2013 Foodie Wish Lists: Kristen Lum, Blogger, Lumdimsum.com

Marilyn Mai | Jan 15, 2013 4:00 pm | Add a comment | 2820 reads

Continuing in our series of Foodie Wish Lists for 2013, we've got everybody's favorite independent PR consultant, event planner and blogger, Kristen Lum. If you've ever stumbled on her website, Lumdimsum.com, you'll know this girl loves to eat (and you'll wonder how she stays in such great shape ... though I guess her hiking the Great Wall should give us a clue). We asked each of our respondents for their top five wishes for eating in Beijing in the next year, but this overachiever gave us nine:

  1. More home-cooked style restaurants with an emphasis on healthy eating, slow cooking, locally sourced organic ingredients. Can be any style cuisine, but following these fundamentals. Being useless in the kitchen myself, I'm craving more home-cooked style meals.
  2. A high-end, fine dining open kitchen dinner experience - like a Western version of Japanese teppanyaki where the chefs cook your multi-course meal in front of you and engage with diners for a more interactive dining experience.
  3. A Mongolian BBQ spot (American-style) where you have a line-up of raw veggies, meats, sauces, etc. and an open kitchen with a giant cooking station for chefs to whip up your meal in a few minutes. If you haven't had this before, it's phenomenal but not at all authentically Mongolian.
  4. A healthy soup and salad casual all-day diner with plenty of vegetarian options.
  5. A petite cafe serving all things fresh - fresh juice blends, fresh smoothies, fresh yogurts, fresh fruit, fresh salads, fresh sandwiches.
  6. For a proper South African restaurant to move to Chaoyang (which just might be coming true as I hear Pinotage is coming to SLT!!!).
  7. For Shanghai's Pulau Ketam to open in Beijing - I've been super craving proper Singaporean chilli crab. More Southeast Asian restaurant options in general.
  8. A dedicated Hainan chicken rice spot would be heavenly.
  9. For all these restaurant options to move to my hood, around Chaoyang Park!

I'd say a hearty "amen" to most of these (with the exception of the Chaoyang Park one, since I don't happen to live near there), and we're already seeing some overlap with Emily's list, which also wished for more homestyle restaurants emphasizing health, local sourcing and slow cooking.

And I don't know if this is what Kristen meant by the healthy soup and salad all-day diner, but it reminds me that I really, really miss Souplantation. (Are my suburban American immigrant roots showing?)

For more Foodie Wish Lists, check out:

Photo: Lumdimsum.com