A Canadian in Beijing: Fine Dining at Din Tai Fung

by Ember Swift on

Sometimes you have to see what all the fuss is about. This restaurant, “Din Tai Fung,” is touted as being one of the “top ten restaurants in the world” and if people are saying that about it then I figure it had better be good. Of course, it could just have a good reputation or good “guanxi” with the New York Times (where the quote is from, 1993). Either way, there was only one way to find out.

When my school mates told me they were heading down to have dinner there and invited me along, I figured it would be the only chance I’d have to check it out. Quite honestly, I don’t really do “fine dining” here in Beijing… or, should I say ever. In fact, I’m more the type that likes to buy bits and pieces at markets and cobble it together to form a delicious meal for pennies a plate. I like cheap and back alley restaurants. I don’t mind the broken down interior if the taste is superb. In fact, the seedier the environment, often the better the food. At least, that’s what I’ve found.

So, when I arrived at this restaurant with my friends and stepped onto the plush carpeting of the gorgeous lobby, was greeted in English and then ushered upstairs into the dining room like it was a theatre event, I knew it was going to be expensive. I just hoped the taste would match the price.

The place was truly beautiful. Pristine, in fact. The bathrooms were all automated and the walls were lined with full length mirrors at all angles. My friend Daisy pointed out that “women like to see what they look like” and I laughed. I suppose everyone likes the option to see themselves from all angles once in awhile (regardless of gender).

There was also a kid’s playroom equipped with brightly coloured toys, comfy couches and activities for them to busy themselves with while parents enjoy their meal. No supervision in there, however, so I suppose it was only for slightly older kids who could be checked in on once in awhile.

The dining room was brightly lit and was more than half-filled with foreign (non-Chinese) faces. My friend Dave had been here before and so he was assigned the job of ordering food. That’s always a little dangerous with Dave as he tends to order too much – way too much – and in this restaurant, everything was priced so high that I couldn’t imagine both the food and the money waste if he ordered more than we could eat. By the look on the face of the waiter as he left our table with order in hand, I could only assume that we were going to have a feast.

And, I was right.

Dishes kept coming. This places specializes in steamed bread dumplings, or baozi. I eat them everyday for breakfast – 4 for 2 kuai – and these came in steam baskets at about 4 for 30 kuai, or fifteen times what I am familiar with paying here. They were tasty, however, and I promised myself I would stop calculating the cost of my meal and just enjoy the flavours. After all, if you think in Canadian dollars, those four baozi were about a dollar a piece, which is hardly much back home.

Eventually, we couldn’t eat anymore and Dave was able to head off the waiter and cancel the remaining three dishes that were on their way. Thankfully! We were all ready to roll away. We had eaten so much that we were starting to look like baozi!

I went downstairs and got some pictures of the open kitchen as well. They’ve positioned the windows so that people can peer in and watch these boazi (and jiaozi etc.) being made fresh by the chefs there. The windows were, of course, steamed up by the steam and so the only place you could actually see inside was through the open window at one end. I found this ironic and I smiled to myself. The chef looking out the window smiled back and motioned that I could get closer if I wanted. I practically leaned into the kitchen to get this shot, much to the amusement of the other chefs.

The lobby was also glittering with awards. This restaurant is all over the world and it has been honoured everywhere, it seems. Beijing is no exception.

In the end, I enjoyed my meal (lots of vegetarian options were available) and just handed over the $130 kuai which represented my portion of a bill that came to over $700 kuai. In Canadian dollars, that’s an average night out (and currently converts to only $18). In Beijing, that was extravagant.

I prefer the streaming baozi fresh from the dusty marketplace down the road from my school, but the experience was worth the expense. I recommend it to anyone breezing through Beijing without the time to seek out the perfect market stall for the perfect snack.

Besides, the menu was in both Chinese and perfect English.

We could easily have been in New York.

(But don’t even get me started about eating in U.S. dollars!)

A Canadian in Beijing: Veggie Restaurant Redemption

by Ember Swift on

I thought it appropriate that I redeem the vegetarian restaurant that was the site of my “bad day” a few weeks ago.

First off, my friend Traci (an American and thirteen-year resident of Beijing) read my blog and had the following to say to me: “everyone has bad China days, Ember, so rest-assured you’re not alone.” That was good to hear. She said that even she has days when she struggles with the cultural differences and when she feels excluded or misunderstood because she’s a foreigner.

Last night, my friend Wei asked me if I was interested in going out for vegetarian food with him and since I feel like my cold is lifting and I’m feeling better, I accepted. He was the one who had originally told me about the “Lotus in Moonlight Vegetarian Restaurant” and I hadn’t realized that he meant we should go to that same one in particular. Of course that makes sense, though, since it was his recommendation in the first place. He picked me up in a taxi and I didn’t notice our destination until I got out of the taxi and saw the same line of bicycles that had been my parking spot just a couple weeks ago.
I didn’t indicate to him that I had been here before, but I did think to myself that it was a good opportunity to redeem the experience and I coached my open mind to remain that way. I’m so glad it complied.

The food was excellent and the service was impeccable. I saw no sign of the previous waitress and I would definitely return to eat there again, even though it was rather pricey.

Wei is Chinese and his English is pretty terrible. His pronunciation is painful and I find him more comprehensible in Chinese than I do in English. When he tried to use his English, I often have to hear what he’s trying to say in Mandarin before I can understand him (or correct him) in English. He and I met at a live music venue the second week I had arrived and he was really helpful in explaining some words to me and writing them down. We became friends and have since spent a bit of time together. When we hang out, it forces me to speak only in Chinese, which is something that is really important for my language development.

He taught me this very valuable expression “dabao” which means “I want it to go.” It’s apparently more colloquial than “na zou” (literally: take to go) and is a request for your food to be packaged up and sent home with you. I used it with the waitress who gave me a huge smile before nodding and returning with the container and a small bag with handles.

I have to admit that I can only spend about two hours in Wei’s company before I feel like my brain is going to stage a mutiny, carve an exit from my skull and then roll off my head and out the door. It’s not his company, of course, but the forced constancy of speaking Chinese that draws that feeling. The mental exhaustion feels physical and it’s a kind of tired that I’ve only experienced when I’ve been in immersion settings in my second or third language. Thankfully, it doesn’t happen to me anymore in French and I will eagerly await the day when it stops happening in Mandarin!

He treated me dinner (which was very sweet) and then I had to take my leave because I could no longer function in a conversation. He was understanding and waved me into a taxi. We’ll likely hang out again in the next couple of weeks. He remarked on my improvement with the language, so he’s a good gauge of my development. We’ll see if he says the same thing to me next time!

Chinese Restaraunt Keeps 143-Year-Old Fire Burning

by Justin Glow on

Qianmen Quanjude, a 143-year-old roast duck restaurant in Beijing, China is closing for renovations, but its oven — said to be burning non-stop since opening day — will remain lit.

“[T]he restaurant has served 115,330,259 ducks in over 140 years of service,” according to China View. “It has hosted dinners for millions of people from all over the world, including former president of the United States George H. Bush, Japan’s former Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu, former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Cuba’s President Fidel Castro.”

The ancient, still-burning embers will be removed from the oven and placed in a vessel that will remain on-site while the renovations take place. After completion, they will be moved back into the oven, and the restaurant service will continue for another few hundred years.

Perhaps we can get Ember Swift, Gadling’s resident Canadian-in-China, to investigate further. Ember?

[via Neatorama]

A Canadian In Beijing: Vegan in China, Part 1

by Ember Swift on

I have had several requests to write about what it’s like to be vegan in China. In the first week, I felt as though my writing would be more of a whine and less informed, less patient and certainly less complete on the subject. Why? Because I was starving!

After all, stepping off the plane in Beijing without having ever had any immersion in this language, you can imagine how I’d find it hard to ascertain where the whole foods were sold, what restaurants were good to eat in, how to order without making a mistake and receiving something I couldn’t (and wouldn’t want to) eat, how to read packages in Chinese, etc. Now, after more than two weeks here, my honest first impression is this:

It sucks to be a vegan in China.

Many of you are probably thinking, “How is that possible? It’s a country of rice, vegetables and tofu?” Well, that’s true, in a way. . .

I could definitely eat rice many times a day and it only costs pennies a bowl (literally: one bowl of rice is 5 mao in the university canteen which equals about $0.05 Canadian.)

I can also order vegetable plates in most restaurants but the food here is exceptionally oily and is always prepared in the same woks as the meat dishes. It’s not unusual to receive a plate of vegetables with the occasional chunk of stray beef from a previously cooked dish. Eggs are also used in everything here. Bits of egg seem to show up in the most unlikely places.

And tofu? It is often prepared in the juices of meat. It is not designed as a meat replacement for the vegetarian diner, but more as an alternate taste and/or texture in an already diverse meal. Many people eat tofu here, but not because they don’t eat meat. It’s simply a common legume-derived product that is part of the Chinese culinary palette.

I have partially been living on snacks like fresh yam chips, all natural compacted fruit snacks, lots of soy milk and sesame snacks. Thanks to some forward thinking on my part too, I had about ten Larabars with me that kept me going during my first week.

In the land of Buddhism, where is the food?

On my fourth day here after eating lots of fresh fruits and vegetables, white rice and some terrifying though apparently vegetarian restaurant dishes that I shudder to re-visit in my mind (and stomach), I decided to make the long and uncharted journey to a vegetarian restaurant just south of the university.

With map in hand, some Chinese currency and a determined appetite, I braved the subway for the first time (hunger motivates!) and then also navigated several unmarked streets and eventually, after about an hour of combined travel and walking, came upon a pair of locked gates. Beyond the gates was my restaurant, Beihe Vegetarian, closed and inaccessible.

The guard at the gates said “bu kaimen” over and over, which only means “not open” and when I asked why, he answered me but I had no idea what he said. I looked at him blankly, blurred by hunger. My vocabulary is growing daily but it’s definitely challenged whenever I ask someone “why” about nearly anything. On day #4, my vocabulary was seriously impaired, not just by the culture shock and unfamiliarity with this language, but also by my empty stomach!

Dejected, I walked slowly back to the subway. It was now 1:30 in the afternoon.

I stopped in a corner store and bought a cold bottle of sweetened green tea. The sugar hit helped. It reignited my commitment to finding a place to eat – my one mission for that day – and so I decided to seek out another location of the same restaurant, this one downtown.

I made my way to the second subway line, got out at the right stop, walked the forty-five minutes or so into the northeast edge of the city core and happily discovered a snack vendor selling fresh peanuts. I ate them ravenously as I continued to search for the street that I needed. Another half an hour of walking and getting lost (though with more of a sense of humour thanks to the peanuts), I found the little street that housed the downtown location of the Bei He Vegetarian Restaurant.

This time, it was open.

It was now 4:30 in the afternoon and I was more than ready for a meal.

I proceeded to have a brilliant lunch that was spontaneously shared with an American woman who was also eating alone. Altogether, the meal cost each of us about $3.50 Canadian.

This was an example of an oasis in a carnivorous desert. At least, that’s how I felt at the time. But, there had to be more options! I refused to have to launch a pilgrimage to a downtown restaurant every time I needed to eat.

That’s where my Aussie friend Sarah came in. She had a Lonely Planet guidebook to Beijing and it actually listed a vegetarian restaurant in Wudaokou, the suburb I live in. She came to visit me last week and together we set out on foot in search of food. Twenty minutes later, I arrived at my new best friend: The Happiness Restaurant.

Oh, what a happy day!

Not only is this restaurant vegetarian, but it’s also egg-free, dairy-free, smoke-free and alcohol-free. Did I mention it’s also delicious? I have now eaten there three times. Last night, they greeted me like I was an extended member of their family. I may just wear path between my house and this restaurant after three months.

Finally, I’ve taken to cooking in my dorm. I bought a cute little pot that has a lid and a bowl that all fit together. I have found that this contraption works as a steamer as well. I can put rice noodles in the bottom of the pot, pour boiling water over them, put veggies in the bowl and place this over the cooking noodles. Then, I can cover it and let it sit for about five minutes and everything is cooked perfectly. I finally bought tofu that isn’t flavoured or smoked, as well, and some almonds and Bragg top off the meal nicely.


Bragg is my travelling companion. I don’t leave home without it. It’s a low-sodium, wheat-free, non-GMO, liquid soy product that is touted as “liquid amino acids.” It’s tasty and lighter than Chinese soy sauce and I’m so glad that I brought a big bottle with me. I hope it lasts me three months!

All in all, please don’t worry. I’m eating. I’m learning. I’m finding more and more options every day. I do believe I will have more to say on this topic and so stay tuned for Part 2. I hear there’s even a Vegetarian Association of Beijing. I’ll be looking into that for sure.

Until then, I’m being innovative.

Riodizio Churrascaria

by Adrienne Wilson on

If my memory serves me correctly, it had been three years since I last pleasured my taste-buds with non-stop meat sliced off the skewer from a Brazilian steakhouse. So to have had the opportunity to samba with well seasoned lamb, prime rib, sirloin, chicken, and all the meat imaginable, I was extremely overjoyed! The only problem was I didn’t have a huge appetite and when you walk into the doors of Riodizio Churrascaria you’re going to want to be very hungry. Having had a large lunch earlier and no plans to swing by Riodizio, I was a little unprepared, but that didn’t stop me from gormandizing for the night.

Green means go and red means halt, but for the most part my coaster was green all night and even when it was red, with a smile I would be offered a warm succulent piece of meat from the skewer. How could I refuse? Yes! With big eyes I said, “yes, yes,” to almost every piece of meat that came around and this was only after I had tackled the salad bar. I knew I was probably way in over my head, but there is something about Brazilian cuisine that has that effect on me. I’ll spare you every greedy detail of my personal feast, but I offer you the same advice as earlier if you plan on going.

Be hungry. The dinner is a flat rate of $40 excluding wine and other beverages to wash it all down.

Riodizio Churrascaria is located at 388 Willis Avenue, Roslyn Heights, NY 11577. Ph. 516.621.4646