In Bejing, everything is on the menu!

The quality of the food in Beijing exceeds expectations on all levels, from cheap noodle bars and street food to swanky dining establishments. Most places we went were surprisingly good value, although all hotels and restaurants slap on a 15 per cent service charge. You can get a steaming bowl of wanton noodles or a big basket of dumplings for 10 yuan ($1.50) at a hutong eatery, or a fancy meal out for 100 yuan ($15.00) per person.

Baozi

Finding a nice meal at neighbourhood eateries is a lucky dip, as most menus don't have English translations. The best strategy is to find one with pictures of the dishes displayed on the walls, and point to anything that looks tasty. Trying to learn the names of dishes in Mandarin is basically an exercise in futility, as no one will be able to understand your feeble attempts at pronouncing the language. I just stuck to hello, thank you and used my fingers to indicate the quantity of whatever I wanted.

For breakfast, we indulged in Baozi – a sort of oversized bready dumpling that was almost the texture of a pork bun and filled with spicy beef mince. They are sold in little shops all over Beijing, stored in stacks of metal steamers.

At dusk, Donghuamen, or Snack Street as it is better known, comes alive with a seemingly endless row of food vendors, staffed by an army identically clad in white chef’s coats and red sunvisors. There are skwers of just about anything you can conceive, from westerner friendly chicken and beef to insects including scorpions, grasshoppers and the downright bizarre, snake and sheep’s penis.

Can't believe I ate one of these critters!

Inspired by Karl Pilkington’s “An Idiot Abroad” I was determined to try the scorpion. I was a little discouraged when I saw a tourist eat one of the crunchy insects, much to the horror of her Chinese companions who refused to touch the stuff. Undeterred, I bought a skewer, and to my surprise it actually didn’t taste so bad, probably due to the delicious barbeque marinade and the fact that it was so overcooked it had the texture of a kettle chip.

We had an amazing roast duck feast at Beijing Da Dong, actually two because we liked the place so much we ended up going back a few days later. The famous ducks are strung up and baked in an enormous clay kiln which looks like a woodfired pizza oven. They are tended by dedicated chefs who haul the cooked specimens out with long sticks. The ducks are then hung up on a rack and another chef tips them upside down and pours a rather copious amount of fat out of them. They are then plopped on platters and taken out and sliced at diners’ tables by servers with white coats and surgical masks.

Peking duck is carved with surgical precision

It wasn’t just the outstanding (and surprisingly lean) Peking Duck that had us coming back for more. Da Dong has an extensive and exquisite menu, presented in an enormous volume that numbers over 100 pages. There was an amazing variety of beautifully presented entrees, including mushrooms accompanied by tomato beer in a teacup, Szechuan spiced chicken with a tube of microscopically diced watermelon and passionfruit paste, and a delicate pomegranate seed salad. I spotted a dish made from fairy floss at one table – it was served on long stalks that were placed in an edible garden. Even the ubiquitous complimentary fruit served at the end of the meal was delicately presented on a mystical bed of dry ice.

Another must-taste on the culinary agenda is hot pot, Beijing style. We were ushered into a dining room clad in garish red and gold decorations and sat at an enormous table (way too big for the four of us) equipped with a lazy Susan and individual hotpot burner. These brassy burners were vaguely reminiscent of a fondue set, with the stock bubbling in a ring around a central tower, and a kerosene burner underneath.

Food coma - delicious Beijing hot pot

The concept of hotpot is simple. Your order stacks of raw meat, sliced thinly and rolled up, vegetables including mushrooms, bean sprouts, spinach and lotus root along with other delights like bean curd, dumplings and various meaty balls. The raw materials appear on the lazy Susan within seconds piled high on enormous platters and you cook them yourself in your hotpot and fish the finished products out with your chopsticks.

Some foods, like meat slices and greens, cook in seconds while the dumplings and balls take a few minutes. It’s easy to forget what you have brewing in there. Waitstaff buzz around the table, topping up your hotpot with extra stock and skimming off any gunk that accumulates at the top of the broth.

Arguments over who should pay the bill are common in Beijing. In Chinese culture only one person pays the bill for the group, but this is often not decided on until the end of the meal. We saw a very heated argument between members of a group over who would pay, and the loser (who did not have to pay) ended up storming out of the restaurant.

See! I really ate a scorpion

Finding decent accommodation in Beijing is not that easy – most of the listings on various travel sites have been trashed by unhappy customers. Staying in a courtyard hotel on one of the hutongs is a great way to get in amongst the action, but the problem is most cab drivers will not be able to find them, and your attempts at even saying the name of the street will prove futile.

Nonetheless, we were extremely happy with Sitting on the City Walls. Tucked away in a maze of alleyways behind Jingshan Park, a stone’s throw from the forbidden city, The spotless rooms were set around a beautifully atmospheric covered courtyard, decorated with Buddhas, rock art and even a replica terra cotta warrior and lots of tables and comfy lounges to sit at.