Nowadays, due to the globalization process, a latent tendency of growing impact of the Far East and Asian eating culture on the daily eating practices of people all over the world is more and more revealed. This tendency could be called nutritional «Esternization» as opposed to «Westernization». The success of Chinese restaurants all over the world, including Russia, is one of the best evidence of this tendency. The role of social factors in the successful economic development of Chinese restaurants in St. Petersburg will be presented in this article from the viewpoint of the economic sociology of food. Our study aims to characterize the visitors to Chinese restaurants as a specifi c social group. Particularly, we focus at the group of Chinese students, which forms a specifi c insulated community, not sufficiently included in the social community of St. Petersburg. The empirical results of our study will be presented in this article based on the observation of 120 Chinese restaurants in St. Petersburg, the survey of 200 Chinese visitors of Chinese restaurants in St. Petersburg and 10 in-depth interviews with visitors of Chinese restaurants in St. Petersburg.