Last Orders: Marilyn Mai and Josh Ong, Food Writers

Every month, we ask noteworthy Beijingers to imagine their final meal before leaving the city for good.

The “venue”
We’d gather a dozen electric scooters (starting with our own, which is yellowed, cracked and rusted from four years of dutiful service), fashion them into a raft, and solder some trays onto the handlebars for convenient on-the-go dining. Because our beloved food spots stretch from Wudaokou to Guomao, we’ll need to be mobile for this.

The starters
First stop: Shin Yeh in Zhongguancun, where we’ll grab some shrimp and taro rolls, dusting them with 300 API air on the way to Fangjia Hutong. At Aimo Town, we’ll get an order of the billowy fried rice gratin and a refreshing mint salad. We continue south to Banzhuo at Soho Shangdu for their awesome popcorn chicken, followed by Du Hsiao Yueh at Parkview Green for their traditional oyster omelettes and some of the shrimp, too – oh, the joy of the bubbly-crispy edge of the potato-starch batter.

The mains
We can never get enough of dough in its many forms, so we’ll drop by the Sanlitun Noodle Bar at 3.3 for a hearty bowl of eggplant and diced pork noodles, complete with the little egg hat on top. Then we’ll scoot up Xiaoyun Lu for a stop at Smiling Dumplings. Wanton for wontons, we’ll get an order of their mala chaoshou alongside their potstickers, which have just the right ratio of savory meatball to toothsome wrapper. Then it ’s back over to Haidian for another one of our
favorite dishes. The dapan ji at BLCU's Muslim restaurant is still the most satisfying version, especially with an extra order of the fat, chewy noodles to finish off the peppery sauce. Now probably suffering from carb overload, we might stop at Cai Yi Xuan for the braised pork belly with abalone and truffle, then also at Nanjing Impressions for their melt-in-the-mouth lion’s head meatball.

The dessert
We’d go a little lighter on dessert: mango puree and mango chunks with coconut ice cream and sago at Hui Lau Shan, followed by the almond-jello shaved ice at Din Tai Fung.

The entertainment
By now, our scooter flotilla will have picked up dozens of curious Chinese onlookers who’ve leapt astraddle our bikes. With their help, we’ll construct an acrobatic human pyramid spinning all the plates and takeout containers we’ve eaten clean. Once in formation, we’ll traverse the northeast corner of the Third Ring, then cut up to the Birds’ Nest to do some donuts on the Olympic Green. Goodbye, Beijing.

This article originally appeared on page 38 in the April 2013 issue of the Beijinger.