Beijing dining

[hzrt8w]

Sweet and Sour Fish - If anybody knows how to do this,  I'd love to hear!

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It takes years of appenticeship to do the fish.

Whole pigeon - picked over

(this might not be a pigeon, but that is what they told me. If you know, again I'd love to know)

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It does look like a pigeon.

My favorite - crispy rice and Chinese sausage

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I thought Chinese sausage over rice in an earthern pot is a Cantonese specialty. Guess they serve it in Beijing too now.

[Sabrosita]

Hi all! I'm planning to be in Beijing for 9 days this fall for the sole purpose of delicious eating. I'm guessing that mostly we're just going to wander until we see something crowded and tasty looking, but would love to hear if anyone has suggestions for areas to look and for specific restaurants. I love Sichuan hot pot, we'll need to try some duck, I eat anything and everything and the less likely it is I can get it in the US, the better!

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Deep-fried scorpions? Guaranteed that it cannot be found in the USA.

Yours is one idea. Except that a lot of delicious items are cooked-to-order in restaurants and you may not find them on the street to look at.

One idea I have, which is what I plan to do the next time I visit Beijing: hire a local tour guide (from Craight's List or something). Let him/her guide you to some of the good, and not necessarily touristy, restaurants. Treat him/her to those meals. Meals don't cost too much in the Mainland China (unless you go to the 5-star hotels). For a big group, it shouldn't be a big deal. If not, meet the tour guide for a few hours shortly after you arrive. Pay him/her. Have them list out / write down the restaurants of reommendation in Chinese (and any specialties).

Or bribe Fengyi...

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That's a great idea--I'm also hoping to find any food bloggers in beijing that might want to take a Seattle food blogger under their wing for a meal or two.

[Fengyi]

That's a great idea--I'm also hoping to find any food bloggers in beijing that might want to take a Seattle food blogger under their wing for a meal or two.

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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

[infernooo]

Be sure to report on Tetsuya's - it is truly an amazing restaurant (as is the beef at Rockpool) !

[Fengyi]

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....

Edited September 14, 2009 by Fengyi (log)

[Fengyi]

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!

[prasantrin]

Has anyone been to Makoto? I'm just curious about the level of cooking going on there.

[Peter Green]

Fengyi,

dingdingxiang? Is that "hot pot paradise" where we went? If so "pretentious"? How can you call crisp linens, precious flower arrangements, and foie gras and wagyu hotpots "pretentious"?

Okay, yes, it was pretentious. Plus, we had to sneak our photos.

I promise I will get the Beijing trip written up soon. (I just need to get some other things out of the way)

And thanks again for all of your help.

Okay, I'll get back to work.

Edited October 21, 2009 by Peter Green (log)

[Sabrosita]

Fengyi,

I promise I will get the Beijing trip written up soon. (I just need to get some other things out of the way)

Come on, come on, I'm anxiously awaiting this post to help plan my trip. Leaving one month from today!!! Your posts helped me a lot on SE Asia, so looking forward to hearing about Beijing before I get there.

[rmillman]

I have just finished one of the best dining evenings I have had this year. While this may seem funny since it is the 1st, I would extend my feelings to make this one of the best I have ever had (and I have posted comments on many places I have been including bulli, duck, arzak).

Green T. House living, the one at No 318 cuige zhuang xiang hege zhuang cun chaoyang, simply knocked my socks off. Everything, from the room, the service, the food, the "value". . . it is all what a three star place can be had.

We are finishing an extended trip including long stops in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Vietnam where we ate at all egulleted, bourdained, blogged and populated street food sites that can be imagined. Yet I find myself compelled to immediately post a note on this place.

Each dish has tea, all asian based. Seven of us ate the menu sampling almost all on the menu for a total of 1400rmb (~$200US). While this may represent extreme over spend in local dining and street food spending (our hand pulled noodles for lunch were 10rmb a bowl), this was incredible value for what I consider to be three star service setting, and food quality.

We love street and market food as well as fine dining. For that special night in Beijing or as a stop on a food journey, I would say you should try this place. I will post follow up pictures later but some dishes to note include the lamb and fish main dishes (although I am not sure how often the menu changes).

[nbaines]

I went to Beijing in September and the highlight for me was Li Qun's Roast Duck. So good we went twice.

A very good Tiawan hot pot place on Ghost street called HENGJI HOTPOT no.242, Dongzhimennei Street, Dongcheng. Very cheap, very very good. Was brought three complimentary dishes and there was only the two of us eating. Also this eemed to be one of the few eateries on Ghost street that didn't have staff on the street grabbing you and trying to lead you into their restaurants. well worth the time to find

and an exceptional Vietnamese on hou hai lake called NUAGE, thoroughly enjoyed this place, a brilliant pho and a whole spread of bok choi, crab spring rolls and noodles.

[Fengyi]

Last night we had a gastronomic revelation in Beijing....

A tiny, tiny hidden place somewhere off Chaoyang north hides a master craftman. A Japanese chef who's sort of 'retired' to Beijing (he was flown in for another restaurant project that failed) who brings in everything from Japan and even has the tap water treated to make it taste 'better'. It only holds about 20 people and we had a gorgeous omakase. I've eaten in Tokyo high-end quite a bit (courtesy of my great-aunt Molly and other relatives and friends) and this was seriously good. The grilled Kobe beef was amazing, the sashimi gorgeous and the tempura was as good as anything I've had in Japan. only sad note was no fresh wasabi.

For Beijing, it was truly fantastic.

We shared a bottle of Mosswood's Mornington Pennisula Pinot Noir (Stellar!) and a Petales d'Osoyoos (surprisingly better than I had hoped) and they matched the food very well.

If you are ever in Beijing and in need of a break from Chinese - just PM me and I'll tell you how to get there. It's a bit complicated and hidden!

[Fengyi]

Also, I think I forgot to mention - if you're in the area of the Summer Palace ever, you MUST go to the Bai Family Courtyard restaurant and order the dish 'Concubine's Smile' .

Never have flowers ever tasted so good...

[nakji]

Ok, we may be completely mad, but my husband just C-Tripped a flight to Beijing over the National Day holiday. If we managed to get a hotel booked, this trip might actually happen. The hot pot and Dongbei place mentioned above are on now on my list - can I get addresses/neighbourhoods? Pretty please?

And no doubt, we'll get to the Summer Palace this time round, so the Bai family restaurant can be done.

But......duck?

I need a winner.

[lovefoodwilltravel]

Hi najki,

Has been mentioned here before....Da Dong Roast Duck.

Quanjude is the government standard. Da Dong was one of the (top) chef at Quanjude and he started his own restaurant. So the service and standard of food at Da Dong is of a higher standard.

What i rememberd from dad ong was the waiting room. We sat just before the window. real weird...like beind a human window display.

Btw in Beijing you need to avoid the socalled foodstreets at the wangfujing area. its bad food and a pure tourist trap.

But there is a street called "ghost street" and this place is FULL of all sorts of restaurants.Not sure how good they are...but there are so many choices...good idea to stroll around. Ask your concierge about this street. When u mention ghost street ///they know what u mean.

Btw I must mentioned i had two incredible dinners when in Beijing. Sad thing is....as we were taken there...have no idea what the name was of the places or the dishes.

One was a mongolion(non hotpot) restaurant. We sat in a real yurt where the food was served. They served donkey/ass, camel etc etc. But the dish i remember was a whole roast lamb. It was so tender. The ribs was as thin as the chopsticks. Awesome.

The second was a barbecue restaurant(Maybe mongolion too?)...you get served special mongolion beef thats milfed or something so that its as tender and as marbled as the kobe/ wagyu beef. Real nice.

[nakji]

Thanks for the tips, all. Looks like a bunch of friends have suddenly decided to join us, (Facing the long national holiday stuck at home with their DVD collections, coupled with a few C-Trip links sent their way greased things along) which means I'll have less control over where we get to eat dinner, although I will be charged with ordering once we turf up at a restaurant, small mercies.

Da Dong is our duck choice, then, which we'll just tell everyone we're going to. Other places will probably be determined by likely-looking places located near wherever we end up each day. I have two more particular interests, however:

I'm looking for a street/place where I can get ample samplings of dumplings/jiaozi/spring onion buns, particularly for breakfast.

I'm also interested in the the omikase place that Fengyi mentions. It's my tenth anniversary, and my husband has requested that I not buy cufflinks or another watch; rather he'd prefer a really excellent meal. This or some other more high-end choice suitable for a romantic meal for two...any ideas?

[Fengyi]

Hi Erin! I will give you the low down on the omakase if you want - I can text you the address and then guide you in by phone if needed.

I'm writing this in Shanghai airport, after amazing visit to Australia to participate in the Landmark Tutorial which, though completely wonderful, has left my brain in a completely non-functioning state (I blame it on the beauty of the 1928 Morris Muscat we were tasting!).

I will see if I can PM you and you can contact me by e-mail for more info. Cheers!

[Fengyi]

Also - there are now 3 Da Dong's in Beijing - so you'll have to decide which one is most convenient for you!

[nakji]

Great! We're staying at Opposite House, and their website says there's a Da Dong about 4km away. They also recommend a place called, "Made in China". Anyone been?

As for the Omakase, very interested. Are there sake pairings? I enjoy a good hunt for "hidden" restaurants! Of course, no set of directions in Asia is complete unless it goes something like, "Go out Exit 6 and walk until you see the China Mobile shop. Turn left down the alley until you come to the house with open window and the red and green thermoses on the desk. Walk through the door and out into the alley opposite, and follow the length of hedges until you get to a garbage tip. Look for the house with birdcage opposite, and..."

[nakji]

Thanks for all the recommendations, everyone. We decided to focus our meals on regional Chinese food that we don't have a lot of access to in Suzhou.

We had a great flight up from Wuxi on Shenzhen airlines, which apparently will still allow you to smoke on board. They also provided a decent box lunch of chicken curry rice, pickles, and a mandarin orange. Simple, but good. I never think to buy pickles at the supermarket; I think because they always come in opaque shrink wrap. I have to correct this.

We had a booking our first night for DaDong's Tuanjiehu branch, which is a short walk down from Sanlitun Village, where we were staying at the Opposite House. (A hotel I will forever love for stocking jelly beans in their free minibar.) It's apparently not the poshest interior, but that worked for us, as we were with a crew of our co-workers who were on a budget and didn't want anything too flash. The bill was an extremely reasonable 150 kuai a head, though, including tea, beer, two ducks, and some veg and cold dishes. Exceptional food. I actually wanted to go back again, but as ever, we didn't have enough meals to cover all the ground we wanted to.

The room:

Cold dishes:

Billed as pickled cabbage, the centre dish was actually more of a collection of pickled vegetables, including pink radish, chilis and carrot.

We also had the sour crunchy cucumbers.

Sesame chili chicken. This classic was actually voted best dish of the night, far beyond the duck. A couple of things won our love - this dish is usually presented on the bone, so you have to delicately whittle the chicken off while depositing lone bone shards and other undesirables onto your plate, causing attention to wander from the otherwise luscious combination of fatty-salty-spicy-sweet that makes up the sauce. I'm aware that many people find this an attraction rather than a drawback; but none were at our table. We are lazy eaters, I guess. In this presentation, the chicken had been removed from the bone, each velvety nugget of flesh suspended in the sauce. This dish broke the ice for our group, as many of us had just met/just started working together. When we started fighting over the bottom bits in the glass, we really came together as a team, I think. The other key point was the chili oil to sesame paste ratio - usually more oil than paste, it's a real exercise to get the chicken into your mouth without collateral oil splatter. No problems with this one. Actually, looking back, I don't know why we didn't order another round.

Duck! What else is there to say? Although I didn't get the point of dipping the skin in the sugar, that may be because I'm pre-diabetic from eating Jiangsu cuisine all the time. Some of my companions did not enjoy the "lean" style, preferring more flesh to skin; I don't feel this way. I think we should have ordered three ducks; we had two for seven, but a couple of the lads were not sated on their share. They provided pancakes and crispy sesame buns for wraps, along with pickles, chopped radish and leek, grated garlic, hoisin and sugar for garnish.

We also ordered, because I am a sucker for eggplant dishes, the braised eggplant. It was nice to see something other than a sprig of parsley or an orchid for presentation, although I'm not sure how much an improvement "smears" are, as artful as they can be; especially when they are a certain shade of brown-green. The eggplant was melting and tasted fragrant with anise, a flavour combination I'm going to experiment with.

A simple green dish to round things out - stir-fried dragon beans. These were cooked simply and made a nice complement to the richer, more heavily flavoured dishes.

The menu here is a real brick - I was extremely intimidated by having to choose. Since we didn't have any Chinese friends with us, my tablemates turned the ordering over to me. I always feel somewhat out of my league with everyone's dinner relying on my inexpertise; fortunately the waitress was patient and guided me to their more popular dishes. (Although we did spend several minutes calling "Fuwuyuan!" to no effect, before my husband grokked and switched to "Fuwuyuanr!" Cue three waitresses, running to the table, all for one retroflex.) I wish I lived in Beijing to further explore the menu, because everything that went out to tables around us looked equally intriguing.

We finished with an icy plate of fresh Chinese dates, which are now in season. Their charms are initially subtle - aside a from a crisp snap when you bite into them, it's kind of hard to see the attraction. However, they are mysteriously moreish, as if the crackle and snap of eating them is addictive. We also noted that while these are mildly sweet on their own, if you eat one and then take a long pull of Qingdao, they take on a pronounced honey flavour. We experimented at length with this effect until we ran out of beer. Then they brought round sweetcorn granitas, which won one of the lads a 10 kuai bet with the other who thought it was mango until tasting it.

The queues were long and competitive; our booking had us ushered in right away. I would recommend making one if you plan to visit.

[nakji]

Happy double nine day! It's the ninth day of the ninth lunar month, and I can barely hear myself think for all the firecrackers going off in the neighborhood.

Our next stop in Beijing was a Sichuan place called Dezhe Xiaoguan. In an alley in the middle of Dongcheng district somewhere, our cabbie was in the dark as we were trying to find the place. I thought at one point I'd seen the hutong sign, and stopped the cab, only to see after getting out and paying that I'd read the sign wrong. My husband and I had one of those conversations you have when you've been dropped out of a cab on a dark, quiet street in a strange city where you can barely read and speak the language. Blame was eventually assigned to me. Our faithful attendance of language lessons finally paying off, though, we were able to call and get guided to the right hutong, not a block down on the other side of the road. It's not a difficult place to find, but please note no English is spoken, nor is there an English sign to this place.

It's in a restored courtyard home, with first-date sort of atmosphere. Warm, naturally finished wood tables and chairs; traditional blue and white china; Jack Johnson on the stereo.

The food, as I noticed in Beijing, came in HUGE portions, and we over-ordered so badly that even our server felt compelled to tell us we'd ordered way to much. We were greedy guts and were undeterred by his warnings.

We ordered the cold sesame and chili chicken in a vain attempt to recreate the magic from the night before, and while their version was fine, the chicken flesh was nowhere near as silky as that of Da Dong's.

Beef with wild mushrooms was rich and moreish. The beef was cut what I think of as Japanese-style - very thin in sheets with lots of flavoursome fat laced on the edge of each sheet. These mushrooms -I have no idea what kind they are, but have long, hollow stems and tiny caps carried the earthy taste of the beef, and they were bound together in a slightly sweet, slightly hot sauce that made you take mouthful after mouthful trying to get sated of it - but each mouthful led to more of a craving, instead of sating it. It was a Sisyphean sauce.

It pretty much ruined my appetite for the two further dishes we'd ordered; the braised green beans with yellow-bean sauce - soft and salty; very nice.

Chili-fried radish with smoked ham.

The smoked ham is what makes me wonder if the true deliciousness of Chinese country cooking can be truly experienced internationally, without access to these cured meats. This pork was so smoky, so rich, that a few small pieces infused a wok full of radish shreds so much that it was like we were eating crispy vegetable chili bacon. It pained me not to polish off every scrap, but we were just too stuffed. My husband and I routinely finish three dishes between us in Suzhou with room to spare, but the portion sizes there are so much smaller. We got da pao of the extra.

There is lots of lovely game and offal dishes on the menu as well, including crispy kidneys and rabbit head, but we couldn't order everything, even though I've been meaning to make a go of enjoying offal dishes. When I go back to Beijing, it'll be difficult not to revisit.

[nakji]

We spent one afternoon wandering around the Houhai area of Beijing - kind of a fashionable club-cafe-shop district set on a lake, with traditional hutong branching off in all directions like a maze. We had a good poke into some of the shops, and I picked up a small clay pot of yogurt to sip, which seems to be the thing to do as a tourist in Beijing. I'm not sure of the name of the dairy, but the yogurt was excellent - so thick and tangy it was hard to sip. I was at a loss with what to do with the nice pot once I was done, however, so I left it in a small cairn of like pots near a shop. Hope that was the done thing, too.

There were quite a lot of stalls on the lake selling cold noodles, but my husband and I have a minor obsession with Yunnanese food, so we searched out a place called "No Name" listed on our Beijing iPhone app - just follow the GPS map and you're there. Awesome.

Of course, we ordered more eggplant, because it had been almost 24 hours since I'd had some last. This was grilled, with a mix of pork, chilis and herbs on top.

Rice noodles with peanut sauce and steamed chicken.

The peanut sauce looked like a dark miso, and had almost a bitter taste. I'm interested in how they got it so dark. Anyone have any idea? I'd never seen peanut sauce like this before.

Fried Yunnanese cheese, with a chili-herb dressing. Much better than a similar one available at Southern Barbarian in Shanghai, which comes under-seared, in my opinion.

Overall, much nicer, lighter dishes than Southern Barbarian in Shanghai, and closer to Southeast Asian dishes. Resolved: my first long-distance trip in China will be to Yunnan.

The restaurant itself had a beautiful view over the hutong from its roof terrace, and the wonderful light was our last chance to absorb some vitamin D before the dust blew in the next day.

[nakji]

We had our last meal at a cheap and cheerful Dongbei place, whose name and location are completely absent in my notes. Perhaps someone will recognize it and help me out?

They had six or seven kinds of dumplings on the menu, and we chose squash and egg, and pork with chive. I was hoping the squash would be the yellow pumpkin kind, but it turned out to be zucchini - rather bland for my taste.

Braised chicken and mushroom with glass noodles. It was okay.

The stand-out dish for me was the beef with cumin - tender sheets of beef and intense cumin and chili flavour made this almost curry-like. My friends were not as big fans, which left much of the dish to me.

We also ordered a big salad basket - very reminiscent of the leaf plates you get in Korean barbecue restaurants. The dip was a chili-yellow bean sauce.

We also ordered tofu sheets wrapped around more lettuce. I wasn't a big fan - the two things hardly seemed to relate to each other at all, but it seemed like a novel presentation that we wanted to give a try.

It was really hard to get a white balance and take decent photos here because of the charming red lighting. I loved the lamps and the bright cotton prints all over the place - and so did everyone else, by the looks of it, as the place was jam-packed on two floors.

[Kent Wang]

If you go to Da Dong, I recommend the Jinbao Dasha location as you can see them roasting the ducks, and they carve the duck table-side. The location I also went to in Chaoyang they carve it in the kitchen and bring it out.

Also ask for the duck soup. It's free; they make it out of the duck you just ate—well, not your duck but somebody else's duck from yesterday. Rather unscrupulous of them to not offer it unless asked though.

[FDE]

Like previous visits, it was short but full, and very full!

Li’s Imperial Cuisine

We have been to both Family Li in Shanghai and Beijing two years ago, but this restaurant located near the Beijing Capital Airport is where the Grand Chef Ivan Li spends most of his time. It is not the easiest location to get to, but like all the top culinary spots, the journey is part of the experience! In terms of food alone, Li’s Imperial is definitely the highest quality of all Beijing restaurants that we have visited.

The Private Room - Park Hyatt Beijing

For high-end exclusive Cantonese dining, this is the place. The restaurant spans over 2300 square meters of the entire floor consisting of 16 uniquely designed rooms! The cuttlefish with smoked bacon, the abalone and morel baked rice, and the egg tart topped with redcurrant and chocolate were just some of the highlights.

Bai Jia Da Yuan

You don't need a time machine to go back to the Qing Dynasty! If you are looking for a unique experience, I would recommend this place. The team consists of 200+ staff divided into 7 levels, distinguished by their traditional uniforms, based on a similar ranking system used in the Forbidden City. It was the professional training to each staff and the attention to details making the whole experience so wonderful. Initially I thought it was a tourist trap with bad food, but we were very satisfied with our experience - the food, the service, and the ambience. Very impressive indeed!

The menu had a wide range of food and even wider range of prices! If you don't need a private room and don’t order those expensive delicacies, you can come out from this place paying less than ¥1500 for two.

Made in China - Grand Hyatt Beijing

We went for the duck of course. They can only do about 70 ducks a day and each duck needs an hour of roasting in their traditional wood oven. Hence, reserving a duck when booking a table at this restaurant is a must. Other than the duck, the Honey Glazed King Prawn was superb!

We went to Duck de Chine the day after and turned out to be the most disappointing meal of our trip! Ambience was bad, pancake was thick, and duck skin wasn’t crispy at all!

South Beauty

And like last time, we always stop by here for some modern and spicy Sichuan dishes. The Pacific Century branch probably had the most stylish dining room of this chain in Beijing.

You can see more China here:

http://www.finedinin...China/index.php