Fujian Cuisine or a Holiday Meal? Wuyishan Nongjiacai Hits Both

To taste Christmas, you might not believe that you should travel to the southwest of Beijing, where the tea market lies between the Third and Fourth Ring Roads. It may sound even more implausible that the restaurant that you should visit serves Fujian cuisine, so well-known for lighter flavors of the sea. But when the dish arrives, you will acquiesce.

The modest name, “beef and taro” (niurou yuzi 牛肉芋子, RMB 26), gives little indication of what is to come, although a first scent of warm cinnamon-perfumed cider should uncloak any mystery. And if you are generous with your vision, what could be a non-descript Chinese dish, in fact, glimmers a holiday palette – white taro, green scallions and brilliant red rounds of fresh chili pepper scattered amid the beef.

You will learn in this same meal that a vegetable (hongcaitai 红菜苔, RMB 15) with faint purple stalks exists that tastes like broccoli rabe, but better, so bitter and complex for such a plain-looking thing. You will discover that the meat just next to a cow’s stomach (dubianrou 肚边肉, RMB 26) can be delightful. And finally, you will reassess your decision to move to the cold and arid north when you could be living on the coast eating an exceptional creation of squid and cauliflower (suanlanyouyu 酸辣鱿鱼, RMB 26).

Wuyishan Nongjiacai  武夷山农家菜
Daily 11am-2pm, 5-8.30pm. Maliandao Hutong, Guangwai Dajie, Xicheng District (131 2669 6251)
西城区广外大街马连道胡同内
[subway] 1.5km southeast of Liuliqiao East station (Line 9)

Read this article in the Beijinger's December issue: