Toro specialty

La Sushi's owners are so confident of the quality of their product that they call themselves a toro specialty shop. Toro is a fatty but delicious part of tuna belly, a top specialty in Japanese cuisine. La Sushi's managers from Hong Kong love it.

The restaurant says it has special channels for plenty of fresh toro, which is not just tasty, but comes at a reasonable price.

Apart from that, La Sushi provides plenty of fresh sashimi from Hokkaido, as well as sushi, grilled seafoods and Sapporo ramen.

Grilled seafood impresses with its freshness - big scallops, whelk, clams and crabs.

It is a small but good eatery located with a delicate style - gray walls, wooden chairs and tables, beside a bar with fresh seafood on ice. It is a comfortable place to get a treat of fresh Japanese delicacies.

- Ye Jun

2/F Patio Nali, 81 Sanlitun Bar Street, Chaoyang district, Beijing. 010-5208-6120.

Seafood platter

Feast on fresh seafood at The Place, a restaurant offering an international buffet at Langham Place Beijing Capital Airport Hotel. The eatery prepares a seafood platter for two people, featuring Australian oysters, Canadian lobsters and Hokkaido snow crab legs. The platter also has high-quality imported shrimp, mussels, scallops and fried squid rings paired with three kinds of homemade sauce. The Place restaurant overlooks a lake and the airport runway. One can get a clear view of incoming airplanes while dining. The seafood platter costs 688 yuan ($112), subject to a 15 percent

surcharge.

- Ye Jun

The Place, 1/F, Langham Place Beijing Capital Airport, 1 Erjing Lu (Road), Terminal 3, Capital International Airport, Beijing. 010-6450-4316.

China leads awards

Restaurants from the Chinese mainland, Taiwan and Hong Kong dominated the winner's list at Monday's gala awards dinner for Asia's 50 Best Restaurants 2014, sponsored by S. Pellegrino, Acqua Panna and Diners Club for the second year. Like last year, however, no Beijing restaurant made the list.

Amber (No 4) at the Mandarin Oriental Landmark Hotel in Hong Kong took the title of best restaurant in China for the second consecutive year. Chef Paul Pairet's Shanghai restaurants Ultraviolet and Mr & Mrs Bund rank No 8 and No 11 respectively. Hong Kong is represented by returning favorites Lung King Heen (9), 8 1/2 Otto e Mezzo Bombana (10), Caprice (13), Bo Innovation (15), L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon (18), Fook Lam Moon (19), Yardbird (45) and Tenku RyuGin (50). In Shanghai, Fu1015 jumps 14 places to land at No 26, Franck Bistro in Shanghai earns a place (48), and Family Li Imperial Cuisine in Shanghai makes the list for the first time (46). Winners elsewhere include Taiwan's Le Mout (24), 28 HuBin Road in Hangzhou (33), and Robuchon Au Dome in Macau (39).

- Mike Peters

(China Daily 03/02/2014 page8)