If you want to know about food in Beijing, Huo Ye is your man. When we meet, he takes me to a private club hidden in a nondescript office building and offers me a glass of his own branded cognac. He sits directly in front of me in a leather seat, perfectly positioned so that the light from an overhead bulb casts long shadows across his face.
“When we are finished here,” he tells me, in a strong Beijing accent, “you are going to be the foreigner with the greatest understanding of Beijing Duck, ever.”
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More than being a mere food blogger (though he is also this), Huo is the most highly regarded eater in Beijing. Every head chef knows him, restaurant managers bow to him when he enters their establishments, and magazine editors faun. He looks like an incarnation of the Buddha: almost entirely bald with a spherical face that seems to be connected directly to his curved shoulders. His ample belly belies a man who has spent his life eating, prestigiously, at the highest level.
I agree to meet Huo a few days later in the car park of the Workers’ Stadium in Beijing. He has arranged for us to visit three restaurants that claim to serve the city’s best Beijing Duck, the classic pancake dish featuring slithers of perfectly crisp roast duck.
The restaurants Huo has chosen are Quan Ju De, which invented Beijing Duck as we know it today, Da Dong, the place that turned it into a fine dining delicacy, and Si Ji Min Fu, a new contender in the Beijing Duck game.
Da Dong, a restaurant renowned for its Beijing Duck, located in the Beijing Workers’ Stadium. All photos by the author.
The gardens surrounding Da Dong.
We head to Da Dong first. The restaurant is the brainchild of chef Dong Zhenxiang, who stands 193 centimetres tall and is an international culinary sensation (“Da Dong” in Chinese literally means “big dong.”) His two restaurants in Shanghai were both awarded Michelin stars, and he is preparing to open in New York and London. When Israel’s president Benjamin Netanyahu was in Beijing recently, he ate at Da Dong.
The restaurant is located inside the stadium. You turn a corner past a giant sign that reads “Da Dong Super Neat Roast Duck & Chef Dong’s Braised Sea Cucumber” and enter an enormous garden with life-sized plastic horses and a blue LED-lined walkway. As Huo and I make our way down the path towards the restaurant, the garden fills with the sound of chintzy Chinese elevator music.
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