Where does Lang Lang like to eat when he’s in Philly, the city where ‘everything started’?

He first discovered it years ago, but one recent morning Chinese pianist Lang Lang was thinking about the lobster fried rice at Buddakan.

“I fell in love with that taste,” he said of the dish, seasoned with Thai basil and saffron. “But during that time I was a student and it was too expensive, so there was always somebody else taking me there.”

Lang Lang no longer eats on a student budget. He lived in Philadelphia from 1997 to 2007 while studying at the Curtis Institute of Music and launching his career. But today he is perhaps the superstar of the piano world and lives in New York and Paris — “a little bit of Shanghai, as well.”

He plays about 85 concerts a year across the globe, which means he almost exclusively eats out.

Back in town this week for a recital of Schumann’s Kreisleriana and Chopin mazurkas Sunday in Marian Anderson Hall, he was looking forward to a visit to Pat’s or Geno’s.

“Cheesesteaks, yeah. I mean, look, here you have to do it. It’s just a tradition. It was a real party food while we were studying here,” he said during a chat in the lobby of the Rittenhouse Hotel.

For a while, Lang Lang found it tough to come back to Philadelphia. Some important figures in his life were gone.

“Gary’s not here. Dick’s not here,” he said, referring to his onetime teacher and former Curtis director Gary Graffman, who lives in New York, and the late civic leader Richard A. Doran, an important mentor to the young pianist. Their absences left him feeling “kind of a little bit left out” in Philadelphia.

But Lang Lang is now 42, married — to pianist Gina Alice Redlinger — with a 4-year-old son, and it is somehow time for a rapprochement between him and the city.

“I really needed this visit to reconnect with my heart in Philadelphia,” he said. “And I’m not making this up, but very often in my dreams, I start walking on South Street. Somehow, just because that was [near] my first house, it has had the biggest impact. I don’t know why in my dream when I walk, I always walk back to South Street. It’s very emotional.”

Lang Lang has used his time this week to catch up with friends and old classmates over lunch and dinner in Philadelphia, and for a benefit performance in Pittsburgh with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra on Wednesday night.

He has been rediscovering Philadelphia as an adult, visiting the Penn Museum to see its collection of Chinese art, and dropping in on a piano seminar class at Curtis. He’s run into old classmates on the street, like Curtis professor and New York Philharmonic principal clarinetist Anthony McGill. And he has sought out some old friends who “really supported me, emotionally and also financially. They’re all getting much older, but it’s really wonderful to see them.”

When he’s in town, he likes to eat at Fuji Mountain, the Japanese restaurant on Chestnut St.

“And also of course Lacroix — incredible restaurant.”

“Before I was more into Asian food, but now I’m OK with everything, so now I have many more possibilities.”

In New York, he likes the Greek restaurant Avra, on 6th Avenue and 50th St. — “all the seafood is so fresh” — and Nobu Fifty-Seven, on 57th St.

And when in Paris, he’s partial to Bistrot Le Champ de Mars near the Eiffel Tower, with its traditional French and international dishes.

“It’s big portions, and very tasty and very casual. It’s open late, so after practice I can always go there.”

The restaurants in Paris, New York, and Philadelphia are all fine and good, but the pianist saves his superlatives for one chef in particular.

“My mom is the best dumpling maker,” he says, though he doesn’t want her to work too much since she is often following him from city to city to help look after his son.

Lang Lang is hoping to spend more time in Philadelphia in the future — at Curtis, and in some of the schools his foundation has assisted with gifts of electric keyboards, curriculum, and other support. He also wants to show his son the city that has meant much to his artistic and personal development.

“The time in Philadelphia really impacted me a lot. The Philadelphia Orchestra took the challenge to take me to China, to take me to my home country to perform, which at that time not many people there even recognized me.”

And then there’s Curtis.

“I still remember my first day when I arrived in the apartment, there was a Steinway B [a nearly seven-foot grand piano] sitting there.”

Sometimes getting up in the night, he would stop to touch the piano “to see if this was real or not. It was just unbelievable.”

Of Philadelphia, he says: “Everything started here.”

Lang Lang performs Sunday at 7 p.m. in Marian Anderson Hall, Broad and Spruce Sts. Remaining tickets are $300. ensembleartsphilly.org, 215-893-1999.