Henan ProvGov: Water Banquets Not Fit For Empresses
Just because something has been around for a really, really long time, doesn’t mean it’s good. That’s what we discovered at the Henan Provincial Government Restaurant where the specialty is the famous Luoyang Water Banquet. The Water Banquet, not quite nearing in on 5,000 years of history as it has only been around for almost 2,000 years, is a branch of Henan cuisine sometimes credited to the Tang dynasty’s Yuan Tiangang. The dishes were created in order to mimic the life of Wu Zetian, who seized power to rule as the empress of the Zhou Dynasty.
Empress Wu was a Chinese sovereign who ruled unofficially as Empress and later as the Emperor of China. She was the only female emperor of China in more than four millennia. One can only assume she’d be pretty pissed off if she found out that after fighting and elbowing her way through a pretty thick glass ceiling to the top of a highly patriarchal political system she’d have 24 dishes, most of which are soups and not very tasty, named after her. I know I would be.
RELATED: Read all of our Provincial Government Restaurant reviews here
Heading to the Henan Provincial Government Restaurant, we must warn you, you can’t actually enjoy the Water Banquet in full unless you’re willing to fork out RMB 2,998. As that definitely would not be covered by my baoxiao, and as I had experienced the glorious Water Banquet in Luoyang last year and been highly disappointed, we went for a RMB 129 version of the most famous of all dishes – the Peony Swallow dish.
This dish comes about from a giant turnip legend, which allegedly grew in Dongguan while Empress Wu was in Luoyang. Farmers in Dongguan thought this was a miracle, and dedicated the turnip to the Empress, who, as one would be, was pretty fed up of feasts, but curious about what could be made from this turnip. This is when her chefs steamed the shredded turnip with starch and blended it into a broth. Nowadays, the soupy dish also comes with chicken threads, pork threads, sea cucumber threads, and seaweed threads, and presented with a beautiful peony on top, hence the name.
The dish itself was very peppery, and falls into the ‘you-either-love-it-or-hate-it’ category. Other dishes we had were really not bad, but not worth the trek unless you already live near the south Second Ring Road. A cold noodle soup described as Songshan spicy cold fun (RMB 8 per small bowl) was a delicious rendition of the usual liangfen with added wild herbs. On the warm end of the noodle spectrum there was a Hui-style mutton soup, with delicious broth and tender chunks of lamb (RMB 22 for a small bowl, RMB 26 for a large bowl).
The menu also presents a lot of special Henan-only steamed flower buds, for example the steamed flour pagodatree flower buds (RMB 26) which were tasty, reminding slightly of tea, and the steamed flour celery buds (RMB 26).
While not necessarily worthy of another visit, the fact that some of our dishes were served with tiny gongfu figurines and the willingness of the waiter to go through the entire menu with us to point out which dishes were and weren’t particularly Henan made it an interesting evening. In fact, just being acknowledged by the staff was quite the change from other ProvGov’s so far.
Yufu Shenchu
Daily 11am-9.30pm. 2-4/F, Shangdu Hotel, 8 Dongbinhe Lu, You’anmen Waidajie, Fengtai District (6357 6666)
丰台区右安门外大街东滨河路8号商都酒店2-4层
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Photo: Margaux Schreurs
