Fish Frenzy: Hagaki at East Beijing
We've been working our way through the restaurants at Swire's EAST Beijing hotel since it opened up a couple months ago. We had a few great meals at Feast (Food by EAST), and the property's Hagaki Japanese restaurant keeps the good eats coming.
While prices can tip toward the high end if you're looking to eat things like toro or wagyu, there's plenty to choose from that won't lighten your wallet too much. Crispy prawn dumplings (RMB 26), for instance, pack a mouthful of flavor into a crunchy ball. We also loved the sweet corn kakiage (RMB 18) with green tea salt.
We tried a few of the rolls and were happy with their quality. The spicy tuna roll (RMB 98) comes with eel on top, which makes for a different experience than I'm used to. I like eel, so that's not a complaint, but it does come on stronger than the spice and the tuna. The sumo roll (RMB 60) is what you'd expect from an inside-out tempura-dusted roll: epic.
We enjoyed the cod roasted with soy glaze (RMB 168), almost enough to skip the sauce and eat it on its own. Slow-cooked crispy suckling pig (RMB 198) was succulent, dripping with fat. Little surprise there, but there were mixed reactions at my table.
My favorite of the night was the nightly special of salmon head (RMB 88). Chunks of meat, blackened skin, and the all-precious cheek had us hovered around it picking away gleefully.
Desserts were also a high point. Fried ice cream with lychee (RMB 58) was exciting, as fried ice cream always is, but I felt it a bit overpriced. We were more impressed by the other three: soymilk ice cream with honeycomb and chocolate (RMB 28), green tea pannacotta and raspberries (RMB 48) and a Japanese-style strawberry cheesecake (RMB 38).
The ice cream was subtle enough to let the flavors of the soy beans come out. The pannacotta was lush with wafts of tea, silken textures, and the bright bouncy flavors of the raspberries. The cheesecake elicited admiration for its lightness from one of our dining companions, but I like my cheesecake with a bit of crust, so I found myself heading back to the pannacotta instead.
There are so many Japanese restaurants in Beijing these days that we've got plenty of choices across all manner of price points. Hagaki manages to hit the upper side of the mid-range (or the lower part of the high end?) while more than delivering on its promise.
Photo: Josh Ong
