Beijing Roast Duck

Beijing Roast duck is thought to be one of the most delicious dishes all over the world; most visitors coming to Beijing will never forget to have a try.

The two famous Restaurant that serve Beijing Roast Duck are Bianyifang Roast Duck Restaurant and Quanjude Roast Duck Restaurant, both of which have a history of over one hundred years. They represent two different schools of roasting duck. Bianyifang, founded in 1855, makes use of a close oven and straw as the fuel, which wont make flames go directly onto the duck. Before being put into the oven, a duck is filled with specially-made soup to make it possible to roast the duck outside and boil it inside at the same time.

Quanjude, a better known one, founded in 1864, uses an oven without a door. After a kind of dressing being spread all over a duck, it will be hooked up in the oven over the flame coming directly from the burning of the fruit-tree wood and it will be done in forty minutes.

When roasted and dried, the duck will look brilliantly dark red, shining with oil and with crisp skin and tender meat. Because of its appearance, few people could resist the temptation of it.

Now its time to serve it! First, the chef will show you the whole duck. Then, he will slice it into about one hundred and twenty pieces with both skin and meat for each. Usually the duck is served together with special pancakes, hollowed sesame bun, green onions and sweet sauce. Dinners can wrap duck slices, onion, and sauce in a pancake or a sesame bun with their bare hands. Sometimes people would like to put in mashed garlic and cucumber or carrot strips as well. Some young women like to dip slices into white sugar directly. Other parts of the duck will be served as either cold dishes with its livers, wings, stomach, webs and eggs, or hot dishes with its heart, tongue and kidneys. The bones can even be decocted together with Chinese watermelon and cabbage.

Imperial Court Cuisine

Imperial Court Cuisine, another important part of Beijing Cuisine, originates from royal kitchens where dishes and food were only cooked for the royal family. After the fall of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), Imperial Court Cuisine began to be popular among the common people with its original features that the raw material and the ingredients are carefully selected and the dishes are exquisitely prepared and delicately decorated in different colors with light taste and sufficient nutrition.

Many Restaurant serve Court Cuisine in Beijing today, such as Fangshan Restaurant and Tingliguan Restaurant being the most famous ones.

Fangshan Restaurant is in Beihai Park and the most famous dish of it is Man-Han Banquet (a dinner of Man and Han national food) which includes "eight treasures from the mountains", "eight treasures on land" and "eight treasures from the sea", such as bears paws, humps and sharks fins, and lots of rare things, but some of them are not available on table today. There are so many dishes (one hundred and thirty four hot ones and forty eight cold ones, besides many desserts) that you have to have them in six different meals in several days.

Tingliguan is in the Summer Palace and it used to be the place where Empress Dowager Ci Xi enjoyed her opera, which, of course, is as beautiful as a painting. It is famous for its "All-Fish Feast" of over fifty kinds and this is the only one in China. When the fish is served on the table, its mouth can be still opening and closing and its gills flapping. Sometimes the fishs mouth keeps moving even when it has been eaten to bones. But you dont have to be frightened; it is just falsely alive. You want to know its secret? Just go and try it!

Imperial Official Cuisine and Medicinal Cuisine

In the past, feudal officials were quite picky about their food, so their bland cuisine is usually exquisite and its material is always carefully selected. Tan Jia Cuisine and Hong Lou Cuisine are known as Imperial Official Cuisine.

Tan Jia Cuisine, coming from Tan family, is especially famous. Today it is a local authorized dish only served at Beijing Hotel. Hong Lou Cuisine, the one that was described in Dream of Red Mansion, is served at Beijing Grand View Garden Hotel, Jinglun Hotel and Zhongshan Park.

Medicinal Cuisine is also special in Beijing. Its dishes are made with rare ingredients such as ginseng, antlers, bears paws, soft-shelled turtles etc. It is not only valuable in terms of traditional Chinese medicine but also nourishing in terms of delicacy.

Other Cuisines from Different Regions

A huge chunk of Chinese culture is devoted to food and drink. There are hundreds of different dishes, and each region has its own distinctive flavor. The majority of Chinese Restaurant in Beijing feature what is known as "family style dishes" (jia chang cai), which are basically the most common types of food that any self-respecting Chinese can make at home. These dishes are usually a combination of the spicy Sichuan style (chuan cai) and the more hearty Shandong style (lu cai). True Sichuan style Restaurant have a special type of tea called Eight Treasures Tea. This tea is poured from a kettle with a yard-long spout, which the boy (its usually a boy) wields skillfully. Aside from jia chang cai Restaurant, there are also many places that are devoted to a certain type of food. Specialty Restaurant include such classics as Donkey Flesh King, Dog Meat City and Fat Sisters Meat Pies.

Shanghai style (Shanghai cai) tends to be sort of sweet and features lots of seafood. Shanghai Restaurant have been quite popular for some years now. Guangdong eaters have a reputation for eating "everything with four or more legs except for the table, and everything that has wings except for airplanes." All of the really funky dishes you hear about like live monkey brains and raw rat babies are Guangdong (Cantonese) style dishes (yue cai). However, there are lots of excellent, non-scary Guangdong dishes, and the seafood is especially tasty. Northeastern dishes (dongbei cai) are usually composed of large quantities of meat in thick, fairly salty sauces. Potatoes also feature heavily in dongbei cai. This is a great style of food to have in winter. Other famous schools of Chinese food include Huaiyang and Shanxi styles. There are also a number of regional minority cuisine.

Uygur Food

The Uygurs are a Muslim minority from Xinjiang Autonomous Region in the Northwest. There are Uygurs all over the city selling lamb shish kebob, but there are two places where they are fairly concentrated together, one is tempted to call them ghettos. These two locations, Weigongcun and Ganjiakou, abound with Uygur Restaurant. If you are walking by around dinner time, prepare yourself to get accosted by "grabbers", sort of like "greeters" at other Restaurant, except these guys tugs on your sleeve and try to drag you into their place. Nothing hostile, just very persistent. The best thing at these Restaurant is the roast fried spicy mutton (chao kao rou), square noodles in tomato sauce (chao pianr), and the round nang bing, a type of bread which is scrumptious when piping hot, and hard as a rock when cool. There is also a smaller, fatter type of round bread which can satisfy a bagel-craving. The roadside shishkabob can be delicious, too, but is not always the paramount of sanitary foodstuffs.

Foreign Cuisine

After tasting so many kinds of Chinese food, you might miss cuisine of your own country. Dont worry, you can find any type you want in Beijing. If you like fast food you can find that big yellow M in many places, or maybe you like KFC or Pizza, or whatever famous fast food Restaurant in your country, such as DICOS, Dunkin Donuts, Pizza Huts, A&W Root Beer and Kenny Rogers Roasters, the only fast food place where smoking is allowed and beer is served, they are available here.

Since Beijing is a charming city, it has attracted many foreign Restaurant. You can find all kinds of cuisine from France, USA, Italy, Russia, Japan, Korea, and many other countries. So it is also a good chance to come to Beijing and enjoy the food from all over the world.

French cuisine has always been favored by the world. It is thought to be the best cuisine in European and many chefs are proud of being able to cook French cuisine. In all dishes, raw materials are widely selected and finely cooked. Gooses liver and snail are the best ones of French dainties. Meat like beefsteak and gigot are usually half done and oyster is always eaten uncooked. Different wines are used as seasonings in different dishes to bring various tastes.

If you cannot resist the temptation, go and find Justine at Jianguo Hotel, the best French restaurant here.

If you are an American or if you like American food, go and find the best American restaurant Louisiana at Beijing Hilton Hotel.

If you prefer Italian food, go to Pinocchio Pizzeria in Holiday Inn Lido Beijing (Beijing Lidu Jiari Fandian) or go to Seasons in Kempinski Hotel (Kaibinsiji Fandian) in Beijing. Kempinski Hotel is also the most popular one where people enjoy German beer.

In recent years Korea barbecue has become one of Beijingers favorite. You can find traditional Korea Restaurant at Beijing Landmark Towers (Beijing Liangmahe Dasha), Lufthansa Center Sorabol Restaurant (Salaboer Canting).

There are many other hotels that are famous for their foreign cuisines, such as China World Hotel (Zhongguo Dafandian), Kunlun Hotel (Kunlun Fandian), and the Great Wall Sheraton Hotel (Xilaideng Changcheng Fandian) etc. You have many choices.