Arcadia is one of the best places to eat Chinese food in the United States. Around half the city is of east Asian descent, and the restaurants on and around Baldwin Avenue cater first to that community — high turnover, regional cuisines done seriously, and very little dumbing-down for outside palates. Look for Sichuan numbing-spice dishes, hand-pulled Shaanxi noodles, Shanghai soup dumplings, and Taiwanese beef noodle soup.
Beyond Chinese, the city has a respectable spread of Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Thai restaurants — plus standard American chains around the racetrack and along Huntington Drive. For a single meal, Din Tai Fung at the Shops at Santa Anita is the easiest celebrity choice; for a wider tour, pick three places on Baldwin Avenue and order shared plates at each.