Where/what to eat in Chinatown (Chicago)?

thewrongparty is absolutely correct about Lao Sze Chuan and Tony Hu. Everything that man touches is gold. I haven't been to Lao Hunan yet, but I'm sure it's great. Lao Sze Chuan is the best, though. Can't go wrong. At all these places, the general idea is to order a few things and share. At Lao Sze Chuan, you MUST order the Mongolian lamb. THIS IS NOT UP FOR DEBATE. I have been eating there pretty steadily for the nearly 8 years I've lived in Chicago, and it's my favorite thing on the menu. Three cup chicken is also good (a little hard to eat since it's on the bone), but sweet and sticky. I also like the pan fried pork, and some other thing with eggplant and spicy pork. I don't think I've ever actually read the menu. It has about 500 items on it, all cryptic and strange-sounding. Your best bet is either to go in with recommendations, or look at other tables for something good, point, and say you want what that guy has. If you want duck, Lao Beijing has the best Peking duck I've had in Chicago outside of Sun Wah (which is freaking delicious, but way the hell on the north side). If you go to Lao Shanghai, get the drunken chicken. Not a big fan of hot pots. If you want hot water with low-grade cuts of meat floating in it, go to Tank Noodle and get pho. (Hint: don't do this.) Bring on the haters. Go to Joy Yee's for bubble tea (really, a fruit freeze/smoothie with tapioca) after you eat somewhere with good food. Joy Yee's sucks for everything else. Barf McGarf. Stick with a Tony Hu-branded entity, and you're sure to have a great meal. Enjoy!

Little Three Happiness! Any restaurant that has had a http://lthforum.com/bb/index.php named after it is certainly worth checking out! This is important -- make sure you go to the right one. "Little" Three Happiness is the one on street level. "Big" Three Happiness is across the street and requires you to climb a flight of stairs to get to the dining room. They are VERY different. LTH is not a fancy restaurant. Service is inconsistent, but the food is amazing. My personal favorite is the scrambled egg with oyster. The salt-and-pepper smelts are great, too. Also, if you have time, talk a stroll up Wentworth and check out some of the bakeries. Mmmm, pork buns.

By the "freaked out" thing, I don't mean that I won't try it, I just like to be prepared first-- so complicated foods are fine!

Go to http://www.joyyee.com/. Everything is delicious!

Oh, and before/after! Walk around and go into the little shops that are crammed floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall with stuff for sale. Most of it's junk, but you'll find a lot of things with hilarious brand names, along with the occasional http://static.flickr.com/42/81440640_8c3352f5e3_o.jpg. Look at the ingredient list on the beauty products they have for sale (because they're not shy about saying GOAT PLACENTA, and that's funny). Also, go into the little food stores. They always smell weird and have dried crusty bits of random animals in jars that people apparently eat. Go to a candy store and get some candy. Go to Chinatown Market and look at the sad little turtles they have for sale back with the rest of the live foods. Go to one of the bakeries on the main drag (Wentworth) and get some buns (bbq pork and coconut are my favorites; red bean paste is good, too) and sesame candy. Get some Pocky somewhere. (It's not especially Chinese, but Pocky is fun and tasty, and relatively cheap in Chinatown.) Walk over to the river and hang out in the cute little park there. If you're feeling really motivated, start your day in Pilsen with lunch at Nueva Leon, and grab something at Cafe Jumping Bean to drink while you walk east to Chinatown. You'll pass over the cute little park when you cross the 18th Street bridge.

If I could somehow eat at Lao Sze Chuan every day, I probably would do so. And I'm vegetarian, so I can't even eat 80% of the menu! The cold szechuan noodle salad, off the dim sum menu, is a steal at like $5 for a big place of amazingly seasoned spicy noodles with the nice tingly of szechuan peppercorns.

I can second the recommendations for Lao Sze Chuan & Lao Hunan, though the latter tends to be quite spicy (just a heads-up). However, probably my favourite place in chinatown is the inauspiciously named Go4Food, a cantonese place with absolutely fantastic seafood - really as close to my memories of eating in HK as I could reasonably hope to get in Chicago. Just saunter in, ask what's fresh that day, and choose a preparation. It'll be delicious, and very reasonably priced (expect to pay ~$25 for a prepared lobster, maybe $15-20 for a heaping platter of delicious razor clams). The strangely named 'french beef' is also a great, and popular, choice. Dim Sum (basically chinese small plates, with lots of dumplings and such), can be a lot of fun, but is not generally served at dinner. If you can do lunch instead, Shui Wah is probably the best option for that. If you're hanging out in the neighborhood, you can also drop into Saint's Alp for a wide selection of bubble teas (tea with milk, sugar, your choice of flavouring, and little balls of tapioca).

Seven Treasures has a few really good Cantonese dishes: Anything with cuttlefish is great there, for example. It looks like nothing on the inside though, so be pre-warned. They also do the only durian boba tea in Chinatown (or at least, they did as of this time last year), so if you're in the mood for durian, that's your place.

This is by no means an inside baseball recommendation as its one of the largest restaurants in Chinatown, but the http://chinatownphoenix.com/ dim sum is consistently excellent