Finding the equipment top chefs depend on
If you've tried to buy a soufflé bowl, cheese grater or measuring spoons recently, you know how frustrating home-cooking can be in Beijing. Thankfully, life has just gotten easier, thanks to newly-opened Pantry Magic. "There is a market need for high-quality kitchenware," explains General Manager Michael Kirchhoff. "In fact," he added, "we should have gotten here earlier!" Sigh...if only.

Nobody knows this frustration better than the chefs who have had to adapt to Chinese kitchens. A few in Beijing have disregarded the physical limits and taken matters into their own hands. At ten-year-old Taj Pavilion, special Tandoor ovens were flown in from India to enable the creation of their famous naan, roti and Tandoori dishes. These ovens are unlike anything in China: their mud combines powdered rice husks and wheat stalks with clay of a certain degree of iron ore content, to conduct and withstand heat high enough to cook certain Indian dishes. The Tree, known city-wide for its pizzas, couldn't possibly maintain its reputation without the now-famous home-made oven, built up brick by brick by the owner, Patrick. He explained that it's taken years of experience making these ovens-first learned from an Italian friend at The Hidden Tree way back in 1996-to get the formula just right.

Blu Lobster boasts extreme high-end, high-flying dining-none of which would be possible without techniques and tools beyond most people's imaginations. Chef McKenna, who deftly manipulates an assortment of gizmos, has recently started using China’s very first “gastrovac”. A marriage between engineering geekery and culinary crockery, the appliance creates a vacuum at a low atmosphere, that, in the Chef's words, "will absorb all the flavors and release none, so it loses no moisture."

For the time being, we aren't all able to airlift the best Tandoori ovens, hand-craft brick ovens or purchase a one-of-a-kind gastrovac. Nevertheless, with silicon bake-ware, cast iron cookware, fondue sets and yes, even soufflé bowls now available at Pantry Magic, we can each play at top chef, in private. You may still be frustrated-but now, you can only blame yourself.

Manuela Zoninsein