Dining in Beijing
Favorite Beijing Dishes
Beijing Roast Duck – Peking Duck
Beijing Roast Duck is the epitome of Beijing cuisine and is well known both at home and abroad. The dish is mostly prized for the thin, crispy skin, with authentic versions of the dish serving mostly the skin and little meat.
Mongolian Hot Pot
Alongside Beijing Roast Duck, Mongolian Hot Pot is another great example of traditional Beijing cooking. Thin slices of various meats are dangled or placed in a boiling pot with various kinds of vegetables until they're done, and then eaten with special sauces and side dishes. This dish is especially favored during the cold season.
Bifengtang Prawns
This dish is prepared by frying prawns in oil until golden red. Then they are cooked with Hong Kong's Bifengtang (wind shelter) restaurant chain's special techniques. This dish is delicious and slightly spicy, with a pungent garlic aroma.
Gong Bao Ji Ding - Palace Chicken Cubes
Gong Bao Ji Ding is a spicy chicken dish with peanuts and other vegetables. For some reason this dish is never the same from one restaurant to another. Perhaps this adds to its appeal, as it is very popular with foreigners.
Tudou Zi - Shredded Potato
This dish is for potato lovers. The potatoes are stir-fried with green peppers and seasoning, and can be served hot or cold.
Imperial Court Food
Imperial court Food is a style of Chinese food that has its origins in the Imperial Palace. It is based on the foods that were served to the Emperor and his court. Now, it has become a major school of Chinese cooking and there are several places where you can sample this unique flavor. Fand Shan in Beihan Park and Ting Li Guan in the Summer palace are the best ones. 150 years ago you would never have been able to eat this stuff, so give it a shot. It is a little expensive, however.
Imperal Official Food and Medicinal Foods
This first type of food is particular to Beijing. In the past, Beijing officials were all very picky about what type of food they ate. The most famous type of Official food is Tan Family Food, which can be had in the Beijing Hotel. This is the preferred food of the Qing Dynasty official Tan Zongling, and was later introduced into restaurants. Another type of food is that which is described in the classic novel Dream of Red Mansions. The author, Cao Xueqin, described a number of dishes in the book and now there are several restaurants which serve this style of dish. The most famous place is the Beijing Grand View Garden Hotel. This hotel is right next to the Beijing's Grand View Garden which is modeled after the garden described in the Dream of Red Mansions Other restaurants featuring this novel type of food are the Jinglun Hotel and Laijinyuxuan Restaurant in Zhongshan park.
There are hundreds of dishes that are medicated with such choice tonic materials as ginseng, deer musk, bear's paw, Chinese wolf berry and soft-shelled turtle, the cream of the crop of Chinese medicine. The "Yang Sheng Zhai" Restaruant of Xiyuan Hotel has the best reputation among such food. Although it has been changed to Sichuan Restaurant, it still offers medicinal foods.
Hotpot
There are basically two kinds of hotpot restaurants in Beijing: mongolian style and Sichuan style. The staple of both types of hotpot is mutton (yang rou). The meat is usually sliced frozen so that it curls up into a tube shape. Then you place the meat into the hotpot, which is a copper pot containing a boiling soup base. After a few seconds the meat is cooked and you dip it into a sesame butter sauce. The verb describing the action of cooking the meat this way is called "shuan."other shuan-ables include beef , frozen tofu, Chinese cabbage , bean sprouts , and glass noodles . Spicy Sichuan hotpot has a soup base which can be described as either superspicy or mildly radioactive, but the pot is often divided into half spicy, half nonspicy soup pots. The soup base for Mongolian style is not spicy, and usually consists of some vegetables and seafood.
Famous Mongolian style hotpot restaurants are Neng Ren Ju at Baitasi, and Dong Lai Shun to the east of Tian'anmen Square. The most well-known Sichuan style hotpot restaurant is Jin Shan Cheng. Of which there are many scattered throughout the city.
Recently there has been an explosion of buffet-style hotpot restaurants. Generally you pay a set price (often around 38 yuan ) for an all-you -can -eat meal. All-you-can-drink beer is included in the price too!