Xin Rong Ji (Xinyuan South Road) - Beijing
Main dining room with cooking station in the background
Rating: 18/20
Where: Beijing, China
When: Dinner for 2 on 30 July 2023
Cost: Tasting menu 1850-2580 CNY, Wine pairing 498 CNY
Accolades: 3 Michelin Stars
Why: Elegantly prepared Chinese cuisine bursting with flavor
“Xin Rong Ji” is the name of a chain of fine-dining restaurants in China. Starting modestly in 1995, it has since become a juggernaut - many of its branches boast Michelin stars: in Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Chengdu and Hong Kong. One of its locations in Beijing even holds the ultimate three stars, being the first Chinese restaurant in Mainland China to achieve that feat. Unusually for a medium-sized chain, though, there is no English website, no online menus and all reservations have to be made by phone. Fortunately, our hotel concierge helped us with the latter, so we arrived for our three-star dinner on a rainy evening in late July.
The restaurant is located off the lobby of a hyper-modern office building that was built only a few years ago. The relatively low-key entrance gets a bit lost in the huge atrium - a casual observer might think that it belongs to a coffee shop. But passing through the open doors, we entered an enourmous space with high ceilings and decorated in a modern Chinese style. Two open kitchens occupied the center of the room, with dozens of tables placed in-between and around them. This restaurant would probably be able to seat upwards of a hundred people at full capacity. Oddly, only a third of the tables we filled during our visit, but we were told that this was due to “capacity restrictions”, and not a sign of unpopularity.
Towards the back of the restaurant was one of the cleanest fish tanks that I've ever seen - it could be straight from an aquarium. Behind the tank was a display of dried abalone and dried fish maw, various kinds of fish on ice, and a cooler full of vegetables. It's a shame that this well organized presentation is not more prominently located. While admiring the fish, I also learned that yellow croaker (a fish repeatedly used during our dinner) has to be caught at night, since its distinctive yellow coloring only develops in darkness (see third picture below).
Xin Rong Ji encourages (foreign?) guests to (pre-)order a tasting menu, which in our case was customized around dietary restrictions (one pescatarian). Normally, there were three tasting menus available: two at 1850 CNY, and a seasonal mushroom menu, where almost every course contained mushrooms, at 2580 CNY. Our dinner was an extended version of the latter, and cost around 4000 CNY - definitely not a cheap meal, even by Western standards. While the three standard tasting menus had matching wine pairings, our customized menu required us to order wines by the glass instead. The quality of these wines was mixed, a Chinese red was surprisingly good, but several whites and a rose Champagne were underwhelming. It's probably better to pick a bottle of known quality and stick with it.
The service throughout the evening was quite good, with the staff speaking great English in addition to all menus being available in English. Less good: dishes arrived much too quickly, especially at the beginning of our dinner. I was served one course while still enjoying the previous one. Curiously, that's very similar to what happened at our dinner the day before. Given that two three-star kitchens subjected us to rapid-fire courses for two nights in a row, I'll have to assume that the problem is with me, and not with them. In Chinese banquets, the traditional form of Chinese fine-dining, dishes are customarily served whenever they are ready, leading to lots of them being on the table at the same time. So maybe a Chinese customer would not be shocked to see courses overlapping in a tasting menu either, and it's just my Western preconception that food should arrive in a measured progression that's at issue here. In any case, after we asked the kitchen to slow down a bit, they did so for the rest of our meal, and even offered us a brief intermission later on.
Similar to our three-star meal on the previous night, seasonal fruit were already at the table when we sat down. In this case, seasonal plums, which were fine but not too exciting.
Three condiments (or snacks, if one preferred) arrived before the tasting menu. Marinated vegetables had a nice crunch, but were definitely more in the “condiment” category 17. Pickled radishes were lovely as well - lightly sweet, crunchy and almost silky - much fancier than the variety usually seen 18. Finally, small fried fish were nicely fishy and spicy, but a bit too chewy for my taste 15.
Our first course was the deep fried belly of a hairtail fish served over raw green onion slivers and topped with golden caviar. The latter is quite an expensive ingredient, and thereby went some way towards explaining the cost of our dinner. The fish was perfectly cooked: crunchy, with a nice texture and an extremely light batter. The green onions added some sharpness, and the caviar was light and creamy. A simple dish, perfectly prepared. Well, if I had to nitpick: the caviar mostly disappeared in the dish, which is a bit of shame given its not insignificant cost. It didn't add any texture (no noticeable pop), and barely any saltiness. “Regular” black caviar would have accomplished all of this at a fraction of the price, but then again might not have harmonized as well with the fish. Overall, a very nice dish 18.
Next, we received mantis shrimp that was stuffed with shrimp ovaries, set on top of celtuce and surrounded by an amber wine sauce. The shrimp was prepared quite nicely, presumably blanched - it was not overcooked at all. The ovaries felt a bit like a gimmick, I couldn't really taste them, but honestly didn't know what to look for either - some creaminess maybe? The sauce was excellent though, full of flavor, sweet, some umami, and with a noticeable hint of alcohol/wine 17.
According to Michelin, what distinguishes this branch of Xin Rong Ji from the other (non-three-starred) locations, is a dish of baby Peking duck. For that reason, I was looking forward to the following Peking duck course, even though I'm generally not a big fan of duck. Well, to get straight to the point, this was the best Peking duck I've ever had. Good pancakes, a delicious plum sauce, sliced duck that was flavorful and not too fatty - amazing! Small quibbles - the pancakes got cold too quickly, and the mushrooms didn't taste of much, but even then, this part of the dish was worth a 19. Unfortunately, there was also a second preparation of duck that looked a bit like two pieces of nigiri - fatty skin on top of duck meat. And when I say “fatty”, I mean soaked with fat - I found this close to inedible, maybe a 13 but only after making it palatable with copious amounts of plum sauce. Overall 18.
The pescatarian alternative to the duck was an oyster topped with garlic and surrounded by chili oil. The oyster taste was light, but together with the bitingly sharp raw garlic and the lightly spicy oil, this dish was quite nice 17.
After a dinner earlier this year in Taipei, we've been apprehensive whenever fish maw makes its appearance on a menu. That's because depending on how fish maw is prepared, it can become a big chewy gelatinous blob - not exactly our idea of a delicious dish. So we were correspondingly hesitant when we were served a soup that contained fish maw, yellow croaker and Chinese amber wine. Luckily, our worries turned out to be entirely unfounded. The fish maw was nicely cooked, it added just a bit of spongy texture, and might have been mistaken for, say, a kind of mushroom. The yellow croaker was also quite good, and the broth was excellent - creamy and with some spiciness from white pepper 18. My wife would have given this a 19.
Speaking of my wife, she received a different soup at this point, a slightly sour soup containing mushrooms and razor clams. I loved the broth, which was both spicy and sour (18 or 19). Sadly, the mushrooms didn't taste of much, and the clam pieces were much too large for the dish and hard to eat due to their chewiness 16. My wife was not as nitpicky and would have rated this an 18 overall.
Starting into the main courses, we again received two different dishes. For me, it was a medium-sized abalone (28pp) with Chinese cauliflower and a meat-based brown sauce. The dried abalone had been suffused with the sauce's flavor. Its texture was only lightly chewy, but not totally soft. Together with the wonderful sauce, and a lightly pickled and spicy lotus root served on the side, this was a delightful dish 18.
The pescatarian alternative to the abalone was a deep fried fish maw served with lychee mushrooms, a crab roe “pesto” (a mixture of crab meat and crab roe) and some balsamic vinegar as a condiment. Proving the adage that everything tastes good deep-fried, the fish maw didn't disappoint, and was really nice. The mushrooms were delicious was well, as was the crab, especially when some vinegar was added. A great combination, but overall maybe a bit too fatty - the fish maw's exterior was literally drenched in cooking oil 18.
Next, a whole steamed yellow croaker with lychee mushrooms. The fish was perfectly cooked to an almost a creamy texture. There was quite a number of bones to contend with, but the amazing salty, fishy sauce made me quickly forgot about them. I could have drunk this sauce by the cup - 19 by itself. For the whole dish, 18.
A soup with house-made tofu, gourd and crab had a slightly smoky/burnt flavor. That might be an ominous sign coming out of my home kitchen, but was actually very nice here. The handmade, textured tofu did a great job of soaking up the delicious soup. We weren't meant to eat the crab itself, but its flavor, especially that of its roe, was suffused in the broth. Light, and well seasoned 18. My wife voted for 19.
Our final savory dish consisted of lotus seeds that had been cooked with chanterelle mushrooms and Chinese celery. This might have been the first time that we've eaten lotus seeds - they were vaguely reminiscent of ginkgo nuts, but much lighter. A light and healthy dish, although some additional salt would have given this a bit more flavor. Then again, we were about to move to desserts, so having a lightly seasoned dish might have been intentional 16.
Two chilled dessert soups came next. A mango soup that came with sago, cream and pomelo was quite nice. The lovely mango flavor and the sour and chunky pomelo pieces made for a nice contrast 16. The second soup contained lily bulbs, white and golden fungus, a stewed goji berry and crystal sugar. The result was more gelatinous and less sweet than the first soup. Certainly not bad, but I haven't had enough comparable soups to fairly judge how good this was in absolute terms 15.
To soften the blow of the substantial check, we received some home-made almond cookies. Thin and full of almond flavor, they were not bad, but also roughly comparable to what one might find at a good fine food store 15.
Overall: This was the best Chinese dinner I've had in China so far. Dishes were full of flavor and also refined, with excellent sauces, broths and presentations. There was also a remarkable consistency throughout, all courses were of equally high caliber. Definitely worth a visit when in Beijing 18.
