BEIJING EXOTIC CULINARY

Jeremy Ferguson returns to the ancient citadel to find it vital, confident and bristling with  accomplished restaurants.

Greetings from Beijing. The Chinese capital is near-unrecognizable from my first visit 30 years ago, when its streets were an ocean of bicycles, the gates had just opened to international tourism and foreigners wound up at the unromantic Quanjude, whose history of Peking duck stretched back to 1864. For the itinerant foodie, Quanjude was—incredibly—the only game in town.
Flash-forward to Beijing 2012, an orchestrated frenzy of 20 million people and five million cars (Beijingers have long kissed off blue skies). But this is a Beijing probably more vital and confident than it’s been since the heyday of the Ming. The 2008 Olympics have come to symbolize the city’s eagerness to participate in the world at large. Beijing 2012 boasts flamboyant modern architecture, a genuine dedication to greening its urban spaces (its boulevards and meridians are not only green, but artistically green) and, yes, accomplished restaurants that transcend the culture of whacked-out omnivorism.
The dreary Quanjude may have opened some 60 franchises from Hong Kong to Melbourne (McMcMcduck?) and has bloated one of its Beijing locations to 115,000 square metres, but it’s no longer the queen of the hop. The current hot spot, Da Dong, is all Manhattan swank, with showbiz lighting replacing the fluorescents, a 160-page menu with art catalogue graphics and a wine list burping with premium labels. It offers everything from “Caesar” salad with a wonky mustard bias to braised sea slugs, their flesh shimmying in the air conditioning. In the Chinese fashion, all courses arrive at once. Like a swarming. They should sell whiplash collars.
But it’s all about the duck, birds roasting at ferocious temperatures while a platoon of cooks perspire like bodybuilders in Hell. The point is the skin, cut from a fatty duck, meticulously trimmed, sliced into thin strips, unctuous and crackling, salty and savoury. The meat and broth courses are pure denouement. Da Dong’s duck is plenty respectable. Just don’t compare it to the celestial rendition at the Hyatt Regency Shatin in the New Territories outside Hong Kong, by far the best I’ve ever eaten.
The foodie’s Beijing soars higher at Pure Lotus, the most opulent restaurant in the history of vegetarianism. Its founder was a monk from Wutai Shan, one of China’s four sacred Buddhist mountains. Breathe easy: there isn’t a trace of vegetarian grunge. Pure Lotus draws its inspiration from temple and palace, its rooms sensual with silk blinds and gauzy, tent-like curtains, servers outfitted in slinky sequined shifts and its music—here Thai, there Indian, with chants and temple bells—from the Buddhist canon. They sprinkle your hands with “happiness water.” And happiness it is (except that no alcohol is served, even when you’re trying to negotiate a two-and-a-half-foot-long menu with a ridiculous number of choices).
The eye feasts first: dishes emerge exquisitely on billowing lotus leaves, abalone shells, burled wooden platters, in nori cones and under bamboo branches. And for once, beauty and culinary acumen prove compatible: a faux shark steak actually outclasses the original, and you’d never know it’s tofu. Chili chicken would fool us again, the tofu’s mimicry a triumph of flavour and texture. Fluffy dumplings stuffed with simple tomato show astonishing delicacy. Sticky rice in lotus leaf gives off the aroma and taste of tea. Vegetarian is finally dancing in my spotlight and I’m reeling with surprise. “Piao liang” whispers a tablemate—Mandarin for “beautiful.” But I also can’t resist returning to the Donghuamen Night Market, an effusive strip of town dedicated, since 1984, to delighting domestic tourists and jolting foreigners with local snack fare.
A gauntlet of stalls under red lanterns offers a supremely exotic array of eats, including raw and fried scorpions, big and hairy king spiders, centipedes, silkworms, water beetles, snake en brochette, dog meat, sea stars, bull frogs and sheep penis. But the most curious is “fried enema.” Maybe something is lost in translation. Next day, I’m still cackling at the fried enema—“tricky one with chopsticks, eh?”— when our guide, the radiant, omniscient Amelia Sun, takes us to lunch at her neighbourhood fave, a hole in the wall whose name translates as “Old Beijing Scallion Pancake.”
For a total of $15 for four, the mom-and-pop kitchen serves up tiny shrimps eaten shell and all, spicy cabbage in a head-exploding mustard sauce, pressed pork dipped in soy and vinegar and, to finish, a kind of fried noodle cake drizzled with rip-snorting garlic sauce. The latter is particularly tasty. “What is it?” I ask the fair Amelia. “Fried enema,” she says, a wicked smirk playing at her lips. Something lost in translation? You bet.

By Jeremy Ferguson in  "Eat Magazine" September-October 2012, Canada. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.

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