Many Western style restaurants in Beijing have taken the path, one after the other, of serving "Chinese style Western food", with the result of easier acceptance by Beijing residents of this type of localized Western menu.
According to incomplete statistics, Beijing presently has around 600 Western style restaurants, including various types of special-theme restaurants in all of Beijing's major hotels. Currently, Beijing has more than 30 of the world's country cuisines offered in different restaurants. Besides Italian, French and American cuisines, foods from Argentina, Turkey and Iran are also available.
This reporter, after visiting many of Beijing's restaurants, discovered that Beijing's consumers more readily accepted some improved Western dishes. According to management of Zhenyi Restaurant, a "black pepper steak" transformed from Western cuisine not only was more suitable for local consumers' palate, but the price of the transformed dish was half that of the traditional Western beef steak. This has become one of the restaurant's favorite house items. The manager of Matador Western-style Restaurant told this reporter that after posting the "well done" sign, the juicy and tender "improved beef steak" has become very popular with consumers.
Not only steaks, but post-dinner desserts have also been improved. Desserts in Taiwan Hotel, while preserving the unique flavor of its European sweets, also pick certain low-fat ingredients; Novotel Xinqiao Hotel used Western style cooking as its foundation and then added refined characteristics of Chinese style dim-sum. The dessert menu of some Western style restaurants features Chinese selections such as bird's nest.
At the same time, the favorable catering environment in Beijing further attracted more Western restaurants to open shop in the capital.
Officials of Beijing's Western Food Association said that the majority of people still cannot accept the habits and flavors of Western cuisine, but the culture of Western dining and the accompanying atmosphere and environment are in tune with the need of modern people needing to keep up with fashion. The eating habits of Beijingers are gradually becoming more internationalized and sampling foreign cuisines has become a trendy pursuit. However, they are unwilling to completely give up the dietary habits they were born with. Therefore, many Western style restaurants have been forced to adapt to the particular preferences of Beijing's residents.
(China News Service March 10, 2006)
