Capital cuisine: Three Beijing restaurants bringing China’s regional cuisines to Beijing’s fine dining tables

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At Mansion Cuisine by Jingyan, Peking duck is served three ways, one of which is the traditional carving that yields 108 slices. — Picture by Ethan Lau

By Ethan Lau

Thursday, 11 Jun 2026 8:35 AM MYT

BEIJING, June 11 — Beijing does not immediately strike one as a culinary destination.

The buildings are towers of glass and steel, the roads wide enough to lose yourself in, and the scale of the city is designed for movement.

It is a capital in the most literal sense — built for business, not pleasure.

Almost everyone I met on this trip had come from somewhere else. Our guide was from Nanjing. A chef from Henan. A waiter from Fujian.

It is a city that has always drawn people in from the vast interior of the country, and they bring their food with them: their ingredients, their techniques, their memories of home.

In a handful of restaurants across the capital, a more deliberate version of that same story unfolds.

Three chefs in three restaurants across Beijing make a serious, meticulous argument for regional Chinese cuisine — not just Beijing’s own, but Cantonese, Sichuanese, and a reimagined version of the capital’s culinary tradition itself.

The restaurants have Michelin stars and are among Asia’s 50 Best. The cooking is precise, refined, and deeply personal.

Taken together, they amount to something that feels brand new, yet rooted in the same traditions.

Historically, ducks were marked with sugar syrup in case of a swap during roasting. Today, Mansion Cuisine by Jingyan encourages guests to write messages on their ducks before roasting (left). Traditional Peking-style grilled lamb, served with a sesame biscuit (right). — Picture by Ethan Lau

Mansion Cuisine by Jingyan

Chef Duan Yu calls his cooking “New Beijing Cuisine”, which is the centrepiece at the Michelin-starred Mansion Cuisine by Jingyan, the crown jewel of his Jingyu Catering Group of restaurants.

Housed in a remodelled siheyuan courtyard near the Lama Temple, the restaurant utilises a modern approach to traditional imperial Beijing cuisine.

Among the dishes that stood out: sea cucumber dressed in a dark, glossy sauce derived from Tianfuhao pork knuckle, 天福号酱肘子, a condiment tracing its history over 280 years to a Shandong shopkeeper who set up in Beijing during the Qing dynasty.

The sea cucumber itself is firm and springy, nothing like the soft, slippery texture that is more prevalent here.

The Peking duck came three ways: first, a thin slice with cliff honey and black truffle, then carved into the traditional 108 slices to preserve the lacquered skin and served with erbajiang, 二八酱, a classic Beijing peanut and sesame paste condiment, and finally, the rest of the duck wok-fried with salt and pepper, and with chillies and scallions.

Peking-style hotpot, also known as shuanyangrou, or instant-boiled mutton, is a pillar of traditional Beijing cuisine.

Lamb from Inner Mongolia is used at Jingyan, with thin slices interwoven with strips of cartilage for a snappy, almost crunchy resistance, cooked quickly in a clear broth with goji berries, and served with two sauces: the first a traditional sesame paste, the second with sand onion, also from Inner Mongolia.

The same cut of lamb is later grilled with onions and coriander and served between sesame biscuits.

Anpu-style poached chicken at The House of Dynasties looks very similar to the white cut chicken we are used to here in Malaysia, but bears a few key differences (left). Instead of soy sauce, oyster brine is used to season the wok-fried beef slices (right). — Picture by Ethan Lau

The House of Dynasties

For most Malaysians — especially those based in Kuala Lumpur — Cantonese food is no mystery.

So of the three restaurants, this was the one I expected to feel most at home in.

And I did, for the most part. But there were moments where the food diverged from anything I knew, and those turned out to be the most interesting moments of the meal.

Chef Justin Tan is from Zhanjiang, a small coastal city in Guangdong whose culinary identity is distinct even within Cantonese cooking.

He made history when T’ang Court at The Langham Shanghai became the first restaurant in mainland China to receive three Michelin stars, in the inaugural 2016 Michelin Guide Shanghai.

Now at Rosewood Beijing’s The House of Dynasties, a restaurant inspired by Dream of the Red Chamber, a classic of Chinese literature, his hometown keeps surfacing on the plate.

The Anpu-style poached chicken rice was the clearest illustration of the distance between what I knew and what I was eating.

The flavour was extraordinarily pure — clean, unadulterated chicken, without the familiar presence of scallion and ginger.

The chicken itself was denser and firmer, none of the slippery, supple texture we are used to here, though the skin had a lovely smooth quality to it.

The Zhanjiang-style fried lobster arrived buried under fermented black beans and garlic, the meat startlingly firm, deeply savoury and impossible to stop eating.

But the dish that left the biggest impression was the simplest: wok-fried beef.

Chef Tan explained that instead of soy sauce, he uses oyster brine — made in-house, one step before it’s reduced all the way down to oyster sauce — for its pure, savoury, briny flavour, showcasing Zhanjiang’s famous oysters.

The husband-and-wife-offal pieces are tingly, spicy and texturally stimulating (left). Steamed Wagyu beef from Shandong with celtuce and Chinese celery, a remarkably refreshing summer Sichuan dish (right). — Picture by Ethan Lau

Chef 1996

This was the restaurant I was most looking forward to. I had seen Fuchsia Dunlop — the writer who is arguably the most authoritative voice on Sichuan cuisine in the English language — visit and share her experience on Instagram, and that was enough.

Here in Malaysia, Sichuan food is having a moment, but it arrives mostly through its loudest exports: the mala hotpot, the numbing heat, the communal spectacle of it.

What I encountered at Chef 1996 was something else entirely.

Chef Dee Liang’s restaurant is private rooms only, situated in an industrial part of Chaoyang.

Like with Chef Duan and his restaurant group, Chef 1996 is the showpiece of the Meizhou Dongpo empire, which has over 100 locations in both China and the United States.

The restaurant’s name is a reference to the year Chef Dee and her husband opened the first location.

It opened in 2023 and by 2026 had entered Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants at No. 52 — the first Sichuan restaurant ever to do so.

The fuqi feipian — husband and wife offal pieces, beef tongue and tripe in spicy numbing oil — was the dish I had been fixating on since seeing it on Dunlop’s Instagram, and it delivered.

The numbing heat was less a wall of sensation than a tingle, like little needles dancing across the tongue, the spice precise and almost delicate.

But the dish that genuinely surprised me was the steamed Shandong Wagyu beef with celtuce and Chinese celery, served with an erjingtiao pepper sauce.

Incredibly fresh and summery, light in a way I had not associated with Sichuan cooking at all — a complete dismantling of my narrow perception of what the cuisine could be.

The familiar heat returned with the braised topmouth culter, a freshwater fish served with rice jelly, pickled chillies and pickled ginger, layering soft, pillowy textures with sharp, tangy spice.

Mansion Cuisine by Jingyan

22 Jianchang Hutong,

Dongcheng, Beijing.

Open daily, 11.30am-2pm, 5.30-10pm

Tel: +86 10 8663 2999

http://www.jingyu2020.com/h-col-118.html

Instagram: @jingyan_beijing

The House of Dynasties

4F, Rosewood Hotel,

Jing Guang Centre, Hujialou,

1 Chaoyangmenwai Street,

Chaoyang, Beijing.