Join the TRIBE: Fans of Healthy Eating in Beijing
Beijing – thankfully – isn’t Mean Girls. But take a second, if you will, to imagine that it is. Which cafeteria table would you sit at? Who’s in your clique?
Or, to put it another way, who’s in your tribe?
The chefs, servers and staffers at TRIBE like to consider themselves, well, a tribe – like a high school clique, but friendlier, healthier and tastier. So we talked to some of the tribe members to see what being part of the TRIBE is all about.
“I always have the same thing,” says Glenn Schuitman (pictured above) over a bowl of Israeli Lentils. “I think wherever we live in the world, we look for comfort in the familiar – somewhere where we can feel happy and secure and this is one of those places for me,” he adds, sweetly.
Glenn has always been interested in healthy eating. He was a vegan for three years while working as an opera singer (yes, an opera singer – he might just win the title for Beijing’s Most Interesting Man), but intention and execution are two different things entirely. Glenn may work long hours at the showroom of his interior design haven, Pop-Up Beijing, but he pops down to TRIBE whenever he gets the chance: “There’s only a few places that we sneak out to when we can, and this is one.”
Also popping regularly into TRIBE is Sun Qikai (above). And when we say “regularly,” we mean it – he’s here every day (if you’ve ever been to TRIBE for lunch you’ve almost definitely seen him). Over a bowl of Summery Summer Squash Pad Thai Salad, he says TRIBE is a lifesaver. Because while his life is certainly fascinating – he has a tattoo studio and formerly worked as a fashion editor – it’s not conducive to healthy habits. (Of his time in fashion, he says with a laugh that he was “drunk every night.”)
“So it’s even more important for me to eat healthy and organic,” explains Sun.
Xu Fei (above) is another who started frequenting TRIBE in order to eat healthier and tastier. She had previously dieted to lose weight, but never found a delicious way to eat right. She credits TRIBE for changing her perception of healthy eating. But she also found more than she expected over her organic lunch.
“I met my fiance on Christmas Eve of last year. Our love at first sight happened in TRIBE. I will never forget that feeling!” she says.
Now that’s quite the membership perk.
// Daily 8am-10:30pm; 1st Floor, Building 3, China View Plaza, Gongti Dong Lu, Chaoyang 朝阳区工体东路甲2号 中国红街大厦3号楼1层大厅入口南侧
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