Chow/HO-down at Beijing Banquet at Chili House, Inner Richmond (SF)- 8/17 (W) 11:30am
Anyone interested in a mid-week Beijing lunch banquet prepared by Chef Tong Gang Wang at Chili House? This is the 14 course ‘imperial’ style banquet profiled by Jonathan Kauffman back in March. We need a minimum of 8 for a quorum. $45 a head + tax/ drinks/ tips. They need a three day advance notification to order the ingredients. So if you are interested, please let me know by tomorrow, Sunday 7pm.
Please reply to this thread or reply to the Yahoo Chowdown posts.
Jon Kauffman’s profile of the banquet, mentioned above:
We got 6. 2 more and I can go ahead and make the reservation.
Note for everyone that because we reserve by the head, the restaurant will still charge for no-shows. So if we get a big enough group for a table, we’ll need everyone to pay for their share of the meal in advance to avoid no-shows. Please let me know if you aren’t comfortable with that arrangement. Thanks!
I just sent you a PM, but to follow up, are you including me in the headcount? Sorry I missed the date on the original post, didn’t read carefully enough!
No before. Yes now. 9 including Charlie. I couldn’t count.
T. N. +1
P. W.
T. M.
P. P. +1
K. M.
C. A.
Sck
Table booked under my last name wed 1130am. I will contact you via email offline. 19 courses apparently. Jennifer from Chili House went through the list of courses but I lost count how many of which after a while. But I remember she said 6 cold appetizers before the pumpkin soup in the coconut shell.
If anyone else is interested, they said we can still add people tomorrow if needed. We can’t add people on the same day because they won’t have enough coconuts for everyone if we add people that day.
Curious as to why you choose to do this at lunch time. I’d be interested but it seems like more than I like to take on at lunch time. An event this significant seems worth devoting a dinnertime to.
I can’t really organize dinners unless people enjoy dining with screaming kids and me screaming with them…!
There are a few folks who have expressed interest in doing this in the evening and I haven’t had a chance to reply. You all should absolutely do an evening round if there is enough interest.
Reading up on Imperial cuisine before eating there. Some background on Wikipedia here and an NPR article here. If we think 19 courses at Chili House are elaborate, try the $54,000 268 courses meal in the NPR article over a year!
Jennifer from Chili House indicated that the chef used to work at the State Guesthouse/ 国宾馆 (The article mentioned the chef worked at Beijing Hotel, a different place, though a fine hotel) where visiting foreign dignitaries and and provincial government officials stay. I see about 3, 4 dishes on the Chili House Banquet menu in the State Guesthouse menu.
I’m looking forward to trying the banquet style meal, though it seems like my research has lead to the Chili House ad following me around the internet. It’s not listed as a dish on their website, but reviews have all had dong po, which I hope makes a guest appearance.
Wish I had been more diligent with my internetting this week, as I would have definitely joined… if anyone is interested in a round 2, please count me in!
