Have you ever found yourself hungrily wandering around Chinatown, popping in the closest restaurant because they all seem the same? Inside, you flip through the menu as if you are not going to get your gazillionth order of General Tso’s chicken?

The menus are daunting — sometimes not even in English — and General Tso’s chicken is admittedly tasty. Or, as Hilary Marzec would tell you, it’s one of those Western-palate-pleasing favorites that get people in the door to hopefully try something more authentic.

Marzec is a guide with Chicago Food Planet, a company that takes people on food and culture walking tours around the city’s neighborhoods. Their three-hour Chinatown tour traces Chinese food’s journey to America with a goal of encouraging more adventurous ordering.

The tour jumps right in, with Marzac passing out maps of China while ordering dim sum at Triple Crown, located on Wentworth near the red Chinatown gate. This Cantonese small-plate meal is best shared among groups and is served with ample tea. Over delicate, crispy deep-fried taro puffs and bamboo steamers of BBQ pork buns, Marzec traced the origin of dim sum back to the traders who traveled the Silk Road.

While food spun on the lazy Susan, Marzac talked about some of the pageantry of the meal: How to serve yourself from a communal plate with chopsticks, how to signal for more tea and a silent way to say thank you.

The tour stops at two of the five restaurants opened by the “unofficial mayor of Chinatown,” celebrity chef Tony Hu. The names of all five begin with “Lao” and each focuses on a different regional cuisine. All are located in the newer part of Chinatown —north of Archer Avenue — except for his latest, Lao Hunan, which opened last month on Wentworth Avenue.

The Dried Chili Chicken at Lao Sze Chuan embodies the region’s abundant use of chili peppers — Marzec called it “fried chicken on steriods.” Even ordered mild, most of the tour participants paired it with a generous portion of rice to cut the heat.

Over at Lao Beijing, the specialty is Peking duck, although it’s called Beijing duck on the menu. Strips of crispy skin and meticulously seasoned and roasted duck are wrapped in thin Beijing pancakes much like a Chinese version of the burrito. A stuffing of spring onions, cucumbers cut into matchsticks and sweet hoisin sauce bring sweet, savory, warm and cool together. You will not end this tour hungry.

Food wasn’t the sole focus of the tour. As we wound our way through just over a mile of Chinatown, history lessons were at every turn. Stops at a tea and ginseng shop, a Buddhist temple and a medicinal supplement store rounded out the cultural aspects while allowing for much-needed digestion between restaurants.

With more Chinese restaurants in the U.S. than all the outposts of McDonald’s, Burger King and KFC combined, the lessons learned on this tour not only make visiting Chinatown more enjoyable, but will inform your ordering at every other Chinese restaurant as well.