Wan Liu Ge
Located south of Dong Cheng district is one of the ten best parks in Beijing is Wan liu ge. The restaurant itself is a converted residence of traditional courtyard house architecture, beautifully painted on the outside and inside full of authentic stone sculpture, wood carvings and admirable wood panel fret-work showing scenes from times gone by. The courtyard (once open to the sky) has been covered to provide space the largest dining area. Eight VIP dining rooms occupy the classic bay, or "the space between", design of the classic courtyard/bay architecture. One of the VIP rooms had an exposed ceiling showing the typical pillars-and-beams framing the epitomizes this tradition.
Equally impressive is the restaurant's surroundings. A very spacious outdoor courtyard dining area with comfortable canvas chairs is separated from the lake of this beautiful park by a sinuous pure white carved stone wall. The restaurant and the courtyard blend effortlessly with the calm and restful natural surroundings: an uncommonly relaxing environment.
Ninety per cent of Wan liu ge's customers are Chinese, but the menus are in English with pictures and the severs are young and polite.
Our diner began with a salad of toon spouts and peanuts in a light vinaigrette. The Chinese toon is a perennial hardwood, also used in Chinese traditional medicine. The very young spouts and young leaves are highly aromatic, nutritional and healthy, with a taste similar to what we call bean sprouts.
A dish of sauteed peeled asparagus, lily bulb (a starchy and therefore slightly glutinous bulb when fried) and Chinese yam (not a yam as we know it, but an edible tuberous root with medicinal properties) made for a mild and pleasant vegetable side dish.
Our two main entrees were the ubiquitous Peking duck and Mandarin fried fish, Sichuan style. The fish was presented on a platter in it's entirety, head and tail, with it's spiky spine curving like a snake around the bite-sized pieces of fish.
Three other dishes we sampled were a refreshing boat of steamed pumpkin cubes in a light sugar syrup, a plate of very plump fried meat dumplings and a flaky tube of eel-stuffed pastry. Yes, I said eel-stuffed. The pastry was very flaky like a puff pastry but softer and messier. If I hadn't been told the filling eel, I would have thought it was a sweet fig filling: a pleasant surprise.
Diner over, we heard some music playing in the distance. I was told amateur musicians gather nightly to play Peking opera, playing that night on a type of Chinese lute and two differently pitched vertical bowed fiddles, with different singers taking turns. This was another example of the superlative environment to be found at Wan liu ge's.
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