---Food

Northern cuisine specialties include Beijing duck, Mongolian hotpot, Muslim barbecue and imperial dishes, but the rest of China gets a look-in too, from the snortingly hot dishes of Sichuan to the ethnic Dai dishes of clement Yunnan and beyond.

Snacks and Cheap Eats

Off the main roads and in Beijing 's alleyways is a world teeming with food stalls and small eateries. Breakfast can be easily catered for with a youtiao (deep-fried dough stick) and a bowl of porridge ( zhou ). Other snacks include the pancake-like and filling jianbing, and the heavy meat filled roubing, cooked bread filled with finely chopped pork. Dabing can be found everywhere—a chunk of round, unleavened bread sprinkled with sesame seeds—and of course there's mantou (steamed bread). Also look out for roujiamo , a scrumptious open-your-mouth-wide bun filled with diced lamb, chili and garlic shoots.

Worth checking out is the food mall in the basement of the Oriental Plaza on Wangfujing. It's a squeaky-clean fast food emporium of Cantonese, Yunnan , Sichuan , teppanyaki, clay pot and porridge outlets plus loads of other types of Asian cuisine.

Markets

A sight in itself, the bustling Donghuamen Yeshi night market at the northern end of Wangfujing near Sundonggan Plaza is a veritable food zoo: lamb kebabs, beef and chicken skewers, corn on the cob, smelly tofu, cicadas grasshoppers, kidneys, quail's eggs, squid, fruit, porridge, fried pancakes, chicken hearts, pita bread stuffed with meat, shrimps…and that's just the start. Foreigners go all slack jawed at the marvels on view. The market is open every day of the year apart from the Spring Festival; 5:30pm to 10:00pm.

Another fascinating spectacle is the Wangfujing Xiaochijie ( Wangfujing Snack Street ) south of the night market. Fronted by an ornate pailou, the quadrant is a bright and cheery corner of restaurants and stalls overhung with colorful flags and bursting with character and flavor.

Beijing Duck

The capital's most famous invention is now a production line of sorts. Your meal starts at one of the farms around Beijing , where the duck is fattened with grain and soybean paste. The duck carcass is lacquered with molasses, pumped with air, filled with boiling water, dried, and then roasted over a fruitwood fire. The result is delicious. The duck is served in stages. First comes boneless meat and crispy skin with a side dish of shallots, plum sauce and crepes, then duck soup made of bones and all the other parts of the duck except the quack..

Qianmen Quanjude Roast Duck Restaurant

Known as the “Old Duck”, this is one of oldest restaurant in the capital, dating back to 1864. It remains one of the city's best places for roast duck..

Tel: 86 01—6511 2481

32 Qianmen Dajie

Tel: 86 01—6525 3310

9 Shuaifuyuan Hutong (nearby Wangfujing)

Tianwaitian is a reliable chain of Beijing Duck specialists dotted around town. The chefs do a fine job on the tasty morsels, served up alongside a thick wad of pancakes. Order beer by the pint; the meicai kou rou is a delicious dish of melt-in-mouth strips of fatty pork atop a small mound of meicai cabbage.

Dumplings

When in Beijing , do as Beijingers do: gobble down dumplings (jiaozi) by the bowl. Small steamed or boiled bite-size parcels of meat and vegetables in pastry envelopes, jiaozi arrive scalding at the table, to be doused in a small dish of soy sauce and vinegar and chomped.

Golden Cat Dumpling City

Open 24 hours. Come here whenever the unpredictable mood for dumplings grabs you, day or night. This courtyard eatery, near the east gate of Tuanjiehu Gongyuan, serves over 20 varieties of dumplings: from the standard pork-filled, through to pumpkin, aubergine, donkey-meat and beyond. Order dumplings by the liang (about ￥ 3.5 for five dumplings)