Back For More: Makye Ame

Inquire about hearty regional Chinese cuisine backed by dinner entertainment, and you’ll most likely be directed to one of Beijing’s bigger Xinjiang restaurants. But there’s another, perhaps better, option. Tibetan restaurant Makye Ame provides rich, stick-to-your-ribs food alongside ethnic music and song.

Their Yonganli branch offers a more quaint, intimate atmosphere then you may have come to expect for dinner-and-a-show dining. The homey interior comes as a welcome surprise after a dark, indiscernible second-floor entrance and you are quickly enveloped by warm, mouth-watering smells. The richly-colored dining room is covered with an array of cultural objects, from masks and flags to a large prayer wheel, kept spinning by passing seekers of good fortune.

The menu focuses on foods available in the Tibetan highlands, and any uncertain parties can look to the staff for honest recommendations. Unique ingredients do mean some high prices. “Song Rong” mushroom dishes start at RMB 98. Yak dominates the meat options, with jerky (RMB 45), tongue (from RMB 60) and traditional steak fried with potatoes (RMB 118), a sizzling stone bowl thick with gravy and chunks of toothsome meat attached to a layer of tender, melt-in-your-mouth fat. The traditional Tibetan staple of barley tsampa dumplings (RMB 38) are squat, sweet and dense, and serve as a nice little vessel for the provided curry or any leftover gravy.

After filling up, sit back with a cup of yak butter tea or, less adventurously, refreshing green barley beer. Accept the offered white scarf, or khatag, and enjoy the haunting, tribal sounds and singing.

Standout dishes: Traditional yak beef steak, vegetable malai kofta.

Makye Ame 玛吉阿米 1) 11A Xiushui Nanjie, Jianguomenwai, Chaoyang District (6506 9616) 朝阳区建国门外秀水南街甲11号 2) 2/F, Jinhuyuan Gongyu, Baijia Zhuang Dongli 23, Chaoyang District (6508 8986) 朝阳区白家庄东里23号锦湖园公寓会所2层

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Photos courtesy of Makye Ame