Michelin gone flat

I love Italian food. Pizza, pasta, Monica Bellucci. Yummy.

A country that produces such a wonderful being can't do too badly with its cuisine, right? Yes. But at a restaurant tipped by some as Beijing' best Italian meal, the experience was, well, not exactly as awesome as Monica.

Sadler Ristorante (10- 65591399) was set up by Claudio Sadler, an Italian two-star Michelin chef - a rare find in Beijing where Michelin is known more for tyres than food. Nestled inside the lovely Chien'men 23, a calming enclave of Beijing I can never get sick of, the restaurant has a chic and clean decor, nicely lit in the day with generous daylight.

Some reviewers have even hailed the place as "Italian cuisine at its finest", so naturally, I went there with high expectations. But alas, the supposedly star-studded meal failed to move the heavens.

It got off to a really good start though. The bread basket (more plate than basket actually) came with five different types of dough delights and an amazing pre-appetiser before the three-course lunch. It was a mousse made from parmesan cheese, garnished with a crispy fried parmesan fritter and balsamic vinegar gelatin (below). Soft, creamy and a great spread on the warm and fluffy bread.

The dishes that followed were a little less impressive. The pasta appetiser was tasty but also a tad unusual on the palate - spaghetti tossed with zucchinis and cherry tomatoes, accompanied by dashes of green and brown sauces with a hint of fish stock and roasted vegetable and breadcrumbs (I think). It was just an all-round odd combination. The breadcrumbs in particular, did not go well with the spaghetti.

Next was seafood soup, very much like a stew of fish and shellfish. It was aromatic and the seafood, very fresh - always a treat in Beijing, where fresh seafood is as rare as clean air. But what spoilt it was the cous cous inside the soup. It soaked up the soup even before you could slurp much of it.

Finally, the dessert of panna cotta. It tasted of sweet vanilla, but somehow did not really sweeten the meal. Rather bland way to end a rather ordinary meal.

To be fair, the wine and wait staff were superb. The waiters and waitresses were friendly and attentive, without being overbearing. Also, I was there for the set lunch, which was about 160 yuan per person (without alcohol). Perhaps, just perhaps, the best is saved for dinner?

The Duck Nazi

A new year, a fresh discovery - Liqun Peking Duck. This is the place where foreigners come so that they can eat like the locals. But when so many expats flock over, erm, where are the locals? Case in point: I had French and Japanese as neighbours at adjacent tables earlier tonight.


The reason why foreigners love Liqun is because it is local. It is buried in a hutong (traditional Beijing alleyways), it is squeezy, greasy and presentation is not present. Basically, it feels like China.


Forget exquisite personal servings of sauces and cucumbers. Here, they are slopped on a common plate for everyone. Forget bamboo steamers that can keep your dough skin warm. At Liqun, it is served on a plate, that's that.


But still the customers come and they are happy to be treated as pesky irritants to be brushed off rather than pampered. Here's an actual conversation that I overheard:

Chief Bitch Waitress (CBW): Your bill is 426 yuan.

Japanese girl: Erm, I didn't ask for the bill.

CBW: It's time to leave.

Poor Jap chick: But...but, we haven't finished our meal.

CBW: I told you on the phone that everyone has only an hour to eat. You came at 6.40pm. It is 8.20pm now. Can you see the long line there (pointing)? You have to go. There are kids waiting, they are hungry. You have to go.


The poor Jap girl was seen packing whatever remained of her dinner into plastic boxes. How do you like that for customer service? But for Liqun, this is how it is. When I made my reservation, I was told of their bizarre rule - they accept reservations for a duck, but not for a table. This is so they can roast your duck in time, to be served to you quickly upon arrival since you have only an hour to eat. The 60 minutes countdown starts once you get a table.

I guess when your clientele includes Al Gore, Christopher Hill, Jet Li and just about every known and unknown Chinese celebrity - all their pictures greasily plastered on its grimy walls - you can get away with treating your customers like they are ducks with venereal disease.


It helps that they serve up a fine bird too. But the winner in Liqun's emsemble was the dough skin. It was so amazingly thin it was almost trunslucent. I have been to plenty of renowned Peking Duck places around this city, but I had never seen anything quite like this. The best part about it was that despite its thinness, it did not tear easily. It could still easily wrap up the oily slices of duck meat and skin. Fantastic!


At just 190 for a full bird, including the condiments, Liqun (010-67055578), which is southeast of the Tiananmen Square, is slightly cheaper than Duck de Chine and Dadong. Just put up with the surly service and make sure you wolf down your duck real fast.

Dimsum de Chine

Here's my idea of an ideal Sunday in Beijing: Get up early at about 11am. Work off some calories with my 2-kg dumbbells. Pile back the calories with a lovely dim sum lunch. But with my favourite haunt having some kind of extreme makeover for the last few months and will open only in the new year, I have had to search for alternatives.

It has been a disappointing hunt. So disappointing that I shouldn't call it a hunt. I gave up after just one try. It was the darn Westin and despite charging a premium and having Chinese Cirque du Soleil-like acrobats performing in their restaurant, their dim sum sucked. The siew mais were lumpy, the egg tarts were lukewarm and the pork ribs were, gasp, undercooked. Even my grandmother could do better.


As you can see, the restaurant looked lovely. But I was there for the food and I expected better when I was paying more than S$20. That was some months back. I was disheartened. My ideal Sunday routine was in ruins. I could try harder to find another dim sum restaurant or I could sulk. Like any mature adult, I chose to sleep later and skip Sunday lunch altogether.

But fortuitously, on a wild night out to attack a Peking Duck, I realised that the bird restaurant Duck de Chine serves dim sum for lunch too. I did my mental Logic 101. Premise 1 - it was set up by a Hong Konger. Premise 2 - its duck is good shit. So Conclusion - Dim Sum must also be good shit. My university lecturers must be so proud of me.

So last Sunday, I re-embraced an early Sunday morning and popped lovely tiny pieces of exquisite dim sum into the Forbidden Stomach. It was, to be honest, not the best. But it was definitely more than competent. The chye tow kuay did not have Comfort Inn's crispy edges, but it was tender and did not overload the rice flour. I thought the bean sprouts was a nice touch too.

The standard dim sum dishes like siew mai and hakao were not bad either, having thin skins and fairly juice insides. And at Duck de Chine, you can never fault the service. Ever attentive staff, quick to top up my cup of chrysathemum tea. It was reasonably priced too, with quite a few items at half price. Me and my party of five paid about 80 yuan (S$16) each, no complaints. DDC's dim sum may not make the Dim Sum Olympics. But it is certainly good enough for, erm, the Asian Games?

Sergeant grabs attention

For chicken rice lovers, Beijing is a fowl haven. While I still struggle to find a decent plate of char kway teow here, there is no lack of yummy Hainanese chicken rice. I have blogged about the bizarrely good plate at Hard Rock Cafe and there have been other decent offerings in the Chinese capital. But this latest entry into the crowded scene has been getting rave reviews from Singaporeans.

Sergeant's Chicken Rice is reportedly set up by one of the original Mandarin Hotel Chatterbox chefs - the same dudes who somehow managed to convince a generation of Singaporeans to pay S$20 for a plate of room-temperature chicken and rice. I know it is good, but I could never understand those willing to pay obscene money for hawker food.


Anyway, Sergeant seems very much like the Siamese twin of Food Republic, following the food court brand rather faithfully - even to Beijing. Food Republic has an outlet here at Viva Plaza （富丽广场） and not surprisingly, the military chicken brand came along. In no time, Singaporeans here have been calling it the "Best Chicken Rice in Beijing". And no one consulted me??? Basket.


Whatever lah, all these self-styled food critics. They don't even have like a proper food blog. Hmph! Sulk. (Ok ok, I have not been blogging very frequently, but hey, this blog is still active, alive and it did take me 15 minutes to set it up). Bloody hell.

Well, after weeks of hearing good things about the Sergeant from those non-qualified critics, I checked it out earlier today. After getting past the dumbass food court system of paying for a prepaid card before you could order food, I managed to get my hands on a nicely put-together plate of chicken rice. The presentation would be familiar to most Singaporeans, an arrangement which I believe came from Chatterbox.


Now for the verdict. It was good. But the best in Beijing? I would withold that honour, for now. I believe the plate at Prima Taste Kitchen gives it a good fight. While the chicken was tender and nicely drenched in soya sauce, it was a tad too cold for me. The meat was supposed to be in room temperature, but not cold. The rice was fragrant and the chilli - possibly the most important part of the chicken rice for me - was sour and slightly pungent with excessive garlic, as it should be.

But the biggest winner? Its price. At only 25 yuan (S$5), it is possibly the cheapest plate of Hainanese chicken rice in a city where Singapore hawker fare is regarded as expat food. Prima charges more than 50 yuan, for example. Good on the stomach, easy on the wallet. Looks like I will be back. Maybe tomorrow.

All-Star burger

I have not blogged for three months, and of course, it is not my fault. The darn Chinese government still refuses to lift the ban on Blogspot and it has been having a big buffet of events, leaving me with more meal times with Maggi than Maison Boulud.

But fret not, my dear clan of fans. The Forbidden Stomach is back from its three-month long diet! And it just ate a whopper of a meal. I have been wanting to try the All-Star Sports Bar & Grill ever since I read that Californians tagged its hamburgers as the next best thing to In-N-Out's.

Its burgers have also been named by a local magazine as the city's best last year. So naturally, I went for the cheese hotdog.

Thankfully, my friends had the good sense to order the All-Star Hamburgers and thankfully, I was shameless enough to just pinch their burgers. It was quite lovely and the reviews did not over hype it. There was horseradish and that gave it an extra bit of zing and the buns were well grilled with the edges dark brown and crispy. There was also a nice big juicy slice of tomato, which is always a treat for me. Add in a splash of hot sauce, and it is quite the perfect burger.


Can't say the same for my cheese hotdog though. It was decent enough, but nothing to shout about. If the hamburgers can match California's In-N-Out, the dogs aren't even close to Manhattan's Gray's Papayas. The side dishes were disappointing too. Coleslaw seemed to have some odd spices and the slim fries were nowhere close to McDonald's famed golden crisps.

But for the burger and the 65 plasma screens that broadcast just about any sports events in the world, it is worth a trip to this rather quiet and lonely strip by the edge of Solana Centre. It is supposed to operate round the clock, but call to check (10-5905-6999).

Perverted hot wings

Its name is strangely boring - Hot Bean Cooperative (炒豆合作社）. The word "cooperative" makes me think of NTUC and stunningly awesome music videos like this.

But there is nothing to cringe at Hot Bean. It is one of the hippest and coolest local joints in Beijing, and perhaps one of the best places for tourists who want a quick snapshot of where creative young Beijingers head to for a chill night out on a hot summer's night.


Located inside one of the traditional Beijing alleyways called hutong (named Hot Bean hutong, hence the name of the eatery), the Cooperative has a crummy entrance bathed in a red light that really reminds me of Geylang brothels from decades back (I was there for the beef hor fun).


The walls of Hot Bean are plastered with spacey murals like these, reminding some of Ultraman, others of Star Trek. I find them cute, but strangely spooky and sends me back to a macho period in my life when I sat with my baby nephew as he watched Teletubbies in the middle of the night.


That somewhat odd and kooky feeling was made worse by the two cats that the young owners of Hot Bean kept in a cage above the entrance. Really weird. I guess you can say I don't really like pussies on top.

But if the whole place felt a bit out of step with my old bones, then the food was a right match. Hot Bean (10-8401-6165) is more or less like a Chinese Yakitori restaurant, serving barbequed wings and other BBQ delights. Of course, it is at a mere fraction of what you would pay at Jap yakitori restaurant. Budget about 40 yuan per person, cold beer included.


The main draw was the chicken wings and I highly recommend the "Perverted Hot Wings". It was too spicy for most normal human beings, so just sit back, watch your idiotic friends torture themselves and revel in their misery. Hahaha...


Go for the BBQ Bacon, which is supposed to be a favourite among the guys. Certainly true for me. The wings and the bacon were served in a metal bucket, on metal skewers. There's something quite barbaric and manly about biting those wings off a metal skewer. I like.

The Orchard Rude

After a rough week in Xinjiang, I was looking forward to a brunch excursion which I had tied down with a bunch of friends earlier. It is an "excursion" because unlike pretty much all the restaurants that I go to, The Orchard is in the boondocks of Beijing.

For good ol' Beijingers, it would not even be considered part of the city. The Orchard is located in Shunyi, some 30 minutes' drive from downtown and near the Fifth Ring Road - which means it is like the backside of Beijing.

But Shunyi is quite a piece of ass. Located near the airport, it has been developed into something like a mini-Florida suburb for expats, with big bungalows, gated communities and old people. Of course, such a crowd usually have quite a bit of renminbi to burn, so a nice crop of restaurants have popped up in this crevice of the capital.

The Orchard, which comes with a lake, is among the most famous and quite highly recommended by expats, especially those old enough to stay in Shunyi.


The restaurant is located in, yup, an orchard. It's supposedly a big deal because you see fruit trees. Why? I have no clue. I guess some city folk swoon and get orgasmic when they see fruit trees - "Check out those apples on the tree!! Wow!!". To me, they are just trees. Give me the juice anyday sir.

Still, I have to admit that it was nice to be in a fruit orchard on a Sunday afternoon. The Sun was out and its Beijing brother, the Smog, was there too. Ah, lovely. Sunny Beijing pollution. It's no wonder I missed this city when I was in Xinjiang.


But first impressions last and The Orchard screwed that up BIG BIG time with me. We reached the place at about 11.40am and since I was hungry, I decided to go check out the buffet spread. We were in a restaurant after all. If I wasn't thinking of looking for food, why be there? But no no no. The Orchard had other ideas. We were unceremoniously shooed out of the buffet area because brunch could only be served at 12 sharp. "You have to leave this area now!," commanded a waitress. Or maybe it was because she wasn't pleased that my friend astutely pointed out that there was a cockroach in the bread baskets. This door (below) was then slammed shut. Bitch.


Anyway, just before the door was closed, I took out my camera to snap a few pictures of the spread (not the roach), but the waitress barked: "You cannot take pictures here!" There was none of the, "I'm sorry Sir, but we do not allow photography in our premises." The rudeness cheesed me off big time. And to make things worse, I later saw signs plastered on the walls saying that if anyone wanted to take pics, they have to pay the restaurant 300 yuan for 30 minutes of shooting time.

Seriously, were they serving bread rolls on naked women? Who the hell in the right frame of mind would pay 300 yuan (that's about S$65) to take pictures? And at 180 yuan per person for the buffet (which is majorly expensive by Beijing's standards), I jolly well think I deserve to take pictures of the stuff I pay and eat.


I was hoping the food - continental spread - would salvage the outing, but I was sorely disappointed. Except for the bread which was quite fluffy and delicious when served without the roach, the other dishes were awfully ordinary. The roast beef was rather stiff and cream pasta was forgettable.


But the place was packed. Maybe that's why they can afford to be rude and harbour insects. I guess some people do like food in the boondocks. As for me, I will stick to the city. Not really an ass kind of man.