Hotel Listings in Beijing

Family banquet

For Spring Festival, the Hong Kong chef at the Regal Palace Chinese Restaurant, Days Hotel and Suites Beijing prepares banquets for friends and families featuring dim sum with tea, traditional niangao (cake) and gift boxes, as well as dishes with auspicious meanings. 6773-1234 ext 3520

Festive hampers

Celebrate Spring Festival at Horizon Chinese Restaurant at Shangri-La's Kerry Center Hotel Beijing, with rice cakes, hampers and truffles. There are beautifully packed festive goodies, besides festive menus with traditional celebratory dishes prepared for family reunions and get-togethers with friends. 8529-9466

Year of the Ox

Celebrate Chinese New Year at Li Jing Xuan, The Regent Beijing, with seafood delicacies, Beijing duck, and steaming hot jiaozi, or boiled dumplings. Year of the Ox set menus include those starting from 188 yuan per person, to chef Au's Chinese New Year reunion menus in private rooms. Year of the Ox Chinese New Year hampers and niangao are available for sale from Jan 6-26. 8522-1789

Dine for free

For every 600 yuan spent, excluding service charges, at one of Holiday Inn Lido Beijing's restaurants, one can receive a 150 yuan dining voucher, valid for the Texan Bar and Grill, The Patio, Gallery Lounge and Pig and Thistle. The offer is not valid in conjunction with other discounts or promotions and excludes 15 percent service charge. 6437-6688

Italian Canarino lunch

Danieli's Restaurant at St. Regis Hotel Beijing has a new Canarino lunch, with four different types of pastas and 15 sauces, accompanied by daily appetizers, desserts and Italy's favorite winter mix of fresh lemon infused tea. Promotion starts from Jan 19 at 85 yuan per person. 11:30am-2pm, Monday-Friday. 6460-6688 ext 2441/2442

Big deal set menus

DI Chinese Restaurant at InterContinental Beijing Beichen will combine Cantonese cuisine with New Year's seasonal offerings to prepare set menus from 1,480 yuan to 5,180 yuan per table (10 people). People who have ordered the set menus can opt for a special deal to pay just another 400 yuan to get a night's stay in one of the hotel's luxury rooms, for two. The hotel offers a Chinese New Year gift basket for 388 yuan comprising dumpling flour, vinegar, sausage, rice cake, dried pork, and wine. 8437-1288

Auspicious meals

Huang Ting Chinese restaurant at the Peninsula Beijing cooks up two festive set meals for the Spring Festival, each with seasonal dishes with auspicious names. For example there are fried prawn balls with XO sauce, steamed mandarin fish, quick-fried mushroom with tender cabbage, and rice cake. Prices are 400 yuan and 438 yuan per person, available for groups of more than 10 people before Feb 15. 6510-6707

Taiwan and Shandong cuisine

Zhao Long Hotel's Han Mei Fang Chinese Restaurant prepares several different set menus for Spring Festival Eve. There is Taiwan-style cuisine featuring three-cups chicken, Shandong-style meals with braised sea cucumber and spring onion, and fish lips in a Year of the Ox auspicious family banquet, all with traditional dumplings. 6597-2299 ext 0215

Malacca Legend

The restaurant offers Malay munchies, with influences from Chinese, Indian and Arabian cuisines. Try their BBQ chicken wings, Hainan chicken rice, nasi lemak (coconut rice), curry chicken and sambal kangkong (fried water spinach with shrimp paste). 80 yuan per person. 11am-10pm. On the bank of Luoma Lake, Houshayu, close to ISB, Shunyi District. 8049-8902.

No 78 Chinese Restaurant, Marco Polo

The restaurant operated by a father-and-son team is very creative in cooking Cantonese dishes using unique techniques. Honey-glazed pork tenderloin is cooked to order and sliced on the spot, just like Peking roast duck. Crispy, fried whole chicken, prawn dumplings, seafood soup and seafood tart are other good offerings here. 150-200 yuan per person. Morning tea 7am-noon, lunch 11:30am-2:30pm, afternoon tea 2:30-5:30pm, dinner 5:30-10:30pm. 1/F Marco Polo Parkside Beijing, 78 Anli Lu, Asian Games Village, Chaoyang District. 5963-6688 ext 6415.

Shin Yeh

The decor is a bit more formal than Bellagio, and the food is totally different. Baked karasumi, a naturally dried fish roe, and baby abalone are the most expensive of its specialties. But the restaurant has plenty of more reasonably priced dishes, such as small dried fish with crisp peanut, sauteed oyster cake, sauteed pork liver and braised chicken in casserole. 60 yuan per person. 11:30am-2:30pm, 5pm-midnight. 6 Gongti Xilu, Chaoyang District. 6552-5066.

Jewel

Jewel takes the fusion of Chinese and Western foods to new heights, especially in terms of presentation. Beautiful glassware, Japanese-styled hotpot and glass goblets are used to make dining here a fun, aesthetic and enjoyable experience. Worth trying are their dim sum platter, abalone shabu (hotpot), deep-fried shrimp with spicy breadcrumbs and sauteed celery with gingko nut and bean curd. The set menu is 380 yuan per person. 11:30am-2:30pm, 5:30-10:30pm. 1/F The Westin Beijing, B9 Financial Street, Xicheng District. 6606-8866 ext Jewel.

Shuangfu

Most restaurants in this style are classified as a hodgepodge of ordinary homestyle foods for people who are not culinarily critical. And this place also fits that bill. But what makes the difference is the food's quality and homey, country-style decor. Sample horse hoof-shaped baked buns with pork stuffing while they're hot; then try smoked pork spine with bone and stewed chicken with wild mushrooms - to be accompanied with their strong, 40-degree Chinese liqueur, or Harbin Beer. 40 yuan per person. 11am-2pm, 4:30-11pm. Opposite the eastern gate of the Temple of Earth, 5 Hepingli Wuqu. 8422-2388.

Dark Restaurant & Faxie Canting

Ok, as for the food... forgot how it tasted. But you can smash your plates, bowls, beer bottles or even the CD player - as long as you pay for it. If that's not enough, you can give a few of the old one-twos to the punching bag or compete with your friend to see who can pound nails in a wooden chopping block faster. There are three set menus each comprising six courses, including a soup and a dessert. 168-218 yuan per person. 10am-10pm. 40 Shuangyushu Dongli, Haidian District. Opposite Shuang'an Department Store, behind Huaxing Film City to the north. 8211-8855.

Golden Yan'an

This is not often seen in Beijing: a compilation menu of former Chairman Mao Zedong's favorite foods from Shaanxi Province. Yan'an was China's revolutionary base before 1949, and now, it brings its mutton, potato dishes, steamed cake in mutton soup and deep-fried millet cake to Beijing. 40 yuan per person. 48 Baofang Hutong, Dongsi Nandajie, Dongcheng District. 8915-8326.

Tiandi Shuanrou

This is a Chinese neighborhood restaurant. But over the years, its freshly cut mutton has been comparable with the best of any other big name hotpot restaurants. It helps you to remember that mutton should taste like mutton. Pots are bronze, as they traditionally should be in Beijing. Also order sesame paste sauce, fish balls, mushrooms, cabbage and deep-fried sesame cakes. A bottle of Yanjing costs 4 yuan. 30 yuan per person. Northeast corner of east end of Dahuisi Lu, 50 meters north of west gate of Beijing Northern Jiaotong University, 23 Daliushu Lu, Haidian District. 6218-7844.

(Source: China.org.cn/China Daily)

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]