Beijing for first-time visitors

Best restaurants

Beijing eats on its own terms. The city has long absorbed the cooking of every province that ever sent a delegation to the capital, and the result is a restaurant scene that runs from imperial-era roast duck houses to noodle shops staffed by people who look like they slept through the morning. Twelve restaurants will not summarise that, and this list does not pretend to. What it does is give you twelve addresses, twelve sets of hours, and twelve plainly stated phone numbers — all verified against OpenStreetMap nodes that anyone can audit — across Chongwenmen, Dongzhimen, Guanghua Lu, Drum Tower, and the embassy fringe. There is a mutton hotpot that runs until 02:00 and a vegan buffet that closes at 20:30. There is a French steakhouse and a Yunnan kitchen down a hutong. Use it as a working set: a week of dinners, a couple of late lunches, one accidental breakfast at a noodle window. Beijing rewards readers who arrive with addresses written down.