Make a Pig of Yourself With 10 of Beijing's Best Pork Dishes
With the Year of the Pig rapidly approaching, we decided that there was no better way to celebrate than with a run-down of some of Beijing's best and porkiest dishes. From bangers to ramen, this list has all your porcine cravings covered.
This unassuming joint in the "Ichiban Street" strip of Japanese restaurants at Maizidian serves Beijing's best – and only – Jiro-style ramen: homemade noodles in a long-stewed broth rich with pork fat, topped with braised pork tenderloin, bean sprouts, garlic, and rendered fatback. Mixed together, the whole thing is incredibly unctuous and stridently porky. The ramen comes in several different sizes but we recommend starting off small.
Homeplate is the OG of American-style barbecue restaurants in Beijing. From the original branch at Sanyuanqiao to the barn-sized Sanlitun branch, Homeplate is rightly famous for its smoked meats, particularly the pulled pork (although the beef brisket is also a favorite). Order your pork in a sandwich, on top of a burger, or just by itself with some of their country-style sides. They also do a pretty great roasted pork belly, a relatively recent addition to the menu.
As many Brits will attest, getting a good banger in Beijing is not always the easiest thing in the world, so when our need for sausage and mash becomes too great we usually turn to Andy's Craft Sausages. A fixture on Beijing's artisanal food scene for years now, Andy sells a wide variety of different flavored sausages – our favorites are the spicy Italian and the Cajun andouille. Order from beijingsausages.com or sample a sausage sandwich in person at 3 Little Pigs.
Call us exhibitionists, but when dining out with friends, we love to order the kind of dishes that elicit gasps of delight when they hit the table; the pork ribs with peanuts and pickled vegetables at Karaiya Spice House is one such dish. The long ribs form a bridge on the plate, just waiting for you to dive in with your chopsticks and pick off the meat. Formerly located in Taikooli, Karaiya has now moved to Damei Shopping Center near Qingnian Lu and is soon to open a branch in the Kerry Center.
This dish of shredded pork sautéed in sweet bean paste is a classic of Beijing cuisine. The pork, which should strike a balance between sweet and savory, is served with sheets of dried tofu skin and shredded leeks and cucumber to be wrapped up almost like a Peking duck pancake. Most Beijing-style or homestyle Chinese restaurants around the city serve this dish; we're partial to the citywide chain Jing Wei Zhai, which has branches everywhere from Zhongguancun to Jinsong.
Pak Pak serves great Thai classics but for something a little different, we turn to the northeastern Thai-style sausages or sai krok isan. These pungent little bites, which are a popular street food from the northeastern provinces of Thailand, are served with lettuce leaves and herbs for wrapping and to help cut through their whack of chili. They pair particularly well with a pint of Jing-A or one of Pak Pak's Thai-inspired cocktails.
It seemed remiss to make a list of Beijing's best pork dishes without including at least one German dish so we settled on the majestic schweinshaxe, or roasted pork knuckle. A good pork knuckle should be roasted long and slow until the meat is falling off the bone and the skin is tooth-shatteringly crisp. We favor Paulaner Brauhaus for their traditional take on German classics such as this, but honorable mention must go to Groovy Schiller's and Brotzeit, too.
All of GLB's burgers are indulgent (try getting through one of their cheeseburgers without at least some juices/grease dripping down your chin) but when we want to go all out we plump for the pork belly sandwich. A slab of melt-in-the-mouth braised pork is stuffed in a sesame bun with spicy mayo and a heap of crunchy coleslaw for that essential health boost. If that doesn't soak up the results of a boozy session, we don't know what will.
We rarely meet a pork belly dish that we don't like but the red-braised pork belly at Transit is above and beyond. The addition of Cognac and Pu'er tea to the braising liquid gives the dish an extra dimension of smokiness that works well with the fatty richness of the pork. It's the ideal choice to balance out some of the spicier dishes they have on the menu.
This one is cheating slightly since it's more a collection of dishes than a single dish but if you want charcuterie (which is, let's face it, usually mostly pork-based) in Beijing, then it doesn't get much better than Bistrot B. Most of Bistrot B's charcuterie and excellent pâtés are made in-house by chef Jarrod Verbiak, who trained under and worked with acclaimed Chef Daniel Boulud. Try the crispy pork belly rillons with honey-dijon.
Read this if you've ever wondered what it really means to call somebody a pig in Chinese.
Photos: Uni You, Robynne Tindall, Andy's Craft Sausages, Dazhong Dianping (dianping.com), Karaiya Spice House, Home Plate, Wikimedia Commons, Great Leap Brewing, Transit, Bistro B
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