Capital Bites: Aria's New Menu, Southern Barbarian Coming Soon, New LMPlus, Maan Coffee, Fish Mama Locations

This week, we've got an update on the Yunnan restaurant Southern Barbarian over in Gulou, as well as new branches of LMPlus, Maan Coffee and Fish Mama locations to report. We also tried the new menu at Aria (amazing) and took the Big Smoke for a spin.

Yunnan continues to be one of the favored cuisines in town, even if everyone's been gaga over Mexican food lately. A new spot's joining the mix: Southern Barbarian, over at Baochao Hutong. They soft-open in early August, with an official grand opening on September 2. The restaurant will also be exhibiting photojournalism by Huang Qingjun, who captures the lives of China's bootstrappers – including Tibetan nomads, farmers and, heck, even acrobats.

Aria at the China World Hotel has always been one of the best places to splurge on a fancy meal, and their new chef is making that even more true. When we sampled some of the offerings on their new menu, we were blown away. A lobster salad came served with an intoxicating lobster and chamomile consomme, roast pigeon with tortellini in a maple glaze tasted like childhood even though I'd never even eaten a dish like that as a child, and a Blackmore wagyu 9+ cut made us want to personally thank the cow who gave his life for those plates.* It was an epic meal, and we highly suggest you put Aria on the list of restaurants you're willing to spend a little chunk of your life savings on. If you're looking to spend a bigger chunk, sommelier Eric Wu can help you with that, too. (This guy is good. Entertaining, too.)

We also tried out The Big Smoke Bistro over the weekend. Good food, good drinks, great potential to be a fun spot just outside Sanlitun proper. Read our thoughts here.

Maan Coffee's got a new location at Gongti north gate. Score. I've been wanting to try their waffles for so long but needed them to open a spot within distance of a "lazy man's walk" from my house.

LMPlus has a new spot at the Upper East Side just outside Northeast Fourth Ring, continuing their trend of opening in places named after locales in New York. I guess any of the Sohos would have been too easy ...

There's something appealing about fish on sticks stuck in sand around a charcoal fire. If you haven't had the experience that is robatayaki at Fish Mama, you should go do that now. With Fish Mama opening another location at the CapitaMall at Taiyanggong, that should get even easier, especially if you don't live too near the CBD.

Over at Fortune Plaza, we've also spotted a new little place called Bistro Ivi. It seems to offer contemporary Euro cuisine in a modern, cafe-like space, but we'll tell you more once we've properly sussed it out.

This coming Sunday through Tuesday, Grand Millennium Beijing is hosting a Singapore Food Festival. All your favorites from the cleanest city-state in Asia will be on offer, including Hainan chicken, crunchy cereal prawns, chilli crab and more. It's RMB 288+15%, but Singapore passport holders get 20% off. Call 8587 6888 ext 3012 for more info.

In other news ... Finally, a constructive use for gutter oil. A couple of weeks ago, we heard that Dutch airline KLM purchased 2,000 tons of gutter oil from China to fuel their planes. Hey, whatever keeps it off the street (snacks).

*New knowledge for the day: Wagyu ratings assess the marbling of the fat and go from 1-12, but producers outside of Japan can only rate up to a 9. So if you're eating 9 or 9+, you're doing pretty well for yourself. Anything above that is almost more like fat marbled with meat anyway, and not too far from eating foie gras. Or a stick of butter. Mmm ...

Photos: Marilyn Mai