Gugong Yushan Fang

A meal at Gugong Yushan Fang – the most intriguing new restaurant in town – is a cloak and dagger affair. Diners are met a few blocks from Donghuamen, the East Gate of the Forbidden City, and driven into the Palace, past the Arrow Pavilion, and through the Gate of Celestial Purity to a part of gugong still closed to all but a few visitors.

Facing the harem is a hall where the emperor and his concubines once took afternoon tea together, and the sound of happy chatter and rattling crockery can be heard once more now that the space has been transformed into a restaurant where diners can gorge on Gugong Yushan Fang’s imperial fare.

The room is tastefully furnished in Qing dynasty style, with delicate jade vases and porcelain lining the shelves and paintings hanging on the walls.

Beautiful round, cloth-covered lampshades hang from the ceiling above two tables that can seat eight and 12 people.

Gugong Yushan Fang’s unique selling point is to serve set banquets, of which the Cheng Banquet is an exact recreation of the meal President Mao Zedong served Puyi in 1961, a dinner date that officially rehabilitated the last Qing emperor.

Cheng Ruming, then head chef of Zhongnanhai, created the meal after poring over recipes in the imperial archives.

Today Cheng still presides over its preparation, but his former understudy at the leadership compound kitchen does the cooking.

Although an imperial meal, the banquet was given a modern twist post-1949 and is served with two pieces of garlic bread, two rolls, butter and jam.

This is followed by the ‘four drys’: almonds, pistachios, sugared walnuts and banana chips; the ‘four freshes’: sliced apple, kiwi fruit, grapes and mandarin oranges; and finally the ‘four flavours,’ jujube, pickled cucumber, bitter gourd and red pepper representing sweet, sour, bitter and spicy.

The steaming hot clear broth with slivers of meat and cellophane noodles is appetising, unlike the overly salty ‘Long March chicken.’

The best of the hot dishes is the butterflied prawn, which is perfectly fried – crisp and with no trace of oil.

This is followed by braised pork belly, a favourite of Mao’s, and baked herring topped with garlic. The seafood noodles – with its tasty broth but boring noodles – marks the end of the hot courses.

Dessert comes in the form of an excellent chilled red bean cake and an equally impressive foshou, a pastry filled with red date paste that’s been made to look like a Buddha hand.

The waitresses –dressed in light green traditional outfits – are attentive and know all about the food being served, a welcome departure from the touristy Manchu princess garb favoured at many a restaurant.

If the quality of the food were slightly higher, then Gugong Yushan Fang would be the ultimate dining experience – utilising such a historical setting for an imperial meal is a beautiful concept.

But beware: dining like royalty doesn’t come cheap. Most set meals range in price between 680RMB and 1,880RMB (not including the 15 per cent service charge) and for an additional fee, the restaurant will arrange for you to visit parts of the Forbidden City that remain closed to the public.