What can I eat at a Chinese restaurant on a ketogenic diet?

Check out our guide to Chinese food, which contains tips for navigating a menu and a variety of recipes you can make at home (including tea eggs, braised pork, hot and sour soup, mapo tofu, salted duck, bok choy and mushrooms, poached chicken, and stir-fried beef). There are many regional cuisines within Chinese food, and some are more keto-friendly than others.

Many sauces at a Chinese restaurant contain sugar. You can ask for steamed versions of some dishes and then add soy sauce, which fits within the guidelines of a well-formulated ketogenic diet. Particularly the steamed Asian broccoli or mustard are good choices. For protein, the roast pork, roast duck, and crispy-skin pork belly are good choices. For fat, you could bring a small bottle of olive oil from home and add a tablespoon or two to your vegetables.

If you'd like to cook at home, we have a guide on easy ways to cook low carb Chinese vegetables.

‍A note on sauces: In general, we recommend that you avoid sauces that have gravy-like consistency and chopped up meat. These thick sauces often get their velvety sheen and texture from sugar and starch. This is often also true of chopped up meat—the marinade often includes soy sauce, sugar, and starch. Stick to thinner or more transparent sauces  or roasted meats. Hoisin, oyster, plum, duck, and sweet & sour sauce often have sugar as well, so we recommend that you avoid those.

We also have information on how to navigate nutrition labels that might be helpful.