Fresh eats from Beijing & beyond
“Hitting the sesame paste” (da majiang 打麻酱) is what we Beijingers say when we go and buy sesame paste. We also hit our soy sauce, vinegar, oil, and even sometimes the hard liquor. No, we’re not abusive toward our condiments; just resourceful and unwilling to waste a single container. The mark of an old Beijinger [...]
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.
Filled with haw berry and kumquat jam, this pie is tart, sweet, and citrus-y, matching wonderfully well with a fragrant almond crust. As haw berries are so very representative of Beijing, I’ve decided to call this a hawberry Beijing pie.
I had been looking for China-grown Meyer lemons everywhere, ever since I found out that they originated from China. But while I saw imported lemons (your typical pointy yellow specimens) at most larger fruit stalls and markets, the local Meyer was nowhere to be found. Then one day I found them right in my neighborhood…
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.
Good Thai restaurants are few and far between in Beijing, which I suppose is only fair, given how far we are from limes and mangoes and galangal. Most Thai restaurants here are operated by Chinese staff and serve what they bill as “Thai flavor” food. So what a surprise when Patara comes along, with not only chefs transplanted from Thailand but also special ingredients like galangal and lemongrass…
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