UnTour Beijing Food Tours: A Tasting of Local Breakfast Bites

UnTour’s Beijing Hutong Breakfast Tour

UnTour Food Tours first started in Shanghai in 2010 and they have now branched into Beijing with two different tours – a Hutong Breakfast and Old Beijing Dinner tour with a bilingual guide.

Knowing that locals generally live a lifestyle that follows the mantra ‘Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise’, I opted to join the Hutong Breakfast tour, which also falls on the weekend.

“Join us for breakfast as we sample the most authentic and delicious snacks that are hiding in plain sight, once you get off the crowded roads and into the backstreets. Wake up early and explore the culinary scene with our trusted vendors, your bilingual guide and a small group of new foodie friends. Over the course of three hours, you’ll eat your way through China’s 5,000 years of culinary history, try new foods and gain an appreciation for the artisans making these handmade treats. We take pride in our vendor relationships, food and city history knowledge – our guides go through a rigorous training process and are active in the F&B industry. Come taste the city’s tastiest (and safe) authentic foods with a professional insider!” – UnTour Food Tours

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Triple Threat: Cinker Pictures Restaurant, Bar & Cinema

2017 Welcomes Beijing’s Trendiest New Addition: Cinker Pictures

Cinker Pictures is a brand new concept that has opened on the fourth floor of North Sanlitun Taikoo Li next to Space Cycle. Part bar, part restaurant, part cinema it is an intriguing idea that actually fills a vacuum left by the efforts to control media here in the middle kingdom.

Given the paucity of film choices – The Great Wall anyone? – Cinker are planning on showing classic films that you will relish the chance to go and see. Over the month of February 2017, you can expect to see films like “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, “Forrest Gump”, “Wall Street”, “Lolita” and “Fight Club”.

Combine the plush, wide leather chairs with some classic cocktails featured in film favorites (French 75 from Casablanca, Highball from The Great Gatsby (1974) and White Russian from The Big Lebowski) and you may well have an ideal date location. With a cinema that has 30 available seats per film showing, it’s perfect to grab a drink, see a classic film and talk it over a dinner together for an all-in-one date place that covers all the bases. While it’s normally RMB 150 for a ticket + your drink of choice, they have a soft opening promo now where each show ticket is RMB 105 (which also includes a drink).

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Call for Beijing’s Bakers: 2017 Cookie Monster Bake-Off

Have a Talent for Baking? We Want YOU!

Love watching The Great British Bake-Off? Do you ever dream of opening your very own bakery? Are you always the one who volunteers to bring something sweet when friends invite you over for a potluck? Are you in possession of a cherished cookie family recipe?

In the past three years of Cookie Monster Bake-Off events, we already know there is a lot of baking talent in Beijing as we’ve tasted some incredibly moreish cookies over the years. And it’s that time of year when we’re officially putting out the call for Beijing’s best bakers to begin submitting their recipe of choice for our annual bake-off event in March!

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TRB Bites Revisited: New Chef, New Menu

1 Year Later: TRB Bites Revisted

New chef, new menu, same great fundamentals.

TRB Bites@The Courtyard has brought on a new international executive chef Sebastian Schafer last fall (August 2016) and we have heard excellent reviews. A restaurant known to provide excellent value, this one caught everyone by surprise when it opened at the end of 2015 and after a handful of visits with different foodie friends (including a BJ FOoDiEs Charity Dinner that hosted 110 guests), I was long due for a return visit.

A Grand Entrance for a Gorgeous Restaurant

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Saigon Mama: Glitzy Vietnamese from Shanghai

Fast Casual Vietnamese Restaurant Brand from Shanghai

Things are not all rosy in Taikoo Li. There are a core of restaurants that produce great food, have great service and seem to have a great business. At the same time, there is a large section of the upper floor where the casualties keep mounting up. Rent is expensive, and if you aren’t that visible, your offerings need to be pretty special.

Opened at the end of November 2016, Saigon Mama is the latest tenant that, based on our experience this week, won’t be joining the ranks of the long term prosperous.

First impressions were great, ticking all the initial boxes. Their interior is stylish for a fast-casual restaurant, a bit reminiscent of North Taikoo Li’s Cacha Cacha Thai restaurant (currently still under renovations). Sitting in the restaurant, you’re surrounded by shelves stocked full of hot sauce, cans of condensed milk, and other Vietnamese products. It’s stylish and the giant logo streaked with bright blue and red neon wins Saigon Mama some major cool points.

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The Hatchery Hosts Gail’s Caribbean Cuisine

 The Hatchery Re-locates to Zhangzi Zhonglu w/ Gail’s Caribbean Pop-Up

After a very abrupt demise earlier this year, the Hatchery are back!

They have moved into a new location just south of Zhangzizhonglu subway station on Dongsi Jiutiao 东四九条 in the dynamic co-working space called 5LMeet. The space itself is very interesting – it offers the use of desks by the day, beds by night (small apartments for short or long term rent), has a gym, cafe, bookstore, events space and obviously a cool concept like the Hatchery housed within.

LDS Snapshots of 5LMeet:

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The Georg: North Side Meets South Side Collab Dinner

North Side Meets South Side: A Handsome Line-Up of Talented Chefs

The boys at the Georg like to play and the kitchen is their playground.

Where all the new dish creations are first tested, plated and tasted, their kitchen has been action-packed as they’ve been busy cranking out a new winter dinner menu, new “Fat Freddy’s Brunch” menu and even a new lunch menu featuring all the tasty smørrebrøds that was launched at the joint pop-up with Moka Bros last month.

As productive as they’ve been, I suppose “boys will be boys” as Georg’s general manager Stefano Censi who is half Danish/half Italian thought it’d be good fun to bring in a fellow Italian chef for a month-long stint and, in his words, to balance out the ratio of Danish to Italian in the kitchen.

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Merry Vibes & Mulled Wine: The Hutong’s Annual Winter Fayre

It’s the Most Wonderful Time of Year!

The Hutong’s Winter Fayre is one of their biggest community events of the year and it also happens to be where I plan to do most of my Christmas shopping every year.

While many of Beijing’s Christmas bazaars and fairs have all been taking place across the city in various embassies and hotels over the past couple weekends, The Hutong’s Winter Fayre may be one of the smaller fayres in terms of its number of vendors and sheer capacity, but it makes up for its size with its merry vibes and abundance of spiced mulled wine.

Taking place this Saturday, December 9th from 11AM-4PM, this is a great place to stock up on prezzies for the holidays and also a great place to meet and learn about some pretty crafty and talented companies who will be showcasing the best of their merchandise! 

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