Eating Out Awards 2008

Time Out selects Beijing's best restaurants of 2008

 

This year we welcome the first Time Out Eating Out Awards – a pick of Beijing’s best restaurants as judged by a panel of independent reviewers.

Whether they are chefs, gourmands or food journalists, Time Out’s critics are all experts in their field, but the moment they sit down at a restaurant table they are the same as any other member of the public – just another customer. When Time Out reviews a restaurant for either awards or for the newly opened section of the monthly magazine, we do so anonymously. We feel our readers have a right to know what eating at that restaurant might be like for them.

We hope this year’s awards honour the restaurants that have given so much to the city’s gourmands in recent years as well as offer up a few new ideas to our readers.

Best New Restaurant

Runner up SALT

Breezing in with panache at the end of 2007, SALT’s contemporary, classy and creative style has caused something of a stir on Beijing’s culinary circuit – nowhere else do you get such high quality food for such low prices.

Runner up Blu Lobster

The flagship restaurant of the Shangri-la Hotel in Xizhimen changed the face of dining in the city forever when it opened last year. Bringing innovative, creative cuisine to a capital where just five years ago options for high-end dining rarely extended beyond over-priced dim sum, Blu Lobster has raised the stakes considerably when it comes to fine dining.

Best Cafe

Winner Comptoir de France

Time Out has one word to say to Comptoir de France: merci! Life in Beijing could be divided into pre- and post-Comptoir de France eras. Prior to its arrival in Beijing, this level of quality was available only in several hotels at steep prices. Comptoir de France has changed that.

Runner up Gustomenta

When Gustomenta opened several years ago, Beijing’s gelato lovers rejoiced. Finally it was possible to eat authentic Italian ice cream in the city. Gustomenta’s charm has only strengthened since then. The ambiance and décor of its three branches are as bright and cheerful as the colour palette of the gelatos. Even on a cold, grey winter day the cheeriness at Gustomenta is like a shot of their espresso.

Runner up Kempinski Deli

For some years now the Kempinski Deli, impressively, has maintained its reputation as a great place to stop for a quick bite to eat. Proof of its popularity is the queue that forms around mid-morning and lunchtimes for tables. Key to the Kempinski Deli’s success is using top-quality ingredients and staffing their kitchen with people who know how to use them. Whether it’s a loaf of bread to take home or a pastry or salad to eat in-house, each bite tastes as good and fresh as it looks.

Best Chinese restaurant

Winner Made in China

Despite ever increasing competition, Made in China continues to stand at the forefront of Chinese cuisine in Beijing. The restaurant succeeds at creating modern, rather than refined, Chinese cuisine. Its contemporary spin on traditional Chinese dishes elevates simple fare to new culinary heights without taking it too far away from its origins.

Runner up Dadong Kaoya

Dadong Kaoya (Roast Duck), nestled in the Nanxincang complex, a thoughtfully restored Ming dynasty imperial granary, is not one of Beijing’s famous centuries old Peking Duck eateries, but it was made famous by serving one of the best ducks in town. The skin of the duck is crispy and the meat is tasty, and each roast duck is served with an array of condiments, including sweet wheaten sauce, granulated sugar, crushed garlic, thin slivers of scallions, red turnips and cucumber.

Runner up Dali

There may be restaurants that serve slightly more authentic Yunnan-cuisine in the city but none that capture the atmosphere of laid back Yunnan any where near as well as Dali does. Sitting in this beautiful courtyard restaurant in the summer months as the sun streams through the surrounding trees, watching the resident cat chase the courtyard’s two friendly dogs – one could easily image sitting in the real town of Dali in the southern province.

Best regional cuisine

Winner Yunteng Binguan

Yunteng Binguan is the Beijing headquarters of the provincial government and the place officials stay when they’re visiting Beijing. It’s perhaps unsurprising, then, this restaurant doesn’t have great decor (atmosphere is never a concern of the government-run restaurants) but makes up for such shortcomings by being serious about its food – the dishes served here represent the true tastes of Yunnan province.

Runner up Golden Peacock

Well before Yunnan cuisine became trendy, not to mention ubiquitous, in Beijing, the Golden Peacock was building up a loyal clientele by preparing authentic Dai cuisine. The freshness of the herbs, mushrooms and multitude of other ingredients never wavers.

Runner up Crescent Moon

Crescent Moon has turned many mutton haters in to mutton lovers, simply by spicing up the meat with wonderful Uighur seasonings. This is the best Xinjiang restaurant in the city. The classic repertoire includes roast leg of mutton; stewed mutton over nang (naan) in a rich, flavourful tomato sauce; delicious mutton-on-skewers, a wonderful pilaf rice; hand-pulled noodles and mutton-filled baked bread.

Best non-Chinese

Winner Yotsuba

Pretend you are in Japan because Yotsuba would be at home down a narrow street in Minato-ku. This tiny restaurant, innocuously squatting on the north end of Xindong Lu, needs no garish frontage to lure diners; for Beijing’s cognescenti Yotsuba offers the finest sushi every evening thanks to the freshest tunas, salmon and other seafood flown in daily from the Tsukiji market in Tokyo, a practice that has enshrined this gem as Beijing’s best restaurant for foreign cuisine.

Runner up Jaan

A meal at Jaan makes one stop and pause for reflection. Course after course of contemporary French cuisine combines flavours and textures, not to mention presentation, that excite and dazzle without being so cutting-edge that they fall over the precipice.

Best interior design

Winner Whampoa Club

Nestled among glass office towers, Whampoa Club offers a refreshing respite from Beijing’s rather characterless financial district. Designed by the Shanghai design firm Neri & Hu, the courtyard dwelling contains a bar decorated with black lacquered walls and seats upholstered in dark leather and teal-coloured silk.

Runner up Face

Face’s interior design is spot on. The upscale restaurant chain hired antique experts to travel around China, Tibet, India, Bali and other Asian destinations for two years, collecting antiques and curiosities to fill the huge space which encompasses three restaurants (and counting) and one of the city’s most popular bars.

Runner up Made in China

Made in China rewrote the rules for the open-kitchen concept. Not content for diners to merely peer into one end of a busy kitchen, the Japanese designer behind the firm Super Potato created Made in China so that diners could sit right in the middle of the action, albeit protected by glass walls. The result makes for a unique experience watching the chefs in action.

Most innovative

Winner Blu Lobster

If there was one thing that did more than anything else to get the dwellers of the east to make the trek to the west of an evening, it was the arrival of the Blu Lobster restaurant in the Shangri-la Hotel. Chef de Cuisine Brian McKenna opened the restaurant to much fanfare last year and introduced the city to molecular gastronomy for the first time.

Runner up Whampoa

Refined northern cuisine might sound like an oxymoron, but Chef Jereme Leung succeeds in doing just that at the glittering new Whampoa Club in the financial district. His tasting menus include a series of dishes in which unlikely ingredients work together, such as a delicate bean curd roll embedded with foie gras terrine, and new takes on traditions, such as the super-thin Zhajiang noodles with an enticing array of bright, julienne vegetables spiked with a Sichuan-peppercorn sauce.

Best business lunch

Winner Le Pré Lenôtre

Le Pré Lenôtre combines three elements crucial to any successful business lunch. First, its impeccable service means that a meal here flows seamlessly. Whoever is hosting the lunch can focus on discussing business and needn’t be distracted by not enough bread on the table or the wrong food arriving. Staff are attentive and observant without hovering near the table.

Runner up South Beauty

Despite not offering a set business lunch menu, the numerous South Beauty restaurants – conveniently located at most of the city’s prominent office locations – nevertheless provide an excellent venue for those corporate lunches. Bright, modern and clean, the well spaced tables and unobtrusive staff afford diners sufficient room to discuss the finer details of their latest deal, while carefully designed private rooms provide a more intimate and private alternative.

Runner up W dine and wine

Chef and restaurateur Geoffrey Weck’s simple formula is a winning one. With a background in international hotel dining and Michelin starred restaurants, the young Belgian has created an environment that is both formal yet comfortable with a clear, clean and very accessible lunch menu.