Border Snacks of Southeast Asia Still Going Strong in CBD's China Central Place

Beijing's busy CBD is never short of hungry white-collar workers and wandering shoppers. This combination makes it the perfect locale for new restaurants, especially those that already have a good reputation with diners. Celebrating its second anniversary, Border Snacks of Southeast Asia falls into this category, sitting in the basement of China Central Place, right next to the entrance to Guomao subway station.

Border Snacks of Southeast Asia is named for “the countries on the border of China,” claiming to serve food from seven countries: Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Brunei, Laos, and Myanmar. We arrived around 1.15pm, supposedly after peak lunch hours, but still found ourselves with a 30-minute wait for this popular restaurant. 

The line of stools outside the restaurant hints at its popularity. Inside, the decor is a mish-mash of different elements, including modern chairs in red and black, paper lamp shades, and waiters in paisley shirts and jaunty straw hats. The menu is similarly wide-ranging, with dishes from the aforementioned seven countries, including Thai papaya salad, Saigon vegetable rolls, mango fish, pandan chicken, golden shrimp balls, tom yang goong, fried rice noodles, and roasted pigs' trotters.

We ordered the signature fish fillets with golden curry (RMB 66), a serving of which seemed to be on almost every table. The fish was seasoned with coriander and wasn’t spicy. We found the deep-fried Thai gold shrimp balls (RMB 36) paired well with a nice cold beer. The chef’s pickles (RMB 16) turned out to be a salad of lettuce, corn, red beans, peas, cherry tomatoes, radish, mushroom, bird’s eye chilies, and fried Japanese tofu, with spicy chili oil. Unfortunately, two of the signature dishes – rice milk and durian toast rolls – were unavailable.

As for drinks, we chose a Malaysia teh tarik, or pulled tea (RMB 15). Served hot and mixed with condensed milk, the tea was warm and comforting, perfect for a winter day. They also offer two beers from Vientiane, Beerlao lager and dark lager, both at a very reasonable RMB 20. The dark one has 6.5 percent ABV and a hint of caramel, which goes well with spicy food.

This may be more of a place for snacks than a serious, high-end restaurant but we would definitely return to try more dishes if we were in the area. The last tip we can give is, try to avoid peak lunch hours (noon-1.30pm) on weekdays unless you have a lot of time to waste queuing.

Border Snacks of Southeast Asia
Daily 11am-9.30pm. B1/F, the China Central Place, 81 Jianguo Lu, Chaoyang District (8588 8521)
边境东南亚小吃：朝阳区建国路81号华贸中心写字楼B1层