I’d last visited Beijing 8 years ago. In China time, that’s a lifetime. My wife and I are totally enjoying the city and already planning a return trip for next year.
Landed Thursday afternoon. First restaurant of the trip had a glassed in noodle/dumpling/steamer display kitchen upon entry, a promising sign indeed.
No English signage on the building facade or on the menu. Menu’s with English captions and pictures by each item with item number. Write your item numbers on the order sheet, your server punches into her handheld right at your table side. Quite user friendly.
Lightly seasoned pea sprouts. Beautiful, tasty and healthy.
A delicious and fun start to the trip. The entire FOH staff heartily belt out the welcoming greeting to each arriving party. The staff all wear the requisite ear/mouth piece, but seem to find it quicker to just shout to each other. A bit jarring at first, but becomes totally appropriate for this hustling bustling restaurant.
After our cultural interlude, we retreated to the relative calm and quiet of a nearby Hutong. When my Hong Kong buddy and I strolled through a Beijing Hutong years ago, most of the residents openly stared at us. We’re both Chinese, but by dress and mannerisms obviously non locals. They’ve since gotten used to outsiders.
This morning as we explored, I spied some activity in a dim cubbyhole by the road. A man was doing something on a large hot plate, interesting.
Turns out this shop was turning out Shao Bing, it as my friend calls them, Chinese hamburger. The fresh bing had just the right crisp and a faint yeasty sourdough flavor. So good with the simple chopped beef filling. No sauce needed.
After this less than stellar sampling we enjoyed a real treat, steamed milk. Wife had hers plain, me topped with mango. Deliciously creamy with a slight sour yogurt taste. Addictive.
The filling was only a bit of soup. I had to dump the skin on my local friend’s instruction. I snuck a couple of bites first, skin was edible but we had bigger fish to fry.
I will alway remember that first bite. Will be chasing that the rest of my life.
Chicken with cashews. Very tasty tender chicken. I complimented the chicken. Later, my wife whispered to me that my dining companions were deriding this as a dish for foreigner taste. Sigh.
A fun dish. Stir fried lamb served with sesame rolls and condiments. Split open and scoop out the fluff, stuff with the lamb and condiments. The lamb was just delicious all by its lonesome, thank you.
Thanks the write up. Great meal, very beautiful duck, skin was so perfect!
One thing I noticed: this place tends to make dishes of “mono” ingredient. Example, duck web, pea sprouts, pig trotter, meatball etc. Meatball is just meatball, not meatball with vegetables. It shows their confidence and unnecessary stuff shouldn’t be there. I like it.
Woke up bright and early Saturday, surprisingly unhungover. A very nice stroll checking out the ‘hood around our hotel. Love mingling with the locals as they go about their life.
Beijing has morphed into a beautiful city with many parks and trees. Public toilets all over, each unit (wo)manned by its own dedicated sanitation engineer. An army of sweepers pick up any litter almost before it hits the ground.
Persimmon trees line the street by the diplomat residence compound.
A food that I’ve seen often on YouTube videos. Crepe, egg, youtiao, pickled veg and sauce. Can’t GOOGLE the name but the best USD$1 ever spent. Very delicious.
An interesting Beijing (?) dish. Round You tiao shaped like onion rings with a pickled vegetable. The custom is to take a bite of yt and veg, chased down with the slightly sour Leftover water from tofu making. Interesting, but not particularly delicious.
I stand corrected. That was black beef tripe, not lamb.
We had hot pot for our final dinner in Beijing. A comfortable spot with well spaced tables and private rooms. Service was very accommodating, our server even stopped us from ordering too much, our SOP. As is common in China, this restaurant had “seat covers” which they slipped over your seat back to protect your coat and/or handbag.
Each table automatically gets the house basics. Frozen tofu, pickled sweet garlic, boiled peanuts, napa cabbage and pickled daikon. The garlic was good with bites of meat.
Of course, we had a plate of the black beef tripe. It comes raw, we just shabu shabu’d it in the hot broth for < 10 seconds. The tripe was barely warm, let alone cooked through. The texture was snappy with a good light crunch. Very tasty.
A friendly gentleman was BBQ’ing Pig’s Trotters and some unidentifiable goodies in a closet size takeout. My wife had to have his Lamb Brain, creamy and delicious. Fun eating on the side of the busy thoroughfare, enjoying the warm evening and the local scene.
Great! We wanted to try jianbing in Manhattan, but one place that served them had gone out of business, and another was closed when we got there. Then, on our last day, when we were getting ready to leave, we saw that a place around the corner from our hotel served them!! But now I’ll aim for M&Y Savor in Paris.
