Before you sit down
Two apps do most of the work in a Beijing restaurant, so it is worth setting them up before you are hungry rather than at the table. Alipay and WeChat Pay both let foreign visitors link an international Visa, Mastercard or JCB card without opening a Chinese bank account, and either one becomes your main way to pay once a QR code is in front of you. A translation app that can read text through your phone's camera is the other essential, since it turns a Chinese-only menu into something you can actually read. Carrying a small amount of yuan in cash is a sensible backup for the rare place that does not take mobile payment or card, and it also covers situations like a phone running out of battery. None of this preparation needs to happen in China itself — both payment apps can usually be set up before you travel.
When the menu is only in Chinese
A Chinese-only menu is the norm outside heavily touristed areas, and there are a few reliable ways through it. Camera translation in a translation app can turn a printed or scanned menu into readable English in seconds, and it is worth practicing with it once before you actually need it under time pressure. Many restaurants, especially casual ones, use picture menus with photos of each dish, so pointing at a photo works even with zero shared language. Dishes are often grouped by category — meat, vegetable, soup, rice or noodle — on menus and on picture boards, so recognizing those category headers helps you order a balanced meal even when individual dish names mean nothing to you. Staff at busier restaurants are generally used to this kind of ordering and will often help point you toward something if you show openness to suggestions.
Ordering Peking duck or hotpot as a pair
Peking duck is typically prepared as a whole bird, carved at or near your table and served with thin pancakes, scallion and a dark sauce for wrapping, and a whole duck is portioned for two or more people rather than one — so if you are dining solo, ask staff whether a smaller portion is available. Hotpot in Beijing commonly means a clear or mild broth eaten with a sesame-paste dipping sauce, distinct from the numbing chili-forward broths associated with Sichuan-style hotpot, and it is inherently a shared, communal format where a pot in the middle of the table is meant for everyone to cook from. Both dishes reward going as a pair or small group rather than alone, both in terms of how they are portioned and in terms of the experience itself, since hotpot in particular is slow and conversational by design.
Dietary limits worth planning for
Halal, or 清真, restaurants are common across Beijing and generally identifiable by signage using that term, which is useful if you are keeping halal and want a straightforward option rather than having to interrogate every dish. Strict vegetarian eating is harder to manage, because meat stock is widely used as a base even in dishes that look vegetable-only, so a dish described as vegetables can still not be vegetarian in the strict sense — it is worth stating this plainly to yourself rather than assuming a vegetable-heavy menu solves the problem. Allergies are best handled in writing: use a translation app before you go out to prepare a clear Chinese-character sentence naming your specific allergy, and show that phrase to staff rather than relying on a spoken word, which is easy to mishear in a noisy restaurant.
Paying and leaving
Payment is straightforward once you are ready to go: scan a QR code with Alipay or WeChat Pay at the table or the counter, hand over a card if the restaurant accepts one, or pay cash if that is what you have. No tip is expected in mainland Chinese restaurants, so there is no need to calculate one or leave extra on the table. Splitting a bill among a group is less standardized than in some countries — some restaurants can split a payment across multiple phones at checkout, but it is often simpler for one person to pay the full bill through their app and have the others settle up with them afterward, for instance by transferring their share through the same payment app. A digital receipt is often generated automatically inside the payment app itself, which is worth checking if you need one for expense tracking.