Nowhere on the Chinese mainland has the culinary wealth of Beijing, with every style of Chinese food available, just about any Asian, and a smattering of world cuisines. Amongst all this abundance it's sometimes easy to forget that Beijing has its own culinary tradition - specialities well worth trying are Beijing duck ( Beijing kaoya) and Mongolian hotpot.

Beijing Roast Duck

Beijing Roast Duck dates back to the Ming Dynasty, about 600 years ago.Beijing duck consists of small pieces of meat which you dip in plum sauce, then wrap with chopped onions in a pancake. The famous Beijing Roast Duck restaurant in Beijing are Quanjude (Complete Collection of Virtues), having a history of 400 years.And another famous Beijing Roast Duck restaurants in Beijing is Bianyifang (Shop of Convenience and Pleasure). The original Bianyifang was in the Rice Market Hutong while the original Quanjude was in the Meat Market, both in the southern part of the city. Now they both have many branches. Two main branches of the Bianyifang are located at Qianmen (Front Gate) Street and at Chongwenmen,while two of the largest branches of Quanjude are at Hepingmen (Peace Gate) and Wangfujing.

Almost every part of the duck (except the feathers) can be made into hot or cold dishes, (for example, the wings, webs, tongue, heart and liver). This is called the "Complete Duck Feast". The duck head is cut in half and served on a small plate with the tongue.

The head is usually for the guest of honour, but if you cannot face it you do not have to eat it. The bones of the duck are made into soup which is served near the end of the feast.

Mongolian Hot-pot

The hot-pot is a traditional brass pot with a wide outer rim around a chimney and a charcoal-burner underneath. Water is heated to boiling point in the rim, and the diners dip thin slices of raw meat in the water, where the meat cooks quickly. The cooked slices are then dipped in to a sauce. There are vegetables, bean noodles, mushrooms and bean curt to be boiled in the rim as well. The sauce is prepared personally by the diner by selecting from a few dozen kinds to suit his/her own taste. The traditional food to accompany the hot-pot is buns or noodles.

Barbecued Meat is a Manchu food. Meat, mainly beef or mutton, is cut into thin strips or slices, and then soaked in a mixture of soy sauce, crushed ginger, wine, shrimp paste, sesame seed paste, rice vinegar and chopped coriander. The meat is then barbecued over a highly-heated grill before it is served.

Court Cuisine

Fangshan (Imperial-style) Restaurant sits on the island in Beihai Park in a traditional courtyard facing the lake. A newly-opened branch of restaurant of Fangshan style, Yushan Restaurant, is located a few hundred yards to the west of the north gate of the Temple of Heaven in the southern part of the city. Tingliguan (Hall for Listening to the Orioles) Restaurant, in the Summer Palace, serves more than 300 dishes and pastries from the Qing and Ming imperial recipes. The All-fish Feast is a specialty of the restaurant.

Snack

The classic Beijing breakfast snack sold by street vendors is definitely worth trying - vegetables wrapped in an omelette wrapped in a pancake - deftly made in thirty seconds . Most hotels offer some form of Western breakfast, with the best choice offered by the cheap backpacker restaurants - easily the best of these is the Friendship Restaurant in the car park of the Jinghua Hotel.

Fast food comes in two forms: the Chinese version, a canteen-style serving, usually of noodles in a polystyrene packet, which you find in department stores or buy from street stalls; and Western imports such as Pizza Hut, McDonald's and KFC, which have made a considerable impact and are now greatly imitated. McDonald's arrived in 1992 and there are now more than fifty branches, often so packed that getting served is an experience not unlike that of buying a train ticket. Prices are cheaper than in the West, but expensive by Chinese standards. Street food ,mostly noodle dishes, is widely available, though not in the centre, where vendors are shooed away by the police; your best bet is at one of the designated night markets. Avoid the ice cream vendors who hang around the parks as their home-made wares are often of a dubious standard.

If you want to get a picnic together, or have the facilities to try some self-catering, the capital is well stocked with supermarkets . The Wellcome Supermarket - part of the Hong Kong chain - in the basement of the World Trade Centre is the most impressive, though everything costs about fifty percent more than you would pay in Hong Kong. The supermarket on the first floor of the Friendship Store is not nearly as good, but it does sell butter, cheese and Western beers, as do the supermarkets in the basements of the Parkson Store and the SCITECH shopping centre. Head for Sanlitun to find speciality shops catering to homesick Westerners; Jenny Lou's on Gongrentiyu Bei Lu is renowned, but not cheap.