Kaifu Lee’s Beijing Cuisines

As I promised earlier, I finished translating Dr. Lee's Beijing Cuisines at Google China Blog. I thought his article is quite interesting, noteworthy of being read by not only Chinese-savvy readers, but also their non-Chinese speaking counterparts. As Dr. Lee also mentioned in his post --Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful, that's why I rendered his post from Chinese to English--let the readers all over the world to know something happening in Google China. I think, once one completes reading my English post, most of them will be envy Google's Welfare for its employees--"Acquiring a person's stomach is to acquire his heart"!

Google is always famous for its tasty food. Two classical Chinese proverbs, regardless of "the food is what matters to the people" or "Acquiring a person's stomach is to acquire his heart", both fully conforms to the Google Culture. Back in China— the world's most delicate food heaven, we must carry forward well this traditional gourmets culture.

Speaking of gourmets, I am very embarrassed because I am a gormandizer among Google gourmets. When I was staying in California, my colleagues dare not consult with me about where we could go for a meal, because the place I suggested was basically either far away or difficult to be found. Last time, two of them let me propose that, we drove nearly an hour to eat the sauce braised fish head, after having those tasty dishes served first, we could not instead eat up the fish head which was complained a lot by me. While those two still gluttonized it while neglecting my complaining. Anyway, I already began telling of how to making “Chili Oil Won Ton” before we left the restaurant, which they felt so unbelievable! Then living in Seattle, I used to drive cross-border for three hours to the Vancouver to stay one night on weekends. Afterwards, my friends might ask what I have done, my answer is very simple: eating, digesting, eating again, digesting again, eating again, then going back home. No famous cuisines in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Taibei, California Bay Area, New York, Vancouver and Seattle are not known by me!


Then how about Beijing? Doesn’t Google China really wanna hire the Master Chef? Yes, of course, Google does do. Once the Master Chef is found, we employees at Google may have the most delicious food without having to go outside. In the past several months we temporarily based in CBD, now we has moved the temporary work place in S &T Garden of Tsinghua University, but the company’s cafeteria is yet to be constructed. How can we do? Google feels very sorry for its talented staffs, we therefore drew up a regulation during this transition period—everyday everybody can go to the restaurant to have the meal, Google pays the bills. That’s why I took the full advantage of this regulation and got the opportunities to taste so many delicious cuisines in Beijing. Now, in order to respond Google’s mission “organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful", I am providing here with the information congregated from my personal eating experiences in the multitudinous Beijing restaurants:

• NO.1 Chang An (长安一号)- a small cafe inside Beijing Grand Hyatt Hotel. If someone hadn’t reserved the seat in advance, there must be no free seat available. Here roasted Beijing ducks are extremely delicious with skins being fragrant and crisp; pancakes are thin and soft. Stuffed dumplings, pot-stickers both are also very nice. Certainly, their sesame seed cakes clamping foie gras and plum sauce must be tasted.

• Heron-Heron Wineshop (鹭鹭酒家) – the Beijing branch of a Shanghai restaurant. Although they acknowledged their dishes are a little of Beijing flavors, but still quite Shanghai featuring. The best serve here is fried lunar-new-year's cake with Chinese mitten crab (other lunar-new- year's cakes are also ok, but must be hand-made and very thick). Sweet and sour spareribs, vegetable-stuffed steamed buns, thick bread and so on are also good.

• Cafeteria of Sichuan Agency in Beijing (四川驻京办事处餐厅)– Beijing’s most typical Sichuan cuisines, all of its recipes are very delicious, but just unusual hemp and spicy. If someone could not eat spicily, he will not be able to have the good fortune to enjoy something. Business is very good and must reserved first.

• Lugang Small Town （鹿港小镇） – Beijing’s best Taiwan recipes. Three Cup Chicken, Sausages are very tasty.

• Smart Chiangnan (俏江南)– Tough it is chain-like, but its "new-style-Sichuan-cuisines" is quite special. Other famous recipes includes: Lake-stone rolling beef (Jiang Shi Gun Fei Niu), pig elbow, sweet peas, re-cooked fish, naked oats with sesame jam and so on.

• Famous Porch (明轩楼) – a Shanghai-featuring restaurant situated the 31st floor of New Century Hotel. Very native but expensive. Fermented glutinous rice rockfish, foie gras, sheet-iron pig neck meat and Chinese-style beefsteak are all delicious.

• Big-House Gate (大宅门)-- though the food is not specially prominent, the performance is the most appreciated by our foreign colleagues (Sichuan Faces, Shouldering Against Cylinder). Very fragrant and thick fish soup, cold dish with wild herbs folded to the pyramid-shape are nice. Fried sweet-potato putty is very well too.


• Big Dong （大董）--Famous for the roasted ducks. If to entertain distinguished guests, may try the rice with cod, or the noodle with lobster. Both two are very special.

• Li Chang (黎昌) – To introduce recipes must introduce Cantonese cuisines. Li Chang is the best Cantonese cuisines in Beijing, but truly speaking, it was compromised a lot when compared to the orthodox Hong Kong counterparts.

• East Sea （东海）—Guangdong-style tea-drinkings of East Sea cannot compete with those of Hong Kong, but they are of good qualities yet with a low-price, normally just cost a bit more than 20 Yuan.

• Friday Dining Room (TGIFriday' s, 星期五餐厅) -- I like having the Chinese meal, but my children require that I have to enlist TGIF they like the most. Roasted pig spareribs there are truly nice, some appetizers are worth being tasted.

Instant food and sweet snacks: Japanese-style hand-pulled noodles of Thousand-Tastes (Wei Qian), Chinese-style instant food of Da Cheng which accomplishes via imitating Yonghe (the pupil surpasses the teacher) (beef noodles very good), Kentuckey's Portuguese-style egg flogs (every time I go there and buy a dozen, which are to finished by the whole family within two days), Bread of the Pacific Department Store and Soaked lotus in the first floor of the Eastern Square.

The followings are several of the restaurants which are my colleague Guo Quji recommends, and I ‘d like to share them with you all:


• Yuelu Mountain House (岳麓山屋) – Yuelu Mountain House at Houhai is Hunan cuisines as the name suggests (Yuelu normally refers to Changsha, the capital of Hunan Province), the most characteristic is the sauce pepper fish head, served together with noodles, after the fish head is eaten up, noodles are mingled with the soup left, and tasted micro spicy but delicious. Hand-ripped garlic shoots (garlic liver moss) in the cold dish, is extremely tasty and refreshing. With regarding to the drinkings, the rice wine is very nice.

Tea-Horse Ancient Road (茶马古道) – Yunnan cuisine in the SOHO modern city. To my own viewpoint, the most delicious is its fungus hot-pots (steam-bowls). Soups made up from with numerous kinds of Yunnan's wild fungus, are extremely tasty. The best funguses are probably Pine Mushroom and Bamboo Sheng.

• Su Zhehui (苏浙汇 )– it is located at Chaoyang District. Its honey-ham made up from very good ham with honey and husked lotus, has the perfect salty-sweet and fragrance-delicacy combination and is thus very tasty. In addition, yellow-bridge sesame seed cake (Huang Qiao Shao Bing) among the snacks is worth being tasted.

• Nanjing Grand Restaurant (南京大饭店) – A cafeteria of Agency of Nanjing City Government in Beijing behind the Wangfujing Department Store, seldom has been known. Actually its salty wild duck and steamed lion heads (pork balls) are well done, and shrimp-heptacreas bean curd is also very specially (other restaurants usually have crab-heptopancreas/ovary bean curd).

• Danieli's – an Italian restaurant in International Club Hotel, food are good and there are also many choices. The noodle with lobster is espeicially the recommendation!

It has been several months since I moved to Beijing. I already put on the weight of around 4 kilogram . If you have the healthy cuisines with low calories, don’t hesitate to introduce them to me! :)

Tags: Google, Google Culture, Google China, Kaifu Lee