Today China has become a gathering place of world food and people can see various restaurants at all levels in China, including western restaurants, hotel restaurants, hotpot restaurants, cafeterias, fast-food restaurants, barbecue restaurants, Muslim restaurants, and so on. Different restaurants provide people with diverse flavors of dishes. In many cities there are food streets where people can have a taste of the local food and snacks, e.g. Wangfujing Street in Beijing and Hui Street (Muslim Street) in Xi’an. Meanwhile, elegant west-style restaurants, Japanese restaurants, Korean restaurants, Indian restaurants, KFC, Mcdonald's, Pizza Hut… can be easily found in Beijing, Xi’an, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, etc.

The choosing of a restaurant usually depends on consumption levels of different consumer groups:

- Students: Most Chinese students especially college students have meals at their school canteens or the small restaurants near their college because of the delicious snacks of various places and their limited living expenses. If you are a backpacker, these places may be a good choice and you may try Guilin rice noodles, Xi’an cold noodles, Yangzhou fried rice, hotpots and other dishes. But please note that the waiters or waitresses there usually can not speak English or other foreign languages.

- General Public: All kinds of restaurants and food stalls. When common people want to celebrate something or have a dinner, they will probably choose a middle-grade or a small one; while food stalls are more popular among common laborers due to their lower prices, but environment in food stalls is usually not as good as that in restaurants.

- Office Workers: With the faster and faster pace of work and life, many office workers always want to make full use of every minute to finish their work, therefore, fast-food restaurants like KFC and Mcdonald's are usually their first choice.

- Wedding Banquet and Formal Feast:In China today, many wedding parties prefer a combination of Chinese tradition and western romance and a formal feast is usually held at a formal occasion, so a local renowned restaurant or a star-rated hotel with first-rate service and nice environment will be chosen.