Customer Reviews

Beijing Eats:Beijing Eats: A Food Lover's Companion to China's Culinary Capital (Chinese Edition) (English and Chinese Edition)

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This the the non-Chinese speaking Chinese food lovers' gift from Goddess (aka Ms. Mooney as far as I'm concerned). Not only does it cover all the best restaurants of every subtype of Chinese cuisine imaginable, she tells you which dishes to try where (all her recommendations were spot on), and this the best bonus of all - the main details addresses and key menu items are provided in Chinese script for each establishment. This detail made navigating through this bewildering city a joy and also allowed us to not fall into the trap of ordering the same old things everywhere. You see not only does hardly anyone speak English, menus sometimes come only in Chinese AND without photographs. Simply pointing and hoping for the best can sometimes prove hazardous. Thanks to this book I sampled widely trying different regional cuisines. Now if only someone would pay me to write something like this about a city in India...

The noted Beijing food writer Eileen Wen Mooney published the book "Beijing Eats" in February 2009. I spent five months in Beijing, starting literally the week this book was published. As I had followed Ms. Mooney's columns for months before departing for Beijing, I was eagerly awaiting this book and bought it on one of my first days in China.

I was not disappointed. "Beijing Eats" was an invaluable companion and well worth every penny for the savory descriptions of Beijing food alone. There are dozens of Chinese regional cuisines represented in Beijing and Mooney covers them with aplomb. Because of this focus on regional cuisines (the book is arranged alphabetically by region), you could read this book like a food history, without ever going to any of the 140 restaurants recommended. As a food treatise, it would be a very satisfying read, with excellent pictures to match. But of course I did use the book for restaurant recommendations, eating at about 20 of the places Mooney recommended. To her credit, she makes a point of not just recommending the "big name" restaurants, but instead runs the gamut from neighborhood holes in the wall to top-shelf eateries. That made it all the more valuable to me. None of her picks was a clunker, and all provided excellent meals.

My only suggestion would be to simplify the indices. It was sometimes difficult to find a restaurant's listing quickly.

Way back in the mid-1970s, when I was studying Chinese in Taiwan, one of my most treasured possessions was Joseph Nerbonne's Guide to Taipei and All-Taiwan. Who is this guy, we all wondered? Well, whoever, his section on restaurants was an invaluable handbook to the riches of Chinese regional cooking, to me then terra incognita. Remember that throughout the late 1940's the Kuomintang government decamped with increasing haste from the Mainland to Taiwan, bringing with them from all over China officials, soldiers, and whatnot, all their regional tastes in cooking and, inevitably, their restaurants. These were still flourishing in the 1970s, and Nerbonne introduced the best of them, even recommending their signature dishes. Thus he made a real, if modest, contribution to my appreciation of one of the great pillars of Chinese civilization, its artistry and science of food preparation and service. I remember returning home and irritating everyone with my scathing comments on local Chinatown cooking compared to what I had savored in Taiwan, thanks to Nerbonne's incomparable Guide. I also remember returning to Taiwan over a decade later in quite a different capacity and being shocked to see that with the fading of the older refugee generation who had opened these regional restaurants, the distinctiveness and quality these establishments had once possessed, if they still existed, had largely faded, too. Bland "fusion" restaurants, it seemed, had become all the rage.

Fast forward, oh, 20 years or so, and shift the scene to Beijing. With the snappily titled "Beijing Eats," long-time resident Eileen Wen Mooney has published by far the best introduction to Chinese regional cuisines that I have ever seen and actually used. To rather oversimplify, the book is divided into sections devoted to regional cooking, all of which is represented in Beijing. Each section is comprised of a general introduction to the geography, history, and culture of the culinary tradition of the region, recommended dishes, and, finally, restaurants (whose recommendation by Ms. Mooney is strongly implied), together with several of their signature dishes. Throughout the book are gorgeous and, indeed, mouth-watering photographs of various dishes, and attractive pictures of some of the restaurants mentioned. Standard fare for restaurant books, to be sure. However, everything here bespeaks a deep appreciation of Chinese culture and tradition, starting with the characters for the classical names of each of the provinces that commence each regional section. There is enough arcana and exotica to hold the attention of even the most dedicated Sinologist. For example, you may vaguely associate the term huadiao with Shaoxing rice wine, but do you know what the connection actually is? See Page 168. Or the traditional belief in Sichuan peppercorns as an agent of fertility or their mixture in the walls of concubine quarters (p.207)?

Living far from Beijing and its restaurants, my favorite parts of the book are the history-laden general introductions, that on Shaanxi being one among many of the most fascinating. Still and all, it is as a restaurant guide, i.e, where to go and what to eat (and why), that this book must succeed, and I believe that it does, and admirably so. Do you have a hankering for the southern-northern fusion-style Tan Family Cooking? Ms. Mooney will accurately point you to the charmingly tiny establishment, Guoyao Xiaoju. Looking for Chinese food "off the beaten track," so to speak? Hakka or Hui cuisine, perhaps? Or what to order for a Chinese breakfast? Or vegetarian cooking (with its moving evocation of Buddhist underpinnings)? It's is all here, and much more, and in gratifying detail, richly buttressed by anecdote, of both the historical and the merely hoary variety.

Back to May, 1975. The director of the language institute tells us assembled incoming foreign students, "There is no reason for any of you to go hungry. Some of the best food in the world is right here in Taiwan." Nerbonne's Guide soon proved the truth of this statement. With the publication of Eileen Wen Mooney's far more ambitious and successful "Beijing Eats," foreign residents of Beijing have no reason whatsoever now to miss out on the vast glories of Chinese food, whether those of the Deep South of Guangdong Province or the Far Northwest of Xinjiang AR. She even includes map appendices on how you can find these palaces of gustatory delight in Beijing.

This is a book to cherish, whether you live in China or not.

This is a fabulous book --it is a great read even if you are not going to Beijing, but invaluable if you are. I used to live in Beijing and I wish they had had this book when I was there. The information about different cuisines is interesting and helpful and the list of restaurants is perfect for finding the best places to eat outside of tourist restaurants and hotels. I can't wait to try out all the restaurants when I get back to Beijing in the summer.