Fengyi

I would love to get some feedback too! I'm teaching a wine course in Shanghai from the 7th Oct to the 13th - and would like to find some good Shanghai food (though many of my friends here would say that's an oxymoron... ).

Ooops and another post - because I want to announce that I have found my DEFINITIVE hotpot place in Beijing. Dingdingxiang is a bit too precious Nanmen is good, but rather ole skool even for me (eating in coats ain't that fun...) Donglaishun is OK but the franchise is too variable. I have found my hotpot nirvana...... Haidilao 海底捞！ Brilliant, just brilliant. From the nice touch of the aprons (I always get filthy eating hotpot) through the amazing and gluttonous frenzy-inducing sauce stations to the performance of the noodle dance, it was great. The only downside is the 2 hours of queuing for a table. Luckily, my friends left work at 4pm to secure our table The soup bases were very very good (we ordered the Mandarin duck pot), the meats tender and well cut. The sauce station reduced my husband to a wreck as he tried to pile each of the 6 types of chilli sauce onto his sesame paste. The service was surprising good with nice Yanjing on tap and free flow soya milk (black). They had the widest array of Bamboo bits I had ever seen - including the strangely named Bamboo clothes 竹衣 which were a triumph of 口感 mouth-feel being both crisp AND slimey - lovely! And the best was at the end when our noodle-dancer came and entertained us with the noodle dance. If you've never seen this, it is truly incredible - and really entertaining as well as producing noodles with the most delicious texture! We were so full I almost exploded, but it really was the best hotpot I've ever had - anywhere in the world!

Tetsuyas was, I have to say, the best meal of my life so far. Amazing! But to get back to reality - another new restaurant report for Beijing... Yesterday morning at 7am I was watching my favourite Beijing TV Show: 食全食美 (basic translation: Totally awesome food). Basically at the weekends it features a girl going around BJ restaurants and eating. One of the ones they featured turned out to be just steps from my office, so.... I can totally recommend Badouji 八斗鸡！！！ Completely awesome chicken! It is VERY home-y Dongbei cooking: salty strong and knock your socks off with flavour. The famous 'eight dipper chicken' of the title is thrice cooked (braised, fried and iron-plated) and is served with a mass of fried onions and green and red peppers which is perfect for mopping up with the excellent home-style bing. The bing is very very truly Dongbei in style, fat and soft and gently greasy. We had a dish of youmaicai 油麦菜 with garlic to make an effort with some veg, and a very good lapi 拉皮, again done in a very dongbei vein with heaps of vinegar and sugar in the sesame sauce. Really quite good - very family style. Not too bad in price 160RMB for all that. Mind you, just of two of us managed to devour the whole chicken....

If it was the Wal-Mart in Wanda Plaza in Beijing, I can tell exactly about nearly EVERYTHING in there - it is one of my local supermarkets as well. You've bought some Larou (in Mandarin). Very useful! Can be used as below also very nice stir-fried with yangbaicai (western-style white cabbage).

For what it's worth, I have never had cold noodles here in the north of China with peanut butter in it! They are always sesame paste based with no peanuts - in my experience. I just about lived on liangmian in my student days here (more than ten years ago now - glup!) and never ever saw or tasted peanut butter used in cold noodles. I must add that I have experienced this in Hong Kong - in the same fashion that they seem to put peanut butter into Dandan mian (yuck, yuck and double yuck!). Coincidently, we buy Chinese-made Skippy here for our sandwiches. and there are two neat things: a) they do one with crispy rice bits in it and it is AWESOME!!! totally fake tasting and typical "Skippiness" and the crispy rice crispies add a frisson of delight... b) They have a side bar on the jar explaining how to use this funky new product and among the ideas is indeed 'as a substitute for sesame in cold noodles!'. Serving suggestions also include salads and use in stir fries....and there's something else that I can't remember but it's quite weird. I need to go home and look in the cupboard!

Hi! I'm currently in Sydney (going to lunch at Tetsuya's in TWO hours - I am SO SO SO excited!! Then it's Rockpool and Quay.... yeah!) but will be returning to BJ next week. My SO and I are always happy to go out for a meal with fellow foodies... just PM me. Always willing to spread the joy of BJ eating

I just had my gallbladder out during a stay at the quite luxurious Matilda Hospital in Hong Kong (thank goodness for insurance else I might have been stuck in China!). Admittedly, it is a high-end private place, but the food was great! I couldn't eat much but my husband took care of anything I ordered. The Singapore fried noodles were particularly amazing - I recommend them heartily to anyone there!

Loft is called 面酷 (pardon my typo previously - I misread the sign!!!). and there's two - one on Dawanglu on the West side of the road opposite from a new property development called 首府 in Chinese. It's south of Tonghuihe river and before the junction with B and Q and Carrefour. The other's down an alley just south of 2nd ring road. For most Beijing listing try: City weekend THey have most place listed in Chinese and English. Have a good stay!

Eeek! Quanjude at Qiangmen....scary! The ONLY QJD I have rated as any good is the one at the Tsinghua science park (and by now I've been dragged to nearly every one...) The Xiangxi government restaurant described above is quite a way from central Beijing (apparently Fengtai district!) Tel: 66214788 Add: 太平桥大街湘西大厦10层 it's at Taipingqiao Boulevard on the 10th floor of the Xiangxi autonomous region government building. That will probably be a horror to find... Why not the Sichuan gov restaurant? Much more central - and very good indeed. BTW, a chief magazine editor, my SO and I have now decided to embark on a serious eating escape: we will eat through all 50 of the government office restaurants. It must be done..... Meanwhile, had a nice lunch today at Mosto - it's no wonder that restaurant is so crowded: a nice two course Latin-american/French lunch at only 70RMB.... very nice break from Chinese food if you can make it. Dinner is also good - I attended a Hewittson winery dinner there recently and the dishes were very good indeed (very nice pan-seared salmon with sauteed fennel). Also, went to the new branch of Hatsune. Menu same as the old one (i.e. Japanese-North American style food with well executed monster rolls and other Japanese-NA style offerings). Located on the 3rd floor of building 8 of the new Sanlitun village. Also this week, went to Manzo for the first time (just east of Panjiayuan). Quite surprisingly authentic Japanese food. Excellent home-made tofu within the izakaya style menu. Almost as good as some of the izakaya's I've been to in Tokyo. . . A nice surprise. Finally got to Duck de Chine in 1949: the Hidden City. Very much what I expected....i.e. Chinese food for those who value surroundings over flavour. The duck was quite OK - but the Tianmianjiang was pretty dreadful. Bo-bing were so-so, the shao-bing OK, in the Da Dong style but less refined. At least they were trendy enough to have the pink radish on offer - which I quite like! Other dishes were alright but not particularly well-executed and not particularly focused on Beijing cai. In fact, I saw a promotion for dimsum on......not a good sign in a roast duck restaurant. The person I was with ordered some. Not very good at all :-( But the interior is very stylish and is a good place to show off to visitors. Pity that they can't cook better...

No, I'm far too glamorous for that Actually, I don't because I don't like to reuse oil like that... having said that, I've now had my gallbladder out, so can't use that amount of oil anymore anyway

There is a dish found here in family-style restaurants (think I last saw it at one of the 9-head bird restaurants 九头鸟) which is called 'chao suibian' 炒随便 'stir-fry as-it-goes' sort of meaning). It's about the closest (and it's pretty darn close - same ethos certainly) I've come to chopsuey here! My mum reckons that they are etymologically linked....but I dunno.....

And BOY was I wrong...! Down in the south - there is the Jing Shen wholesale market. It opens very early - and you can get your seafood cooked at restaurants there in the market. I plan to go soon!

Here in Beijing, Da Dong 大董烤鸭店 does a *particularly* elegant version of Lion's Head using white fish instead of the pork and a green pea broth for the liquid. Immensely elegant and satisfying. Unfortunately, every time I order it, it gets eaten before pictures can be taken . . . but I guess that's my fault Another favourite private kitchen of mine here does a lovely version which is ethereally delicate in a clear broth.... So there's a lot of potential riffs on the subject...

If you're in the mood for fast Shaanxi food while in Beijing, I do recommend the fast-food joint '顺口溜' Shunkouliu. a bowl of Yangroupomo is 20 RMB - not bad for around here - and it's HUGE. They also have rather nice bowls of chemian 扯面 if you want some Shaanxi comfort food....

I had guests in town a while ago, and while at a Food and Wine magazine meeting, I asked where was best for Hot Pot - traditional and new style. The consensus was for Dingdingxiang Chinese site English review for new style. But I wanted Old Skool, so I went with a Editor's suggestion of Nanmen Shuanrou 南门涮肉 English address And it was fantastic! The Shaobing 烧饼 were amazing - far better than Donglaishun or Kourouji. Light and crispy with great sesame taste. The hand cut mutton was tender and delicious. In fact, all the mutton was terrific! Prices are remarkably good - and even if, in winter, you have to eat in our overcoat, it is very fun - with lovely cloisonné individual hot pots. We went to the one at Houhai, but I've been lectured since on the fact that the one at Tiantan is better. Nevermind! If you're in the mood for proper old style Beijing HP, this is great!

Judging by the amount of pigging out I've been doing in the last year, I feel I should post a bit more on Dining in Beijing. I note that I forgot to post on Maison Boulud! I've been going there kind of regularly since about October and it has been amazing just about every time. The service is by far and away the best I've experienced in Beijing and the atmosphere is fantastic. We enjoy it so much that my company helped hold a wine dinner there too: Maison Boulud and Grand-Puy-Lacose Recently they've started to do brunch - which I've now been to twice! The DP Burger is fantastic... If you want a break from Chinese food while in China, I cannot recommend this place more!

Doing Chinese food for wheat allergies is very very difficult. I used to cook chinese food for a friend who was a severe Celiac and that was almost impossible. I would make EVERY single sauce from scratch with wheat-free soya sauce. Pounding black bean, yellow bean, chili, etc.. all from scratch. Also, avoiding certain dishes altogether - for instance red-cooked dishes which rely on 'laochou' (dark soya sauce) as its impossible to buy this style of soya sauce without flour added. Those are the 'dark dishes' - swimming in hidden flour! The trouble is: wheat flour is a ubiquitous ingredient in a lot of Chinese sauces - from Black bean sauce to various chilli sauces to oyster sauce to being the base for Tianmianjiang (used in a lot of Dongbei cooking). There is an awful lot of wheat hidden in Chinese cooking that you wouldn't even suspect. However, one good thing is that you CAN pick the starch used to thicken sauces. Here I use water chestnut starch, but potato starch is a favourite as it gives good bang for the buck in terms of thickening. Usually wheat flour is NOT used to thicken during stir-fries though. You can ask - most people in the US use cornstarch I think. To be safe, do not order ANYTHING made with sauces. So you could have broth-based cooked green veg, white-cooked chicken (don't dip it in any sauce though), steamed things IF they have not used any sauces ( so black bean spareribs are OUT!), crystal-stir fried prawns. Also, even barbequed meats can be basted in sauces that contain wheat flour. you'll be better off picking Cantonese very simple dishes that are 'white-cooked' or poached. I'm sorry, but you have to keep to absolutely the simplest things poached in stock and most soups. Even stuff like mapo doufu can harm because of the amount of flour in most commercial Doubanjiang. I suspect that when you eat Chinese food you are ingesting a lot of hidden wheat flour and this builds up- despite no obvious wheat being present. I'm sorry to be a gloom and doom person. But having cooked with a wheat-free kitchen for this friend, I know how difficult it is! At least you don't have to worry about hidden gluten too...

Just say "la" repeatedly in an disapproving tone... like you're scolding a dog or shouting 'down! down!' at it. Repetition is often used in Chinese to convey emphasis so saying it three or four times is good. Honestly, this tone of voice exactly conveys the correct tone of 'hot' in Chinese - it doesn't sound rude. If you work up your tones, you can make them laugh by saying: pa4bu2la4 ('pa' in the above 'sit dog' voice, 'bu' sounds like you're asking a question, 'la' as above). It means that you're actually frightened of eating something NOT spicy. I use it a lot to describe my husband... It does get him super-hot food!

I love those weird names...the ones where you just have to ask the waiter 'what the heck is this dish?' Particularly prevalent in wedding banquet menus.... More to the point, udscbt, you can come to Beijing and eat at every single one of the provincial restaurants here! That would give you a great idea of regional differences...! But honestly, the regional classifications can make for fascinating arguments. I sometimes bring it up at meetings with Food and Wine magazine editors just to see the fur fly!

I find frozen tofu in mala huoguo really difficult....it seems to soak up twice the amount of spice and the result just blows my head off!! It's pretty standard here in Beijing as a hotpot ingredient. Must be another Northern thing...

HK Dave, weird is a polite way of putting it!!! I would add ?!?!?! It's frankly bizarre....

What's it like down your way, Liuzhou? Here in BJ, the only milk really available is the SanYuan aka the Milk of the Great Hall of the People. Same with yoghurt - it's really all SanYuan now. We've always bought SanYuan - not because of its government links, but we thought it tasted best and wasn't obscenely expensive (as some of the local organic ones are). But is Sanyuan on sale in the South? What are you doing for milk?

I think that going to South Beauty should be treated with caution - like Quanjude, it's franchised and very variable. Some are good - some (like the one in Oriental Plaza at Wangfujing) are pretty bad. It's not actually only Sichuan - it's Cantonese as well. So there are plenty of dishes to chose from. I don't rate it highly unless the particular branch has good chefs in. It's OK. It's the sort of place I go when I have coupons for half-price menu in my pocket. My local branch is quite reliable....and just about worth it for 1/2 price specials. Chuanban knocks it for six.... Laoshe's Teahouse is VERY touristy! But if you like that kind of thing, it's fun enough (though the food is pretty average). I haven't been to Baijia Cai for eleven years! I guess it must have got cleaner and more up-market! It looks a lot like a cleaner, better version of Fangshan - which has gone more and more downhill - maybe being owned by the Quanjude group doesn't help?!?! BTW, went to Sadler's in the legation quarter for drinks - very pretty balcony on which to sip a glass or two of wine. But the word on the grapevine is that the food isn't very impressive for the money... someone I know spent 1000+RMB for lunch for three.... and I can get a killer jiamorou and a BIG bowl of noodles that taste great for 11RMB in my neighbourhood.... THAT'S value for money

The consensus seems to be that this is the 'deep fried dough sheet' - at least ways, that's what people say it is. Don't know how to make it... It's definitely not 油条 (youtiao) and I think that the sheets are commercially purchased. Actually, here in BJ, I've only ever had Jianbing with the flat dough thing. But then again, I've always been told by Shandong people that they 'do jianbing wrong' in Beijing

My wok ring here in my apartment in Beijing is very strong - I had a so-called wok ring in my house in the UK, but this one here in China blows that one away. My great-aunties place has a two-set burner which runs even fiercer and hotter. Now, the funny thing is that in all the supermarkets they sell non-stick woks One thing I do know is that, outside of western-style cookstores, it's really hard to find a skillet here. I got mine at a professional hotel cookware store. I've also never seen one in a local kitchenware store...