Dining in Beijing

Speaking only a handful of phrases in Chinese makes buying food a bit of a challenge. Sometimes you cannot tell if what you're looking at is chicken, fish or pork (the other white meat). While we've been able to find a few restaurants with English menus, and they are certainly more popular in touristy areas, most of the time we are resorted to pointing and saying "chicken?" to see if that is what we're ordering.

Several restaurants in the mall across the street from our apartment have wax food replicas displayed in a window at the entrance. Still, we find ourselves pointing to order. Noodle and Rice dishes are popular, along with soups, and most times we drink tea or water with our meal. There are a wide variety of teas served but we see Jasmine, Oolong, Green, Black and Chrysanthemum quite often. Oh, and if you order water at a restaurant, make sure to tell them "ice water" else you get a cup of warm, not room temperature but warm water!

Prices at restaurants vary of course but we've been able to eat most meals for well under ten dollars, many times only three or four dollars. Import beers are more expensive than their domestic brands: Yanjing and Tsingtao, which are anywhere between 1 dollar and 4 dollars depending on the establishment.

Peking Duck
Beijing's most famous dish, Peking Duck, is all of what they say it is and then some. I've had the pleasure of eating twice since I've been here and we're planning to go again this weekend. Let me explain what I know of how its served.

First, the duck is cooked hanging in an open oven and different restaurants pride themselves on what kind of wood they use as that impacts the flavor considerably. Nicer restaurants will serve you a plate of the skins that capture most of this flavor as a way to showcase the quality of their duck recipe.

As an appetizer, there are wide varieties but it is common to eat duck heart, liver or feet. I had the pleasure of trying the duck feet marinated in some sort of mustard sauce, all I could taste was mustard but the texture... well you can imagine.

The duck is carved and served on a few small plates in slices. Now here's the best part: you take a thin flower dumpling shell, some veggies and onions, pieces of duck and some plum sauce and roll it up in a sort of mini burrito.

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I'm playing a bit of catch-up as usual with this but there are more posts coming about our weekend trip to the wall.