2019 Year in Review: 12 Restaurant Openings That Got Our Tongues Wagging
Getting to the end of a year in Beijing tends to leave you with more questions than answers, and when you're not searching in vain for that long-gone jianbing seller, you're dealing with quiet closures, noisy neighbors, and if you're really lucky, surprise laduzi. One thing's for sure: there's never a dull day in China's capital, and we hope for nothing less from 2020. For now, however, let's take a look back at the year that was 2019.
It's been a funny old year for Beijing restaurant openings. In the same year that Michelin launched its first-ever Beijing guide (and caused controversy in the process), new casual and fast-casual restaurants often seemed to create the most buzz (especially ones serving Beijing's beloved burgers and pizzas), although there were some cracking fine dining openings as well. Fancy something other than Chinese food? This year's restaurant openings had you covered, with everything from Thai to Turkish food.
Here are 12 of the restaurant openings that caught our eye in 2019.
Rive Gauche
The year got off to a strong start with the opening of Rive Gauche, the French-styled all-day dining restaurant at Dongsi-adjacent The Puxuan. Rive Gauche bills itself as a bistro but don’t go expecting casual dining. The staff fine dining level and you will also frequently see executive chef Ivan Miguez, who most recently worked as executive sous chef at three-Michelin-starred Ultraviolet by Paul Pairet in Shanghai, roaming the dining room chatting with diners. The must-order beef short ribs are cooked for eight hours in a mixture of more than 20 spices (we detected chili and lemongrass, among others) before being carved tableside, which rightfully places it as one of the star dishes on an overall outstanding menu.
Read our full review here.
Kup Kup Kup
Low-key Southeast Asian restaurant Kup Kup Kup does stellar work at transporting you south (and away from the chilly confines of Taikooli North) by the strength of its menu alone. Embracing its Asian food hall vibe, the simple, open, colorful cafeteria-style space gives little clue as to the caliber and authenticity of the food to come. The key lies in Kup Kup Kup's full embrace of all the aromatic, spicy, and occasionally pungent flavors of SE Asian cooking in a well-priced menu that is great for sharing. (We'd also like to give a shout out to Mulu's WF Central branch, which is equally dedicated to replicating the flavors of SE Asia.)
Read the full review here.
Burger Box
It's a brave move to open a burger restaurant in Beijing's crowded fast-casual market but the team behind Moka Bros did just that with Burger Box, a no-fuss burger joint situated just next door to their Nali Patio location. Burger Box's four traditional hamburgers are all made with Australian beef but the crowning jewel is the extravagant “Out of The Box,” with enough extras to make the other options look like child's play. For a whopping RMB 158, it comes topped with Iberico ham, brie, and shaved black truffles.
Read the full review here.
Cocottine
Groupe Flo continue their bid for domination of the Beijing restaurant market (also see: Miam Miam) with Cocottine, a rustic, family-style restaurant in Parkview Green that is named after a small French saucepan. This latest addition to the portfolio offers dishes such as crayfish cooked in tomato bisque and Milanese beef osso buco with mashed potatoes, both served in the restaurant's eponymous enamel-coated cast-iron cocottes. The indoor-outdoor patio also makes for a nice touch, almost tricking diners into believing they've escaped the confines of a mall basement.
Read the full review here.
Zha Zha Bistro
Paca Li's new project, Zha Zha Bistro near Qianmen, puts a creative spin on Guizhou cuisine, demonstrating exactly why everyone should be paying attention to regional Chinese food. Although the venue's floral painted walls and gleaming marble balcony and tables are gorgeous, Zha Zha's food is an even greater thing of beauty. The dishes are a mashup of the traditional dim sum of Li’s childhood in southern China and made-for-sharing tapas-like plates with inventive sauces and stuffings, and truly striking presentation (as can also be seen at the top of this blog).
Read the full review here.
Merci
Beijingers living around Chaoyang Joy City mall have a new reason to be thankful these days: Merci, the latest venture by TRB. The brand famous for its fine dining establishments has chosen one of Beijing’s busiest shopping hubs for their newest restaurant, an upper-midrange bistro falling somewhere between the fancy TRB Hutong and their more casual Hulu in Sanlitun. Classic French dishes like Nicoise salad and roast lamb leg offer the best bang for your buck.
Read the full review here.
Red Lobster
American chain Red Lobster made a splash in summer 2019 when it opened in Taikoo Li, the chain's second store in China after Shanghai. Fans of the brand will surely be pleased to find that the Beijing location is serving longtime favorites like the fluffy and piping hot complimentary cheddar bay biscuits, the Red Lobster chopped salad (RMB 90), and above all, the flagship steamed live Maine lobster, which if you didn't get the memo, is basically the sole reason for this chain to exist. We also dig the daily happy hour, which has good deals of hearty-sized drink pours.
Read the full review here.
Daruma
From the same group behind Bottega and El Barrio, Daruma sees the team looking east to Japan. This modern izakaya impresses with its East-West decor (think Japanese-style wooden paneling with hints of vintage Americana) and a menu of classic-with-a-twist dishes such as chicken meatball yakitori served with mascarpone and egg yolk. Don't miss their rich and warming Tokyo-style abura soba now that winter is here.
Read the full review here.
Turkish Feast
The Shang complex on Xinyuanli became that little bit more international this year with the addition of Turkish restaurant and bar, Turkish Feast. Turkish Feast bills itself as a "steak house" and meat is certainly a mainstay of the menu, including a range of predominantly lamb and beef-based dishes, including dry-aged steaks and traditional Turkish kebabs. In addition, don't miss the mezze dishes, such as hummus and muhammara, and the stone oven-baked breads.
Read the full review here.
Jing-A Longfusi Taproom
Although it is technically a taproom, we're including Jing-A Longfusi on this list by merit of their must-try sourdough pizzas, which catapulted them straight to eighth place in this year's Pizza Cup. The pizza dough is left to rise slowly overnight before being tossed into the high-temperature brick oven. That slow rise gives the dough a complex flavor and a bubbly texture akin to Neapolitan-style pizza, with the best toppings benefitting from when the kitchen flex their creative muscles. The Yunnan wild mushroom (RMB 90) is as good a white pizza as we have had in Beijing, topped with a generous and fragrant scattering of mushrooms and black truffle shavings.
Read the full review here.
Ling Long
Located in the newly rebranded/renovated BEI Zhaolong Hotel, Ling Long is a modern Chinese restaurant with a kitchen led by chef Jason Liu, formerly of Bistro 3. The presentation of the dishes served is distinctly modern French, but the flavors are unmistakably Chinese, something that Ling Long is calling “re-fine dining.” Take for example Chef Liu's pork belly dish, which perfectly evokes the flavors of traditional Dongbei-style pork and sauerkraut hot pot but is also worlds away from its usual rustic presentation, substituting melt-in-the-mouth slices of sous vide Spanish pork belly and a crystal clear consommé infused with pickled cabbage. One to watch for Michelin in 2020.
Read the full review here.
Gou Gou Guo
It's hard to miss Gou Gou Guo's huge storefront on Xingfucun Zhonglu and once you're inside you'll be glad you didn't miss it because you're in for a tasty Korean-style hot pot treat. There are three different kinds of pots available: soup-based hot pot, skillet, and stir-fry dishes. The very winter-friendly soup hot pot is available in both small and large serving sizes, with plenty of meat-heavy options and while none of them are completely vegetarian, the seafood (RMB 188 large, RMB 158 small) is safe for pescatarians with its shrimp, scallops, mussels, and octopus.
Read the full review here.
Catch up with what you missed this year with all of our 2019 Year in Review posts.
More stories by this author here.
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Photos courtesy of the restaurants, Uni You, the Beijinger team
