Eating Alfresco: Courtyard Bistro at Red Wall Garden Hotel

Ranking fifth out of more than 5,000 hotels in Beijing on Trip Advisor, Red Wall Garden Hotel is clearly doing something right. So when we heard they also had a pretty popular restaurant, Courtyard Bistro, we felt we really had to try it out.

It is customary for hotels in China to have at least one restaurant serving what amounts to a Cantonese menu with a grab bag of influences from all over the rest of China. Courtyard Bistro has taken this idea and run with it ... right off the edge of the map. Their menu is a self-dubbed culinary journey, a rotating seasonal selection of dishes from China’s eight great culinary traditions. So, on our visit, we sampled a Zhejiang-style dish of fried fish and shrimp cakes in honey bean sauce (RMB 78), but you could equally cruise through dishes such as Sichuan pickled vegetable with beef (RMB 82) or Guangdong-style pork ribs (RMB 78).

The food is good, if lacking a little in authentic zest. The real find here, however, is the huge courtyard. Set far enough back from Shijia Hutong to avoid the car horns but still take in the area’s more pleasant sounds, the comfy patio furniture and reasonably priced drinks (they don’t apply the usual hotel service charge) list encourage lingering.

Does Courtyard Bistro serve the best Chinese food in Beijing? No it does not, but when you’re sitting in their quiet courtyard with a glass of wine listening to the burbling fountain in the corner, it doesn’t seem to matter all that much. 

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Photo: Ken