Our other Peking duck-centered dinner (and it was our last meal in China) was at Made in China at the Grand Hyatt Beijing (where we stayed while in Beijing but more on that in a near future post). We arrived to dinner at 7 PM with a reservation for a table and the Peking duck. (You must reserve a duck ahead of time or you’ll never have one that evening.) The dark wood and steel eatery; floor-to-ceiling shelves stocked with Chinese knickknacks and a stylishly exposed kitchen behind glass set the atmosphere inside this 126-seat glitzy space. Dumplings and stir-fry have their own chefs, and specialty dishes focus on Northern China cuisine, such as Peking duck and beggar’s chicken.
We started off with a few vegetable dishes of marinated cucumbers in peanut sauce and shredded, pressed tofu tossed in cumin and chilies. Both were delicious and balanced in flavors.
Next up was a plate of roast squab. These little pigeons were beautifully roasted to a dark mahogany brown and still retained its juiciness and perfectly seasoned.
The Szechuan style prawns quickly stir fried in whole garlic cloves and chilies were amazing. The shell-on prawns were fresh and sweet. They’ve taken on the bold, spicy flavors very well without being masked.
The Beijing duck is prepared with crisp, crunchy, rich skin without a trace of hanging fat. One of the chefs quickly slice our duck to precise thin slices. The succulent meat goes well with the freshly made, delicate, moist and paper-thin pancakes, finely julienne cucumber, scallions, ginger puree, and hoisin sauce.
The our two types of dumplings arrived; boiled beef dumplings and a version of pan-fried dumplings that has a lattice formed from the starches of the dumpling skin. In terms of flavors, the the boiled dumplings were much better. The juicy beef (as in it’s almost like soup dumplings) mixed with cumin and cilantro dumplings made it really flavorful and the skin was chewy and not too thick. The pan-fried dumplings needed a bit more robust flavors and oddly the starchy lattice detracts the flavor. Nevertheless, the dumplings were still juicy.
The beef and chive stuffed pancakes were very tasty. Delicately crisp, not too thick skinned and the filling was delicious and moist. We didn’t have to add any condiment to these pancakes.
We finished dinner with a vanilla panna cotta topped with a large dried chip. Desserts are not their forte since the panna cotta was a bit too firm and lacking the vanilla flavor but the ginger chip was sharp and spicy when bitten.
It’s pretty impressive that the restaurant makes almost all the food in-house and actually churn out very solid dishes. The food is great but the wait staff were stretched a bit too thinly that timing of the dishes coming out were off since they were trying to address the needs of other diners. It is not an inexpensive place but the quality is top notch.
To view more photos of this dinner, please CLICK HERE or view the gallery below:
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Information:
Made in China at Grand Hyatt Beijing
Website
1 East Chang An Avenue
Beijing, China 100738
Tel: +86 10 6510 9024
Note:
Reservations are necessary, especially for the Peking duck.
