you are, the more likely you are able to get the results you want. Searches do not normally take into account your present location.

➡️ Personally, I mostly use RedNote when I’m new to a city and need some suggestions for restaurants to try. Once I find a restaurant I’m interested in, I’ll find it on Dianping, look at the dishes on offer, and read a few reviews. This is the approach that works for me.

How to Search ->

Step 1️⃣: Type out the dish/cuisine + location. If you only know it in English, translate it into Chinese. If you only type in English, results may be limited.

Examples:

北京市的北京烤鸭餐厅 = Peking duck restaurants in Beijing city

四川火锅餐厅，成都 = Sichuan hotpot restaurants in Chengdu

Step 2️⃣: A grid of results will pop up. As long as you have the app setting in English, posts in Chinese should be translated after you click on them. If anything is still in Chinese, you can take a screenshot and use WeChat or a translation app.

Step 3️⃣: If you find a restaurant you like, copy the name of the restaurant in Chinese and paste into Dianping or Amap to locate it. Make sure you copy the entire name because some restaurants have multiple branches.

How to Write a Post ->

Step 1️⃣: Introduce where you are from (which will attract more attention) + ask in English or ask in Chinese to get more answers from non-English speakers

Example:

我是澳洲人，能推荐一些重庆的火锅餐厅吗，谢谢！= I’m Australian, can you recommend some Chongqing hotpot restaurants? Thank you!

Step 2️⃣: Wait for people to comment on your post. If you don’t get many replies within 12hrs, you may need to be more specific as people may not have understood your post.

Step 3️⃣: Cross check restaurants against Dianping.

✴️ You can also use RedNote for other things such as places to visit and activities to do.