Lounging Towards Perfection

When a restaurant lists the calorie content of its food on the menu, provides hairstyling products in its bathroom, and asks how “vogue” it is on its customer survey, it’s a sure bet that there’s now yet another restaurant stalking Beijing’s moneyed swish set. That said, even for the eminently unswishy among us there’s a lot to love here. The interior is a testament to superb restaurant design: open and airy in the day, swanky and intimate in the evening. The hybrid Western-Chinese menu—printed on a fun yet wholly impractical scroll—is happily free of disappointments, with a regrettably small portion of cod in a creamy soup of pumpkin (¥28), an artfully presented gongbao jiding (in our defense, ordered on our waitress’s recommendation; ¥48), and an exquisitely smooth peanut and chocolate flavored bingsha (¥30) serving as highlights. Chilly bathrooms and a couple of inexplicable service delays detracted somewhat from the experience, but were, fortunately, the only off notes in a harmonious evening of dining.
-Matt Schrader