Meet Adam Schmidt, the Guy Who Ate at Every Restaurant in Philly’s Chinatown

In 2023, Adam Schmidt, the president and founder of local bar/cocktail blog Drink Philly, ate at every restaurant in Chinatown. His quest to dine at roughly 100 hotspots in the area was a culinary, personal, and sociopolitical journey. In an interview with Eater Philly, Schmidt shares how he was able to pull off the ambitious dining goal, his favorite dishes, and what he learned along the way.

Ernest Owens: What made you want to eat at every restaurant in Chinatown?

Adam Schmidt: I wanted to set a New Year’s resolution that actually excited me. I had eaten at every single food vendor in the Reading Terminal Market during the previous summer. I felt like it was a great way to learn more about an area I wasn’t that familiar with. I think if I set my goal at only eating at the “best of” lists of Reading Terminal Market, there would have been so many things I would have missed out on. When you try everything, you force yourself out of your comfort zone and open yourself up to options you didn’t even realize were there.

Adam Schmidt

How did you pull this off?

It involved a lot of information gathering. I had to answer, “just how many restaurants are in Chinatown?” How do I even find that information? How many do I have to hit a week in order to accomplish this?”

I gathered most of the information through Google Maps, making a list of every restaurant that showed up. Then I posted on social media what I planned to do, which was met with incredible enthusiasm. My social media network helped me fill in the places that were missing as well as some good, old fashioned spots I found by just walking around the neighborhood. A lot of these places don’t even have websites. In the end, it looked like I was facing around 100 restaurant visits over a year. I had to hit two to three restaurants a week, every week, in order to get through the list.

What was your biggest obstacle along the way?

Time. Lack of time was the biggest obstacle. It’s not particularly easy to leave your house and eat out two to three times every week. And if I missed my quota for the week, I’d have to make it up somewhere else. At one point, I was eating in Chinatown seven days a week because I had let too many weeks go by without a visit. Toward the end of the year, the marathon I planned turned into a last-minute sprint and it had become much more intense than I had anticipated.

Adam Schmidt

What was your favorite restaurant that you hadn’t tried before, and why?

Xun Yu Si Kao. The fish pot dish is just incredible. In fact, every dish I had there was outstanding. Their menu is a book of beautiful food photography — so even if you aren’t familiar with the dish, you can see what everything looks like, which makes some of these lesser known dishes more approachable.

Adam Schmidt

What were some exciting dishes you tried that probably wouldn’t have been on your radar without this project?

Previous to this, I wasn’t really a big fan of hot pot. I always thought it was a little gimmicky. But after having to eat so much hot pot, I really learned to enjoy it, and it became one of my favorite styles. And in Chinatown, no two hot pot restaurants are the same. One will have individual bowls, while another will have one large community bowl. One will give you a set “all you can eat” price, while another charges by the skewer. They were all unique in their own way and I really enjoyed that.

Adam Schmidt

Mala soup is a Sichuan dish similar to hot pot, but it’s super spicy. Mala in Chinese means “numbingly spicy,” and is made with Sichuan peppercorns, which causes numbness, and chillies, which causes heat. It’s intense, but so, so good. You can find it at Chu Shang Spicy.

Adam Schmidt

Ming River Sidewalk turned out to be one of my favorite spots. They serve traditional Fujian dishes, which are similar to Cantonese cuisine, but are more savory and salty. The food is quick, cheap, and good. I could eat their peanut butter noodles for days.

Adam Schmidt

Siu Kee Duck House had my favorite quick bite dish. You get a plate of rice with this seasoning on it — I have no idea what it is — but it’s absolutely delicious, and three meats of your choice, all for $13. It’s a perfect to-go lunch break spot.

Ray’s Café is one of the best coffee shops I’ve ever been in and the only place I’ve ever seen make tea with a siphon. They don’t allow photography, so it’s nice to just sit and enjoy all the care that goes into the coffee they’ve made for you.

What is something you learned about Chinatown’s restaurant scene during this journey?

It is so diverse! There are Sichuan places, bubble tea cafés, duck houses, pho soup spots, Bahn Mi, noodles, bakeries, dim sum cart restaurants, karaoke bars, fast food joints. Chinatown is sort of a melting pot of all sorts of styles and there really is no shortage of food variety.

Don’t be intimidated by food you don’t recognize. Start slow, and try something you normally wouldn’t. All the restaurateurs are very friendly and accommodating, and they’re happy to help you pick new things.

Aaron Raysor

What was a major takeaway that you want people to know about Philly’s Chinatown?

Chinatown needs your help! The Philadelphia 76ers are trying to build an arena next to Chinatown where the current Fashion District is. If this happens, it will greatly damage the Chinatown community. We’ve seen it happen in D.C. with the Washington Capitals and Wizards arena. In 2000, Philly Chinatown had to fight off an arena. Then in 2008, they had to fight off a casino. Now it’s an arena. These developers just won’t leave Chinatown alone but there are things you can do to help.

This interview was edited for brevity.

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