Freddie Wong’s ‘3.5 star rule’ for Chinese restaurants is a game changer

Freddie Wong has revealed the secret to finding the most delicious Chinese food and surprisingly it involves looking for restaurants with average reviews.

Plenty of people can relate to trying to find the most delicious Chinese food in their area, but not really knowing where to start.

Well, in a post shared on TikTok and Twitter, filmmaker Wong explained that he only eats at Chinese restaurants that have a Yelp review of 3.5 stars exactly and went on to elaborate on why.

He explained that the secret to finding authentic Chinese food in a major metropolitan area is finding the “sweet spot” of reviews.

According to Wong, reviews higher than 3.5 stars indicates that “too many white people like it”, the “service is too good” and the food is “not as good as it could be”.

But, he says at a 3.5-star restaurant, “the waiters are not going to pay attention to you. They’re going to be rude. But it’s going to taste better”.

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Wong said: “Why is this the case? Here’s my theory: cultural expectations for service are different in Asia – they’re not proactive, they’re not gonna come up to you, they’re not going to just pro-actively give you refills, you need to flag down the waiters.

“People on Yelp are insufferable. They’re digging all these restaurants because the service is bad, however, the food balances it out, so you end up at three and a half stars.

“It’s the sweet spot. Trust me.”

In the comments, people were checking the reviews for their local Chinese restaurants and were amazed to see that Wong is correct.

One person wrote: “literally just checked my favorite local Chinese restaurant after seeing this and boom, right on the money.”

Another said: “I just sprinted over to Yelp to check my fav place, and am absolutely relieved.”

Others thanked Wong for his advice and said they’d now follow his guidelines.

Someone commented: “This…makes a lot of sense, honestly. Gonna have to test it out next time I’m traveling.”

“Thank you for this life advice,” another said.

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