Warm up for Winter at Vin Vie's New Sanlitun Location with Hearty Yakitori and Fusion Dishes
Good news for those of us who don't like to leave the comfortable bubble of Sanlitun. Our favorite hidden Liangmaqiao izakaya, Vin Vie, has opened a second location just south of Sanlitun, on the same road as Haidilao. The new location replicates the formula that made the original so popular, offering a menu of yakitori and Japanese-Western comfort food, alongside an extensive and reasonably priced wine list.
The restaurant's unassuming frontage is currently covered in scaffolding but don't let that put you off. Once inside, the room is warm and inviting (although much larger than the original in Liangmaqiao), with an eclectic decor scheme that seems more New Orleans speakeasy than Japanese izakaya.
The menu is as eclectic as the decor, offering a mix of Japanese, Western, and fusion dishes. If you stick with the yakitori, salads, and small assortment of sashimi and carpaccio, you could have a relatively light meal at Vin Vie, but it is in the indulgent, comforting dishes where the restaurant really shines. Start your meal with the homemade foie gras pâté (pictured in lead image), a steal at RMB 38 and as accomplished as any we've sampled at Beijing's French restaurants. The avocado and seafood salad (RMB 58) offers a surprise when it arrives – the sizeable chunks of avocado and salmon sashimi dressed with pesto, rather than the anticipated Asian flavors. The horsemeat carpaccio (RMB 55) is an equally pleasant surprise, the tender meat topped with a salty green olive relish and lashings of Kewpie mayonnaise – trust us, if no one told you it was horse meat, you wouldn't have any idea.
Things tip over from hearty to heart-stopping with the red-braised pork belly (RMB 58), which owes more to red wine-based western stews than it does to the Chinese version. The pork comes with a dab of strong mustard to cut through the richness, which you will need if you accompany it with an order of the gratinated mashed potatoes (RMB 45).
Even the yakitori are hefty, featuring larger pieces of chicken than many other yakitori joints we've tried. Skewers are priced around RMB 15 each, of which the best is the tsukune (chicken meatball), which comes with a startling fresh egg yolk for dipping. On the night we went, the yakitori was perhaps lacking the smoky flair of the skewers at the original Vin Vie location, but this could have been a one-off hiccup and they are still very much worth the stumble down from Sanlitun proper.
Without drinks, a satisfying meal for two at Vin Vie will only set you back around RMB 150 per person, a bargain for food of this quality. Of course, Vin Vie is an izakaya and izakaya are made for drinking, so you won't want to skip those drinks after all, especially not with several tasty wines by the glass priced at RMB 48 (try the Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon) and draft Kirin (served in classy copper cups) at RMB 30. Wines by the bottle start from around RMB 250-300.
Vin Vie has always been one of Beijing's most interesting and overlooked restaurants and we're glad to see them making moves with a second location, especially when the quality is just as good as the original.
Vin Vie (Sanlitun)
Daily 6pm-2am. 1/F, 29 Zhongfang Dongli, Baijiazhuang Lu, Sanlitun, Chaoyang District (6593 6593)
朝阳区三里屯白家庄路中纺东里29号楼1层
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Photos: Robynne Tindall
