[Behemoth]

Where to start? First of all if you haven't been there since the Olympics it's probably quite different. If, like A, you haven't been there for 16 years then it is almost completely unrecognizeable. But mostly for the better, or so I've been told.

Here are the places and things I especially enjoyed.

Food:

1) Chinese cooking lessons: Hutong Cuisine
I saw an article about this in Saveur and followed up, with a dumplings and noodles lesson. I wholeheartedly recommend this: Chunyi, the instructor, is very good at clarifying technique beyond the recipes. In fact, I forgot to take my recipes home with me (I'd put them aside to keep them clean) but since everything was explained in terms of ratios and feel, it was easy to reconstruct the dishes. (I posted some jaozi photos on the dinner thread.) Plus you get to hang out in a charming hutong courtyard for four hours. And cook!

2) The Hot Bean Cooperative: a chicken wing and beer joint started by a bunch of slightly goofy but very friendly art students. Down an obscure hutong, marked by a drawing of an astronaut outside the door. Concrete room with walls covered in chalk graffitti of astronauts, furnished with plastic ikea stools, hand drawn menus. This is the face of new hipster China...


The food is basic but very tasty and very very cheap. In particular the spicy grilled wings and the spicy mashed potatoes. I think including beers we ended up paying about 3 euros apiece for a lot of food.

3) Dim Sum:
- Din Tai Fung -- A Taiwanese chain started by a Shanghainese-in-exile, specializing in Shanghai-style dumplings. They have branches all over the place and the best Xiaolongbao anywhere. It's become sort of a tradition to go there in every city we visit where there is one.
- Crystal Jade -- another chain, this time from Singapore. We'd been to the Shanghai branch, which we really liked. The service here is much more formal, and the Dim Sum menu considerably less extensive. Still, it is very good.
- Lei Garden -- this time a Hong Kong chain. The atmosphere is kind of like the Chinese version of the Four Seasons, lots of expense accounts. But so long as you stay away from the abalone and bird's nest not much more expensive than anywhere else. The dim sum menu is in Chinese only, with no pictures, but one of the hostesses spoke very good English, and guided us towards a lot of dishes I would not have otherwise tried. By far the best dim sum I have ever had -- everything was exquisite. My favorite was something called "golden mesh" -- four very delicate dumplings filled with crab, all covered a thin golden mesh made presumaby by drizzling a thin batter into the bottom of the pan and then flipping the whole thing over. Tiny steamed pork ribs with a small amount of fermented black bean, atop some translucent hand made rice noodles. Even the bbq pork buns were light and delicate.

All the above places were about 100 RMB per person, or about 10 euro. Lei Garden a little more, about 150 RMB.

4) Peking Duck:

My favorite was Huajiya Yiyuan - Excellent duck: skin was not the least bit greasy and the meat was moist. Contemporary cooking style, plus they have lots of other stuff on the menu, all very well prepared. Which was good, because one of the people we were travelling with was vegetarian. Again, it ended up being about 100RMB per person, including alcohol, for a massive amount of food. Besides the duck my favorite dishes a very good braised mushroom and bamboo shoots dish, a tripe and tofu dish, an addictive appetizer of roasted peanuts and pork floss, and the best version of gong pao ji ding of the entire trip. (I need to put more vinegar in my version.)

More later...

[mongo_jones]

3) Dim Sum:
- Din Tai Fung -- this is a Taiwanese chain started by a Shanghainese-in-exile, specializing in Shanghai-style dumplings. They have branches all over the place and the best Xiaolongbao anywhere. It't become sort of a tradition to go there in every city we visit where there is one.

if anyone in the u.s wants to try this without going as far as china, they have a branch in the san gabriel valley, just outside l.a. the only branch outside asia, i think.

[hollywood]

3) Dim Sum:
- Din Tai Fung -- this is a Taiwanese chain started by a Shanghainese-in-exile, specializing in Shanghai-style dumplings. They have branches all over the place and the best Xiaolongbao anywhere. It't become sort of a tradition to go there in every city we visit where there is one.

if anyone in the u.s wants to try this without going as far as china, they have a branch in the san gabriel valley, just outside l.a. the only branch outside asia, i think.

Yes, it's on Baldwin in Arcadia. There are however any number of other local restaurants with good dim sum, which provides more variety.

[Behemoth]

Or, now in Sydney. That time, I did take photos:




Two rules I follow in the West and throw away in Asia:

1) Avoid places with pictures on the menus
2) Avoid chains

By the way, if you have a chance to get to China now, do it. It is in heavy transition, so a very interesting place to be. And while the Yuan is still pegged to the Dollar, you can live way beyond your normal means. Embarassingly so.

[hollywood]

Two rules I follow in the West and throw away in Asia:

1) Avoid places with pictures on the menus
2) Avoid chains

These sound like good rules generally. However, in the San Gabriel Valley, there are a multitude of good Chinese restaurants with pictures of food items on menus and walls. And, yes, a few of these are chains.

[hollywood]

Now about art and alcohol....

[Behemoth]

Well, I could write about more food but alcohol is more interesting. We found three excellent bars.

1) Tradition dictates that when we are in a large Asian city, we must spend an evening in the highest bar in said city. This generally means we pay absurd (read: normal Western) prices for reliably shitty cocktails. A successful strategy is to order whisky, or gin and tonic, as it is hard to screw these up. For the price, one gets to feel rather posh, and enjoy a view that is usually very inspiring, albeit possibly vertigo inducing.

In Beijing, this would be the bar at the Park Hyatt. As with most buildings in the CBD area, no cabby knows where this is. It is across from the China World Hotel, right before the 4th ring road. If you look up it is the tall building with the square in the middle. Having a sign that says "park hyatt" on it would be much too easy, of course. anyway, this is what it looks like:

Actually, to their credit the cocktails here were surprisingly good.

2) Now that we have posh out of the system, I would recommend an evening at Reef Bar, on NanLuoGuXiang.
Let's be clear: 1) it is a total dive and 2) being as it is in a Hutong, if you want a bathroom you will have to use the public squat toilet. Or, my strategy is to just drink things that contain a high alcohol to liquid ratio. But the music is excellent, the owners are funny and cool, and the clientele is definitely fun to watch.

3) And, finally, the place we really fell in love with: Fu Cafe.

Where else can you play Go while drinking warm chinese yellow wine with dried plums? Or end the evening sharing shots of Erguotou with the owner? Or get talking about art with said owner, liking the stuff he shows you, coming back the next day (yes, sober) to go through piles and piles of his work in ink on linen and paper (paper also made by him) and buying three of them to take home?

(A picture of me getting my ass handed to me in Go:)

[The Scream]

1) Chinese cooking lessons: Hutong Cuisine
I saw an article about this in Saveur and followed up, with a dumplings and noodles lesson. I wholeheartedly recommend this: Chunyi, the instructor, is very good at clarifying technique beyond the recipes. In fact, I forgot to take my recipes home with me (I'd put them aside to keep them clean) but since everything was explained in terms of ratios and feel, it was easy to reconstruct the dishes. (I posted some jaozi photos on the dinner thread.) Plus you get to hang out in a charming hutong courtyard for four hours. And cook!

I have no plans (or real urge) to go to China, but if I did I would want to take this class.

[Sneakeater]

This is such great stuff, Behemoth.

[g.johnson]

(A picture of me getting my ass handed to me in Go:)

9x9 is for wimps anyway.

[Behemoth]

Was already late. The people at the table with us didn't know the game, so it was sort of a demo.

[Behemoth]

I'm kind of beat tonight but I do want to give a shout out to the Beijing Hikers. For 300 yuan they get you there, feed you snacks, give you water, take you to the least bad squat toilet in the region, hire a local to pay off the farmer so you can cut through his field, find a great place for lunch and include that in the price too...plus the person who leads front of the hike shows up in a long-sleeved frilly polyester blouse, polyester sequined pants and normal sneakers on the hottest day of the year, and proceeds to soundly kick your pathetic properly hiking-outfitted western ass.

It's a mix of Chinese locals, visitors and expats. They pick different sites each week, at different difficulty levels. We were lucky enough to be able to go along on a hike to the Haunghacheng section of the Great Wall.


Since this is a food website, I really have to mention the meal. It was one of the few places where my tastes would overlap with those of the typical Chowhounder in China. They took us to a restaurant at the foot of the hike, open air on the river. They food was very simple and basic, really geared to the locals and local budgets. All but two dishes vegetarian. It was outstanding. In particular, the vegetable dishes were really lovely with one or two new ones (for me) --deep fried leaves of the sichuan pepper tree? Otherwise just basic stuff - fish flavor eggplant, egg with tomato, a potato and squash stew, sauteed water spinach, cuke salad...Just really nice quality, cooked with care, cheap simply because the ingredients themselves are naturally inexpensive.

They are apparently known in the region for freshwater fish. They split it down the belly and flatten it, rub a spice paste on it, and cook it slowly over smoke. The skin ends up being crispy, bacon-y and absolutely lovely. Actually, it reminded me very much of the Iraqi dish "masqouf" (which coincidentally shows up this week in the NYtimes food section. )

The beer was included as well.

[Behemoth]

1) Morning water calligraphy practice, Temple of Heaven.
2) Prayer wheel, Lama temple.

[hollywood]

Great photos.

[The Scream]

Love the water calligraphy.