Beijing's Food Pros Take You Beyond the Expat Veil
Too few of us venture beyond the protective bubble of our favorite local Chinese restaurants. It's understandable. Even with a recent proliferation of quality bilingual menus (and websites like City Weekend's) the obstacles to finding and enjoying good Chinese food often seem formidable. So consider this a primer. CW's done the heavy lifting for you, talking to three of the city's foremost food experts, looking at dianping.com until our eyes bled and taste testing far more food than was probably healthy in order to ferret out five of the best Chinese restaurants you should know about, but probably don't. Remarkably, every restaurant we came up with is extremely expat-friendly, so you're now officially out of excuses. It's time to get out of your neighborhood with CW's guide to enjoying some of the best Chinese food Beijing has to offer.
by Amy Lin

Sincerity Restaurant

This restaurant with a view keeps the decor simple and elegant, allowing the exquisite skills of their kitchen to take center stage, creating delectable Shanghainese and Cantonese dishes. "It's all in the preparation," Mr. Dai tells me over lunch, indicating the pickled cucumber scrolls made from a single long strip of crisp green. "Good food should look and taste like itself." The pan-fried shrimp was sliced at the belly to release the flavors then curled back into its natural shape, encasing succulent flesh inside its own crackling shell. The stewed pork, made from specially selected pigs, melted sublimely in the mouth, and the root salad was a rapturous blend of sweet creaminess and crunchy walnut in each bite. Everything we sampled was gastronomic perfection, leaving us convinced the kitchen staff knows how to cook well because they know how to eat well.
Chinese Name: 致真酒家
Add: 5/F, West Tower, LG Twin Towers, 12 Jianguomen Waidajie
Tel: 6567-3366

Huaiyang Cun

With eight locations in the city, this is imperial dining at its finest and most accessible. "I go here quite often," says Wang Zhesong. "The owner genuinely enjoys food, and he does a lot of research on how the dishes are made." Huaiyang cuisine uses a delicate approach built on the inherent characteristics of raw materials. The beer-battered mutton was tender and had plenty of malty flavor with subtle hop notes. Each bite of the chrysanthemum shoots yielded a grassy fragrance reminiscent of summer hillsides and the solitary crab meat ball in broth was rich enough to satisfy with a few bites. The genial staff and generous tables are perfectly suited for leisurely group dining and good conversation. As an added bonus, the range of individual serving-sized dishes, which arrive in dainty covered bowls, presents a opportunity ripe for adventurous ordering.
Chinese Name: 淮阳村
Add: 11 Yangfangdian Lu, 2/F Zhongche Dasha
Tel: 5193-3573

Three Guizhoumen

Ok, we admit it, you've probably heard of this one. And yet too few of you have taken the elevator at Coca Banana up to Guizhou bliss. Which is a shame because it topped Alan Wong's list of favorites: "Restaurants [like Three Guizhoumen] are raising the bar with better design and service. The easier it is to order, the better business will be." The reams of glossy pictures on the menu are indispensable in this case; vegetation is scarce in the Guizhou region so the cuisine uses pickles and chilies for flavor. This makes for some unusual and audacious pairings: the sweet dumplings with pickles were mouthgasmic, the fern root jelly with bacon had a wonderfully addictive chewiness and every dish held dopamine-flooding chili heat. Good, truly exotic-tasting cuisine is a rarity, making this restaurant the Hope Diamond of hip dining.
Chinese name: 三个贵州人 Add: 8 Gongti Xilu, behind Bellagio
Tel: 6551-8517

Qu Yuan

Established in the 1950s, Qu Yuan has updated its classical, banquet-hall d-¦cor with a charming and extensive bilingual menu and foyer waterfall, but the details are a testament to something extraordinary: "This is the best place in the city for Hunan food," says Mr. Dai. Qu Yuan does excellent, no-frills food in ample portions often cooked fast to avoid losing natural flavors. Service is equally expeditious, guaranteeing short transit time from wok to table. The saut-¦ed hot and sour chicken united luscious, free-range meat accented with sweet bell peppers and the peapods tossed with cured meat were at the peak of freshness. The best part is that each plate comes tagged with the name of the dish and chef that made it, so you can request your favorites the next time you go.
Chinese name: 曲园
Add: 48 Zhanlanguan Lu
Tel: 6831-8502

Lei Garden

A perennial favorite on best-of lists for good reason, Lei Garden fills up fast with families and business groups looking for the best upscale Cantonese food in Beijing. The extended dim sum menu on weekends is entirely in Chinese, but there is a sophisticated bilingual menu, and staff members are fluent in Cantonese and English. Despite the absence of rolling carts, the characteristic buzz of enthusiastic chatter is ever-present. "What Chinese cuisine excels at," Mr. Dai emphasizes, "is the art of contradictions." The willow sweet dew dessert melded tapioca, lychee, mango and grapefruit pulp into a Mozartian symphony of sensations. The fried turnip cake and taro balls were creamy sweetness wafting over savory richness. There's plenty to choose from and the only must is a steaming pot of delicate pu-er tea to help digest all that delicious food.
Chinese Name: 利苑
Add: 89 Jinbao Jie, 3/F Jinbao Dasha
Tel: 8522-1212

The Experts

"You eat three meals a day, which gives you three opportunities for enjoyment. Why waste them?"
Dai Aiqun
Food critic and consultant for CCTV

"Order according to the time of day; some ingredients like fish are fresher during lunchtime."
Wang Zhesong
Editor for Food & Wine magazine

"Keep it fun. When the atmosphere is upbeat, food tastes better."
Alan Wong
Owner of Haiku, Hatsune and Kagen

10 More Places For Beijing's Best Chinese Food

Lao Beijing

Bai Hua Ren Jia
百花人家
Way outside the city, this restaurant is a hidden Fengtai gem. Grab lunch here after a hike.
Add: Qingshui Village, 73 Xinanjie (take route G109 from the west sixth ring)
Tel: 6085-5566

Yunnan

Dali
大里
A beautiful courtyard, tasty food and excellent service make Dali our favorite place in the city for a Yunnan fix.
Add: 67 Xiaojingchang Hutong, Gulou Dong Dajie
Tel: 8404-1430

Sichaunese

Chuan Ban
川办
Located in the Sichuan provincial government's offices, Chuan Ban is Beijing's spicy cuisine champ.
Add: 5 Gongyuan Toutiao, Jianguomennei Dajie
Tel: 6512-2277 ext. 6101

Tibetan

Ganglamedo
岗À­梅朵藏式餐厅
A newbie on the Beijing food scene, this place impresses with its classy decor and its epic “Dinner in a Felt Tent” dish.
Add: 38 Maizidian Street, (First floor of the Great Hyatt International Apartment)
Tel: 6592-3159

Hunanese

Yu Lou Dong
玉楼东
Popular with Changsha transplants, don't miss the specialty: Boiled Bullfrog. Yum!
Add: 7 Zhengchangzhuang Dachenglu
Tel: 6867-0155

Huaiyang

Ming Xuan
名轩
On the pricey side, but this place's seafood is out of this world.
Add: 6 Shouti Nanlu (32nd floor of the New Century Hotel)
Tel: 6849-1357

Xinjiang

Xinjiang Fanzhuang
新疆饭庄
It's all your standard Xinjiang favorites, but better (and cleaner). Try the nianchou yogurt.
Add: 1A Chegongzhuang Dajie
(inside Urumuchi's Beijing representative office)
Tel: 6836-2795

Vegetarian

Bodhi Sake
菩提缘素食斋
Housed in a Buddhist temple with outdoor seating and cooking up some of Beijing's best food, Bodhi Sake's vegetarian wizardry is a must taste. Add: 10-16 Heiyaochang Jie
Tel: 6355-7348

Dongbei

Wang Shun Ge
旺顺阁
Had enough of Dongbei Ren? Give that stalwart a pass and check out this spot, a favorite of the capital's Dongbei crowd.
Add: Multiple locations. Try the one at Dongzhimen Waidajie, 2A Xinzhongjie
Tel: 5120-3232

Hubei

Nine-Headed Bird
九头鸟
As you might expect from a place named after a multi-noggined fowl, the food here, though tasty, isn't what you're expecting or what you're used to. Turtle, anyone?
Add: Locations across the city. The one at 1/F, Beihai Hotel, 141 Di An Men Xidajie is most convenient.
Tel: 6651-9001