An Authentic Taste of Naples at Guomao's Italian Restaurant Radici

There is no greater pleasure than discovering a great restaurant when you least expect it. Such is the case with Radici, a classic Italian restaurant tucked away in the hip yet oft-overlooked Langyuan Vintage complex just east of Guomao. Radici means “source” in Italian; the owners chose the name because they want to return to the very source of Italian cuisine – authentic, accessible dishes that are designed for sharing. 

The first thing you will notice when you walk into Radici is the large wood-fired pizza oven, giving a clear indication of the restaurant’s specialty. Radici's pizza comes charred, fragrant, and minimally-topped, a style perfected in the city of Naples, and otherwise known as Neapolitan pizza or pizza napoletana.

Pizza napoletana is a Traditional Specialty Guaranteed (TSG) product. This means that it has been deemed to possess specific characteristics that make it different from all others in its category and that its raw materials, composition, or method of production have been consistent for a minimum of 30 years. In order to meet these stringent standards, pizza napoletana must be prepared with type 0 or 00 flour, San Marzano tomatoes, and mozzarella cheese. Radici uses imported flour from venerable Neapolitan brand Caputo, which has been milling flour in Naples since 1924. The dough made from the flour is left to slow prove for up to eight hours, giving it a distinctive flavor and texture.

Of course, no matter how good the ingredients, a great pizza is nothing without a great oven. Radici’s oven was custom made in Naples and shipped over to China brick by brick. The oven, which is fired by traditional fruit wood, has a high dome shape and just a small opening, which ensures that it reaches the scorchingly high temperature necessary to cook the pizzas quickly and ensure they come out with that essential puffy, charred base – a temperature of 485 degrees Celsius (905 degrees Fahrenheit), to be exact. Pizzas take just 60-90 seconds to cook, meaning customers will never have a long wait for their dinner. 

The menu includes more than 10 different pizzas, hand-shaped in the traditional way, from a simple margherita pizza topped with buffalo mozzarella to a pizza topped with four luscious types of Italian cheese. For a real treat, order the pizza calzone con prosciutto, a crescent-shaped pizza stuffed with ham, mushroom, and ricotta, topped with prosciutto and arugula, and for the final flourish, a ball of creamy burrata. 

Pizza is not the only treat on the menu at Radici; fans of Italian cuisine will find a full selection of antipasti, pasta, risotto, and secondi, the main, meat-based course. As executive chef Wilson Zhou explains, just like pizza Napoletana, all Italian dishes rely on sourcing and using the best possible ingredients. “For example, we spent a long time looking for exactly the right tomato sauce with the perfect level of sourness and tomato flavor. Many restaurants don’t go to that much effort,” he says.

Chef Zhou’s skill in choosing ingredients – as well as his decades of experience in the kitchen – show in the decadent seafood spaghetti, packed full of prawns, mussels, and clams. The spaghetti, from Italian brand De Cecco, is cooked to the perfect al dente, a quality that the chef insists on, despite the fact that the restaurant’s Chinese diners are not always versed in the propriety of al dente pasta. All of the pasta dishes, which include old favorites like rigatoni bolognese, pesto linguine, and spaghetti carbonara, are portioned to share.

Complete your meal with a bottle of wine from the short wine list, which focuses on interesting, accessibly priced bottles rather than the fancy French selection favored by many Beijing restaurants. 

Authentic food and wine in a classy space just a stone's throw from Guomao make Radici a great choice for Italian cuisine in the heart of CBD.

Radici
Daily 11.30am-1.30pm, 5.30-9.30pm. Bldg 7, Langyuan Vintage (close to the south entrance), Tonghuihe Beilu, Chaoyang District (5741 7196)
根壚意大利厨房：朝阳区通惠河北路郎园Vintage7号楼

This post is paid for by Radici. 

Photos: Uni You (the Beijinger)