BEIJING CUISINE                                                      

Beijing Roast Duck

    Beijing Roast Duck dates back to the Ming Dynasty, about 600 years ago. The two famous Beijing Roast Duck restaurants in Beijing are Bianyifang (Shop of Convenience and Pleasure) and Quanjude (Complete Collection of Virtues), both having a history of 400 years. The original Bianyifang was in the Rice Market Hutong while the original Quanjude was in the Meat Market, both in the southern part of the city. Now they both have many branches. Two main branches of the Bianyifang are located at Qianmen (Front Gate) Street and at Chongwenmen, while two of the largest branches of Quanjude are at Hepingmen (Peace Gate) and Wangfujing.

    Almost every part of the duck (except the feathers) can be made into hot or cold dishes, (for example, the wings, webs, tongue, heart and liver). This is called the “Complete Duck Feast”. The duck head is cut in half and served on a small plate with the tongue. The head is usually for the guest of honor, but if you cannot face it you do not have to eat it. The bones of the duck are made into soup which is served near the end of the feast.

Court Cuisine

    Court Cuisine originates from the imperial kitchen which cooked food for the emperor and his family. After the fall of the Qing Dynasty, some chefs from the imperial kitchen opened restaurants in the capital to introduce the special food once only eaten by the imperial family.

    Fangshan (Imperial-style) Restaurant sits on the island in Beihai Park in a traditional courtyard facing the lake. Apart from delicious dishes meticulously prepared with rare and expensive foodstuffs such as birds nests and sharks fins, the restaurant is also known for its pastries, including pea-flour cakes, kidney bean-flour rolls, miniature corn buns and sesame seed buns with chopped meat filling.

    A newly-opened branch of restaurant of Fangshan style, Yushan Restaurant, is located a few hundred yards to the west of the north gate of the Temple of Heaven in the southern part of the city. Tingliguan (Hall for Listening to the Orioles) Restaurant, in the Summer Palace, serves more than 300 dishes and pastries from the Qing and Ming imperial recipes. The “All-fish Feast” is a specialty of the restaurant. The fish is caught from the Kunming Lake and cooked in a unique way. When the fish is served on the table, its mouth is still opening and closing and its gills flapping. Diners should not be frightened; it is falsely alive. The secret lies in keeping the nerve of the fish intact.

Tan Family Food

    Famed as a home-style cooking, the Tan Family food is liked by both southerners and northerners who eat different staple foods. The most popular dishes include the Steamed Chicken with Mushrooms and Duck with Crab Meat.

Mongolian Hot-pot

    The hot-pot is a traditional brass pot with a wide outer rim around a chimney and a charcoal-burner underneath. Water is heated to boiling point in the rim, and the diners dip thin slices of raw meat in the water, where the meat cooks quickly. The cooked slices are then dipped in to a sauce. The meat can be anything, from lamb, veal, pork, chicken, fish to prawn. There are vegetables, bean noodles, mushrooms and bean curd to be boiled in the rim as well. The sauce is prepared personally by the diner by selecting from a few dozen kinds to suit his/her own taste. You may want it hot, sweet, or salty. People usually do not eat rice when they have Mongolian Hot-pot. The traditional food to accompany the hot-pot is buns or noodles.

    Nowadays, some restaurants provide each diner a small hot-pot with solid-alcohol fuel. They no longer look like the traditional ones but are more hygienic. Some people still prefer the traditional ones because they think it gives a greater atmosphere of “gathering together”

Barbecued Meat

    Barbecued Meat is a Manchu food which has become very popular in Beijing. Meat, mainly beef or mutton, is cut into thin strips or slices, and then soaked in a mixture of soy sauce, crushed ginger, wine, shrimp paste, sesame seed paste, rice vinegar and chopped coriander. The meat is then barbecued over a highly-heated grill before it is served.

    The most famous restaurants of barbecued meat are Kaorouji (Barbecued Meat Quarter) which was opened in 1848 and is located on the bank of Shishahai Lake north of Beihai Park, and Kaorouyuan (Barbecued Meat Garden) which is also over a century old and is near Xuanwumen in the southwestern part of the city. Nowadays, there are many barbecued meat restaurants in the streets, but most of them are Korean ones.