Food and Drink

A stylish setting but tame dishes fall flat

By B.W. Liou (China Daily)
Updated: 2011-05-25 07:52

Master Zong, a folk artist who has made flour figurines for four decades, shows off his impressive skills in the restaurant. Photos by Wang Jing / China Daily

New Shaanxi eatery fails to live up to expectations, B.W. Liou reports.

Master Zong briefly darted his tired eyes and corresponding brows upward as if to say: "Are you serious??Dressed in his traditional Chinese brimless cap and golden silk jacket, he had been asked to make a complicated figurine of an old Beijing woman using his technique of shaping flour-based dough into mianren, or flour people. Master and customer eventually settled on the legendary Zhu Bajie from Journey to the West, but the pestering didn't stop.

"Where are you from? How did you come to learn this?" the customer asked.

In a quiet voice, the 62-year-old master said he was from Xi'an, had learned this art form from his family and had been making mianren for 40 years. Curious faces and iPhones were thrust near his hands to capture the process.

Behind and to the left of Master Zong was a kitchen, but not any ordinary kitchen. With a central walkway fenced off by thick glass lined with monitors, the massive kitchen held cooks and assistants who quickly made dishes in their walled-off spaces.

A waitress, who asked customers to don well-worn chef's hats before entering, gave a very brief and at times stumbling explanation of Shaanxi food. When asked how many cooks were in the kitchen, she said she didn't know.

This is what you'll get at China Folk's Restaurant: tidbits of culture and education, where Shaanxi province and its creative cuisine are delivered to Beijing in an elegant and meticulously crafted restaurant. What you'll also find is a place that is mostly style over substance, where dishes have great potential to dazzle but are often executed only to a certain point.

Located in Dongzhimen, the restaurant is indeed impressive, at least from the inside. Up the stairs from Master Zong and the showcase kitchen on the first floor, a spacious dining hall is partitioned in two.

At one end, which seats about 50, a procession of clay miniatures of old Chinese men playing musical instruments or pulling horse carts adorns a wall. Tables along the drapes are separated by pillars of mirrors and black latticed wood; large lamps, wrapped in more latticed wood, hang low.

The restaurant's dishes are stylish as well. The Pucheng tofu with pepper is served in a clay pot and consists of layers: at the top are homemade tofu squares covered in chili paste and dried chilies, beneath are fatty pork slices and at the bottom are enoki mushrooms and rips of white cabbage.

All of this is simmering in a soup of oil and chili sauce, which somehow sweats the covered cabbage and fungus and creates a layer of broth underneath. It's not as spicy as it appears but also doesn't stray too far from mapo tofu.

The "cuisine in mom's kitchen" is another creative but altogether unsatisfying dish. Served in a modern iron pan, the dish combines stewed chicken wings, fatty pork cubes and glass noodles in an anise-tinged sauce that reminds me a lot of the chicken feet served in dim sum, which I am craving right now. The chicken is fall-off-the-bone tender but do you really need that quality in chicken wings?

Other disappointments included the "steamed four joy", a sampling of three meats and tofu in four small bowls without any distinctive flavors, the overly dry fried dumplings and the bland wonton soup.

Two dishes, however, managed to both wow and warm the belly. The stewed pickles with duck in clay pot is a fantastic blend of gaminess, salt, heat and tartness.

At only 79 yuan, this small cauldron provided enough for 12 small bowls of soup and was quickly finished off by our table of two.

The duck meat shreds in the soup, but isn't so dry that you can't eat it on its own. Loaded with slices of zhusun (bamboo fungus)and white radish blocks, this is the remedy for this week's run of colds in Beijing.

The other winner is the amusingly named "gigot cooked with special sauce", which is a roasted leg of mutton on a raised porcelain plate.

It comes with two separate saucers of pickled greens and chili powder. Peppery and tender without a trace of fattiness, this is a beautifully cooked dish.

Over two visits, China Folk's Restaurant did much to impress with peripherals and visuals but left me wanting more at the table. The 11th restaurant from the Shaanxi Kitchen Restaurant Group and its first in Beijing, it is what the government would call an "all-around" experience.

Unfortunately, aside from the statuettes of dragons, snakes, roosters and pigs from Master Zong (hint to men on dates: many women bounced with joy after receiving the gifts) and a few inspiring dishes, the restaurant needs a better showing in Beijing.

(China Daily 05/25/2011)