Fresh eats from Beijing & beyond
It isn’t often that I’m surprised with a trio of Beijing snacks I’ve never tried before. But the Longfusi Snack Shop (隆福寺小吃店 Longfusi Xiaochi Dian) lives up to its reputation as one of the best places to sample traditional Beijing foods, with everything from flash-boiled tripe (baodu) to more kinds of fried treats than anyone can reasonably eat in a day. Here’s a very small sample:
Hawberries & Kumquats is overwhelmed with moving house and will be taking a short break. (The complexity of apartment hunting in Beijing could be an entire blog subject.) In the meantime, here are a few tidbits to mull over, and I’ll be back in a week or two.
I’ve been a fan of Jiangxi food since visiting Nanchang Fandian (南昌饭店), the restaurant run by Nanchang (the provincial capital) government’s Beijing representative office. I had heard that Poyanghu Dajiulou, named for a famous lake in Jiangxi, was even better, but unfortunately, it took me nearly two years to come here – anything in Haidian is not exactly convenient for we city dwellers. I’m already regretting the wait.
Ordos, in central Inner Mongolia, is perhaps one of the more surreal places in China one could visit. It’s known for, among other things, vast coal reserves and mines, the mausoleum of Genghis Khan, a new, expensive, and completely uninhabited ghost city, a renewable energy park totalling some 11,900 megawatts of power, and a contemporary art & architecture complex funded by a dairy king. And it’s all in the desert, in the middle of nowhere.
In its own way, the restaurant run by the Ordos government’s representative office in Beijing is no less surreal, tucked inside a 1980s-style apartment complex. After walking through the derelict corridors of the Ordos guesthouse, we found ourselves in a cluttered courtyard, lined with not one but eight yurts.
Dianke Dianlai might be my favorite new Yunnan restaurant, always excepting those unshakeable classics Yunteng Shifu and Baoqin Daiwei of course. The chefs are from Yunnan, and so is the owner – a decided rarity in Beijing. The food is creative and modern while staying true to the province’s bold, sassy spice melangé. It even manages to capture some of the diversity of Yunnan food – with 24 different ethnic groups, there’s perhaps as much variety here as in a small country. The innovations, like touches of rosemary and thyme, are subtle; everything works together.
No, Wushan is not a master chef who works out of his hutong kitchen, luring young Beijingers in the know to his grubby yet charming hidden restaurant¹. Straddling the Yangtze River, Wushan is the eastern gateway to Chongqing. And in Beijing, Wushan is associated with Chongqing-style roast fish, and Wushan Roasts the Entire Fish is the literally translated English name of an extremely popular local restaurant chain, Wushan Kao Quanyu (巫山烤全鱼).
It may not look very fancy, but this slice of apple-walnut cake (RMB 28) from the South German Bakery was a little piece of heaven: rich, nutty, stuffed with apples, and most importantly, moist with rum. I suppose that’s German pastry for you: simple, homey, and delicious. The bakery also many other worthy treats, including [...]
I could never make sense of the North Korean restaurant Pyongyang Haitanghua Cold Noodles. It didn’t seem to fit with any of the images I had of North Korea: reclusive, Communist, impoverished, frozen by famine, obsessively loyal to the Great Leader. Yet here they were, barbecuing oh-so-expensive cuts of beef and pork and serving up [...]
I’m always pleased to discover a new Guizhou restaurant here. There aren’t that many, and the number of really excellent ones you can count on one hand. Which is why it’s so nice that Jiaxiulou Yuan (甲秀楼缘) is worth going back to.
One of my favorite Yunnan restaurants is Bao Qin Dai Wei (宝琴傣味), run by a Dai minority family, with Dai chefs and Dai waitstaff. Very nearly as good is its neighbor, two doors down, Golden Peacock (Jin Kongque 金孔雀), operated by another Dai family. Related to the Thai, the Dai people live in the Xishuangbanna region of Yunnan province, on the border with Myanmar and Laos. Their food owes more to Southeast Asia than China: lemongrass, papaya, limes, bananas, and pineapples all make frequent appearances, mellowing the more assertive spicy and sour flavors in Dai cookery.
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