Beijing Restaurants Make It Onto List of World's Best
Beijing frequently gets snubbed by restaurant rankings and guides such as Michelin and the San Pellegrino Asia's 50 Best Restaurants, but a recently released guide looks to finally give our city's dining scene the recognition it deserves. More than 20 Beijing restaurants made it onto La Liste 2017 (laliste.com), a French ranking of the world's best restaurants that launched last year. Beijing's top restaurant, Hong Kong Jockey Club (technically more of a destination rather than a single restaurant since it is host to six different venues), ranked 20th of all restaurants worldwide.
La Liste describes itself as an "algorithm-based aggregator of food guides and reviews, crafting the perfect ranking of the world's best restaurants." To come up with the final list, reviews from more than 300 guidebooks and publications are collated. Each review is then given a standard grade from zero to 100. Each guidebook is also given a "trustworthiness index" out of 10 based on the opinions of chefs and trusted sources. Then, they calculate all of the standardized review scores for each restaurant, weighted according to the trustworthiness of each publication. Finally, they integrate customer reviews, for a total weighting of 25 percent. This ranking system puts Paris' Guy Savoy at the top of the pile with a "La Liste score" of 99.75 and Tokyo's Kyo-Aji in second place with a score of 99.5.
Below is a list of all the restaurants that made it onto La Liste 2017. We must confess we've never eaten at some of them, but that's just an excuse to put them on our dining bucket list.
Hong Kong Jockey Club 北京香港马会会所
Huai Yang Fu 淮扬府
Quanjude 全聚德
Hua's Restaurant 花家怡园
Yi Jin Yuan 伊锦园
1949 Duck de Chine 1949全鸭季
Shanghai Xiaonanguo (City Mall Shopping Center, Liangmaqiao) 上海小南国
Da Dong Roast Duck 大董烤鸭
Yu Restaurant (The Ritz Carlton Beijing) 玉
The Horizon Chinese Restaurant (Kerry Hotel Beijing) 海天阁
Xi He Ya Yuan (Zhongguancun) 羲和雅苑
Kyoto Shengtang 京都盛唐
Yi Zhen Xiang Zhen Shan Restaurant 一珍香珍膳餐厅
Yiyin Sea Cucumber Restaurant
Asen Abalone Restaurant 阿森鲍鱼
Summer Palace Restaurant (China World Hotel) 夏宫
Bianyifang 便宜坊
Li Family Restaurant 厉家菜
Made in China 长安壹号
Pangu Wenqi (Pangu Hotel) 盘古文奇
9 Dynasty 九朝会
Seventh Son (China World Summit Wing) 家全七福酒家
Manmanhai Fotiaoqiang 满满海佛跳墙
Green T House 紫云轩茶事
King's Joy 京兆尹
The Beijing rankings are based on aggregated reviews taken from sites such as Tripadvisor, Dianping, The World Federation of Chinese Cuisine, and even the Beijinger! We're glad to see perennial Beijing favorites such as Hua's Restaurant, 1949, and Bianyifang make the cut, although overall the list is weighted a little bit too much towards southern Chinese fine dining for our tastes. Still, Beijing (finally) represent!
Photo: Public Domain Pictures