Heart Skewers: New Sanlitun Beyond Yakitori Expands Horizons

Western patrons are often too skittish about Asian skewers. While most of us foreigners share a near universal love of barbecue with our Far Eastern friends, the Asian affinity for gristly meat and sizzled organs can make many supposedly opened-minded laowai turn up their noses. If any restaurant can push such reluctant expats out of that narrow comfort zone, it would be Beyond Yakitori.

The newly opened eatery, housed on the third floor of the recently built Topwin Center, serves up a variety of Japanese meat sticks. Even the pickiest of expats will gobble up their chicken heart and liver skewers, thanks to the unimaginable juiciness and tenderness of the meat.

Manager Chris Niu (who honed his skills before recently moving on to open a place of his own Hatsune) says that tantalizing texture is due to Beyond Yakitori's grills, both of which cost RMB 10,000 and were imported from Japan. The restaurant's barbecuing technique is further augmented with another secret weapon: high grade Japanese style binchōtan charcoal, which radiates a heat of 1,000 degrees Celsius, thoroughly trapping the juiciness in the meat. That scorching blaze has benefits well beyond the flavor. This is especially true for the chicken neck sticks, which would seem all but unpalatable for many foreigners, but are instead offered a spectrum of textures by the binchōtan's heat: delicately tender in one bite, delectably chewy the next, and unpredictably dynamic through and through.

The restaurant's grill and charcoal are both top notch

Other highlights include a Scotch egg, which boasts a mostly flavorful outer chicken layer encasing and a runny yolk inside. We've yet to try anything quite like it, and thoroughly recommend its salty taste and cushiony texture. And while all these items will pique your curiosity, Beyond Yakitori also serves more conventional fare like chicken ball and chicken thigh skewers, both of which are divinely tender and lack any gristle, though the latter features a thin layer of skin that makes it enticingly crispy upon the first bite.

The restaurant's Scotch egg is tasty and wholly unique

There are also quite a few promising beverages on hand. The restaurant serves Emishiki Sensation sake in wine glasses, an interesting fusion item that gives the distinctly Japanese spirit an international twist. That rice wine is far preferable to Beyond Yakitori's mojito, which should be avoided because its overt mintiness is reminiscent of fluoride, lacking the texture and balance of the restaurant's other top notch fare. Aside from that lackluster cocktail, our visit to Beyond Yakitori was fantastic.

Unfortunately, one of the restaurant's other slight flaws is its gradual opening, which is a bit confounding and slow paced. For now patrons can call ahead for reservations, and about 10 evening walk ins per day are accepted (so we strongly recommend ringing them up beforehand). Visitors will be treated to a range of a la carte skewers and a list of add on items until the end of the month, priced at around RMB 200 per person (the details of which are still being finalized, though updates will be made later this week, which you can view by searching beyond_yakitori on WeChat).

A finalized menu with a full selection (consisting of skewers at RMB 20 a piece and many other items) will be unveiled in early August. This sounds promising, though we at the Beijinger are growing weary of fits-and-starts soft openings, and wish that more venues would simply throw open their doors when they're fully ready.

That being said, we appreciate Niu's perfectionism and efforts to carefully tweak his menu and pricing, while offering Beijingers a gradual glimpse of the restaurant's yakitori goodies. That means barbecue lovers should rush to make a reservation at this white hot new venue now. Based on the delicious promise of its already available items, we have a feeling that it will be even tougher to get a table once the full menu is on offer.

Beyond Yakitori
Daily 6pm-10pm (hours will expand in August) 3/F, Topwin Center, 1 Nan Sanlitun Lu, Chaoyang District (18801289101)
美酔堂: 北京市朝阳区三里屯1号通盈中心 三层3-5