April is Gourmet Month!
Welcome to City Weekend's Gourmet Month!
This is a food festival that runs from April 10 to 30 2008. The purpose of Gourmet Month is to celebrate the Spring season by giving our fabulous readers, You, a chance to try out the top restaurants in Beijing -- all at a ridiculously reduced price!
- Click Here for the list of participating restaurants, their menu, price and reservation contact info!
Swing by any of these restaurants from April 10 until April 30 and enjoy specially priced menus. Book in advance because they're popular! Just simply call the restaurant and tell them you want to take part in City Weekend's Gourmet Month special menu, select your date & time (remember only between April 10 to 30), and you're done!
Reservations for Gourmet Month can be taken by each participating restaurant starting March 25th all the way until April 29th
By dining at Gourmet Month, you're eligible to eat again for FREE
- Click Here for instructions to the Gourmet Month Contest! The best answers will win a voucher valued at RMB200 to one of our participating Gourmet Month restaurants, which you can use during or after Gourmet Month!
Bon Appetit!
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I had the Gourmet Month special at the Taj Pavilion last night and was incredibly impressed. The restaurant serves the best Indian food I've had in China, and the 11 dishes on the set menu really show off how much the chefs there can do. The hara bara kebab, a deep fried combination of mashed vegetables, was really yummy. The marinated chicken pahadi tikka was incredibly moist and tender, as was the lamb dish (I forgot the name!). The naan was soft, with a delicious flavor. The gulab jamun for dessert was kind of like a donut hole soaked in sugar syrup, but very tasty and small enough to eat after the feast I had just eaten. Great value for money, and I certainly plan on going again before the end of Gourmet Month.
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Sambal Urban was truly a delight and went beyond my expectations. The Vietnamese roll with prawns were fresh and bright, with a firm texture. The herb/mango rolls were very fragrant and strong, opening the senses and palate for the following dishes. The samosa/spring rolls were fairly balanced, not too heavy, and contrasted with the first dish by bringing the flavors back down. The Satay chicken/beef used a delightful homemade satay. The beef rending was rich and heavy, but not overbearing. It had a good balance of spiciness. The kapitan Chicken nyonya curry chicken was absolutely divine, using extremely tender chicken in a perfectly-prepared sauce. As a fairly ‘lazy’ eater, I really appreciated that the prawns were pre-shelled. The Squid Sambal was chewy, spicy but not obnoxious. It really brought out a vivid pepper taste. The 4-sided bean w/ cashew nut sauce was a bit peculiar for me, as it was served raw with a sauce covering it. Nevertheless it was a unique taste, worth a try. Finally, the desserts that they served that night were a little piece of heaven! At a seating of two, we were served two different desserts, a hot, sweet coconut milk soup with warm jumbo tapioca, and taro and sweet potato chunks. That was pleasant and very satisfying. The other desert was a cold bowl of tapioca/gelatin overturned on top of a generous amount of maple syrup and submerged in coconut milk. The maple syrup was an absolute surprise and really made the whole meal memorable.
At 99 rmb per person, this is an astounding deal! The dishes keep on coming, and you won’t need the dishes to be large to get full!
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Brasserie Flo’s dining experience was one of consistent excellence in the standard that is only Brasserie Flo. I started off with the French onion soup which had fantastic cheese. The onion taste was not overbearing at all but was instead subtle and allows for the cheese to take the lead role in this starter. It was really a meal in itself, very hardy. Next up was the Escargot, which was extremely supple, moist and falls apart in your mouth. It was drenched in the most addicting molten butter. I was pretty full after the second course, but then the fish came. First it was terrifically presented, and was extremely moist in texture. The base sauce a wonderful compliment to the fleshy fish. For dessert, I had the crème brulee, which was served as a cold dish. The sugar crust was thin and the crème was thick, a little on the heavy side. Still its crème brulee, not the best that I’ve had but overall the meal was really very satisfying and a wonderful value at 149 per person!
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The Bar & Grill at the Regent Hotel was a superb dining experience. Nothing fell short of the high standards expected at a 5-star hotel restaurant. We started off with a uniquely displayed appetizer of greens, asparagus and artichokes in vinaigrette. I won’t ruin the suspense to describe the way they presented the salad, but it was a great start. The portions were more than just generous. It is the size of a large salad you would have as your full lunch meal. The taste was fresh and full, and literally was an ‘appetizer’. Next followed the soup, which was a concoction I had never tried before. The smell of sweet lobster with herbs is immediately distinctive as the course is presented to you. (think of a large martini glass filled with opaque orange soup and a large amount of thick-orange foam). The foam is light in texture, offsetting the rich flavour of the soup, which is sweet in smell but a pleasant sour taste. The lobster was fleshy and the taste was muted. This plays off the savory and zesty soup. For the main course, we were presented with a very fragrant, fresh-off-the-grill steak with a battered-oxtail placed on top of it. All of this is on a bed of mashed potatoes and assorted vegetables. I must admit, the steak is definitely one of the best and most memorable steaks I’ve had in the four years I’ve been in Beijing. When steaks are done well, they are fantastic, and the Regent knows how to make a steak. It doesn’t disappoint. They have the best choice cuts and grill it to perfection. The oxtail too was a wonderfully moist delight, which accentuated the fried batter around it. Finally for dessert, the presentation was highly stylized. The mint ice cream is home-made, extremely fresh and natural. The chocolate tart is used with a dark, bitter chocolate, which is offset by the sweetness of the fruit and ice cream. One point was the fried-chocolate decoration that went with the mint ice cream. It had a burnt oil/plastic taste to it that was very hard to wash down. Stay away from that one piece until they can prefect it! Other than that, and especially the steak, it was a fantastic experience and what fine gourmet dining is all about! I hope The Bar & Grill makes it onto the City Weekend Readers’ Choice Awards this year because it deserves it!
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The Rumi restaurant is authentic Middleestate cuisine.The food is very delicious.They have good drinks,for example yongurt and flower tea.If you want to try Middleestate food,you must go to Rumi.Set menu RMB99.Reasonable Price.
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Mare brings great value to its RMB149 Gourmet Month set menu. I honestly believe the Mare tapas to be better than the standard beer-assisted fare I found in Granada, Spain. The entrees—grilled beef tournedos with truffle sauce, sea bass with olives and vegetable sauce, roast duck served with pineapple -- are well-prepared and well worth the wait. Mare is a classy restaurant; you can’t do better for the set-menu money.
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CRU Steakhouse in the five-star Marriott hotel offers a Gourmet Month set menu that won’t leave you hungry. After working through the salad, you will be bombarded with an amplitude of honey-mustard prawns and tasty chicken thighs. Cheesecake lovers will enjoy the decadent New York style cheesecake with spiced caramelized pineapple and its sorbet. If you find the RMB249 price tag a little expensive, you certainly can’t afford the set-menu items after Gourmet Month. Each dish made me remember western-sized servings.
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Hatsune is “bringin’ the goods” with their contribution to Gourmet Month. They understand gourmet charm but have a blue-collar plentitude infused into their ample selections. For 150 quai per person you can‘t expect more than their assorted tastes of everything Japanese done right. The sliced sirloin and enoki mushroom rolls with shaved yuzu are to die for; in fact, all set-menu offerings fill out the waistband gracefully. So if you haven’t visited Hatsune before, give their Gourmet Month menu a try; if you have been there, give their Gourmet Month menu a try. You won’t be disappointed.
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Mexican Wave’s contribution to Gourmet is good value for the money, considering savings of about 30 percent off the regularly-priced menu items. When it comes to the two of four entrée choices allowed, I recommend going for the Tostada with the Carne Asada (thinly-sliced grilled steak) filling. For desert, the Death by Chocolate option doesn’t misrepresent its promise of cloying excess. A fine minstrel named Chris Decena performs nightly 7-9, completing a breezy-warm ambience.
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Having heard all the rave reviews regarding Brasserie Flo, I was no doubt excited to try out their special menu. Their mushroom soup was a nice change from the traditionally creamy versions I'm accustomed to, and was instead less rich (and filling!) though still full of flavor--a good thing since there was more to come. The arugula salad combined with tomatoes, walnut dressing and Felino salami, provided our tongues with an exciting and impressive combination of flavors, making each bite feel like a new experience. Next, was the char-grilled beef tenderloin (medium-rare), which was both amazingly tender and moist, making the provided gravy completely unnecessary (Note: it came with french fries not sauteed vegetables). Rounding out the meal, was the creme brulee, a tad disappointing due to the thin crust but still rich, creamy and thoroughly satisfying.
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The menu at Caffe Marco is a seafood lover's dream. The triology of citron vodka marinated gavlox was absolutely divine, featuring the freshest salmon tartar and the most delicious mouthful of saffron sour cream I've ever tasted. The seafood chowder was equally impressive, rich but not too creamy and filled with various bites of seafood. The beets, while unexpected, were a very nice touch--something I would never had thought of. The pan seared river trout was a bit on the plain side, but following the two rich starters, it was a nice change. The potato dumplings (in essence, mashed potatoes) were also very well done and gone within minutes. As for the dessert, while the lemon crepes were good, it was the wild berry parfait that took the cake. Presented in a tiny shot glass, the available spoon was too large for the glass. However, as it was so good, we quickly threw politeness to the wind and flipped the spoon over, digging the smooth dessert out with the handle. And believe me, you will too. As an added note, the service here is incredible and is comparable to what you would expect in any high-class restaurant. Definately worth it.
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You can bet that when the opportunity to eat at Beijing's best French restaurant presented itself, I muscled competitors out of the way. Jaan, in the Raffles Hotel, opened with a lot of fanfare almost two years ago. It's a strange little place, situated to one side of the same arched foyer with the famed Writer's Bar, but comfortable. The food was excellent, highlighted by very tasty Wagyu beef parmentier. I stole a few bites from my dining partner's plate of slow-cooked cod--it's fantastic. The Raffles is where the notables stay when they're in town and there is a very good reason for that. It's top notch, the kind of class and service that gestates in the womb of history. It can't be bought at any price.
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The meal I had at Paper was incredible. Each of the 11 courses was delectable. RMB149 for a 11-course banquet at what is perhaps Beijing's premiere contemporary Chinese restaurant is a great price. The decor, as you likely know, is all white and minimal, and there's an i-Pod docking station if you want to play your own tunes.
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Had the menu at Hatsune, when we saw everything was tiny, we thought that was it, but it kept coming and coming and by the end of the meal, we were stuffed. So excellent and looking forward to the next one! Well done CW Team!
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I tried the gourmet month special set dinner last night and had an incredible experience! Set menu makes this place much more affordable and even includes a selection! Although portions were small, I left feeling very full and satisfied. The food quality is very high and atmostphere inside is really beautiful. The drunken chicken was really unique, the hot and sour soup was delicious and so were the shrimps! For dessert, I tried the sticky rice balls filled with chocolate which were also amazing. Overall, a great meal and I'm definitely recommending this place to my friends!