As the Beijing Olympics enter their first full week, we thought we'd let you know that our friend Jeffrey Steingarten, writing in Vogue magazine, gives a list of his 18 favorite Beijing restaurants.
He also wants you to know that when noted Chinese food expert Fuchsia Dunlop went to the Chinese capital on a recent trip, she took one of his recommendations, went to a restaurant even she had never been to, and said it was one of the best restaurant meals she had ever had in the city. That restaurant is:
Tiandi Yijia
Chang Pu He Garden, 140 Nanchizi Street
On the eastern side of the Forbidden City
Dongcheng district
天地一家:东城区南池子大街140号
+86-10-8511-5556 or 8511-5557
If you want the guide, here's the deal: You have to go to vogue.com and scroll down toward the bottom, where you'll see an item titled "Lost in Beijing." I'd give you a direct link if I could, but the Vogue site does not give you the option of direct-linking. Sorry.
We should all live in Jeffrey Steingarten's world. As food critic for Vogue, he's got one of the best food-related jobs out there, exploring the universe of very fine dining on his employer's dime. For the March issue of the tony fashion magazine, Steingarten was asked by his editor to hire a personal chef for two weeks and report on the experience.
Bonus material: The Great Bread Debate—"soft, squishy British bread" vs. "incinerated, burnt, crusty bread." And, the last of the outtakes from our video microseries.
Posted by Lia Bulaong, January 29, 2007 at 11:15 AM
Adam Kuban's recent curry rice feature prompted a few commenters to fret about MSG, a phenomenon that always reminds me of the essay from Jeffrey Steingarten's collection It Must've Been Something I Ate, in which he points out that a) the Chinese, who eat MSG every day, are not suffering from debilitating headaches en masse, and b) foods like Parmesan cheese and ketchup contain enough free glutamate to trigger headaches in people who say they're affected by MSG but no one ever complains about them.
The Guardian's Alex Renton wrote a great article two years ago about the mythology of MSG that goes from the discovery of umami, to the mass production of MSG, to the 1968 article that triggered the spurious conflation of MSG with Chinese Restaurant Syndrome. From the piece: "Science has still not found a convincing explanation for CRS: indeed, some researchers suggest it may well be to do with the other things diners have imbibed there - peanuts, shellfish, large amounts of lager. Others say that fear of MSG is a form of mass psychosis - you suffer the symptoms you've been told to worry about." Renton himself experiments with the stuff, to hilarious results.
Posted by Alaina Browne, December 26, 2006 at 3:45 AM
Curb Your Enthusiasm's Susie Essman meets her match when she locks forks (or should I say chopsticks?) with Vogue's feared and revered food critic Jeffrey Steingarten.
In this episode, Jeff lectures Susie on why some vegetables are bad for you and how salad is the "silent killer."
Posted by Adam Kuban, December 13, 2006 at 11:00 AM
In this episode of Table for Two, Curb Your Enthusiasm's Susie Essman has lunch with Vogue food critic Jeffrey Steingarten. Essman reveals her cannot-eat-list, which Steingarten, when handed the menu, ignores.
Posted by Alaina Browne, November 25, 2006 at 6:07 PM
Curb Your Enthusiasm's Susie Essman meets her match when she locks
forks (or should I say chopsticks) with Vogue's feared and revered
food critic Jeffrey Steingarten.
In this episode Susie and Jeff discuss their fantasy dinner dates, Sigmund Freud and Gisele Bündchen, respectively.
I've been blown away by the quality of the entries for the Win A Dinner with Jeffrey Steingarten and Me contest. The breadth of candidates offered up by entrants (To enter you have to tell me in a hundred words or less who your favorite food critic is and why) has been impressive indeed: Frank Bruni, John T. Edge of Oxford, Mississippi, Robb Walsh of Houston, Texas, Calvin Trillin, the late R.W. Apple, Ruth Reichl, Peter Meehan (current $25 and under critic at the NY Times, Jonathan Kauffman (formerly of the East Bay Express), blogger Clotide Dusoulier, Roy Andries de Groot, A.A. Gill, Anthony Bourdain, and Jane and Michael Stern.
But we still need about 25 more entries before ending the entry process. Remember, this is not an election. You can write about one of the above-mentioned writers or someone brand new. So enter right here. Steingarten and I await the pleasure of your company.
As the Beijing Olympics enter their first full week, we thought we'd let you know that our friend Jeffrey Steingarten, writing in Vogue magazine, gives a list of his 18 favorite Beijing restaurants. 
