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The winners of this year’s the Beijinger Reader Restaurant Awards were announced in mid-March. Who were the biggest winners this year? And how did their performance compare to last year?
2013
2014
Temple Restaurant Beijing (9 awards, 7 Best) Element Fresh (6 awards, 5 Best) Annie’s (6 awards, 4 Best) Home Plate Bar-B-Que
(6 awards, 3 Best) Mosto (6 awards, 3 Best) Da Dong Roast Duck (4 awards, 3 Best) Capital M (6 awards, 2 Best)
Temple Restaurant Beijing (9 awards, All Best) Home Plate Bar-B-Que (7 awards, 4 Best) Mosto (8 awards, 3 Best) Da Dong Roast Duck
(5 awards, 3 Best) Moka Bros (5 awards, 3 Best) Annie’s (6 awards, 4 Best) Element Fresh (4 awards, 2 Best) Opera Bombana (3 awards, 2 Best)
Winners with less than two awards were discounted TOTAL VOTES CAST
2,596 3,355 VALID VOTES
VALID VOTES
TOTAL AWARDS CATEGORIES
58 51
NUMBER OF AWARDS WON BY TEMPLE RESTAURANT BEIJING
NUMBER OF AWARDS WON BY ELEMENT FRESH
9 9
6 4
NUMBER OF AWARDS WON BY HOME PLATE BAR-B-QUE
6 7
(7 BEST AWARDS)
(5 BEST AWARDS)
(3 BEST AWARDS)
(ALL BEST AWARDS)
(2 BEST AWARDS)
(4 BEST AWARDS)
Letter from an Editor
I
n the years that I’ve been taking notice of the Reader Restaurant Awards results, the thing that has been most notable to me is how the city’s culinary habits have developed and how quickly they seem to evolve. What was a popular venue one year can quickly fade from consideration by the next, and places that are flavor of any given month can ride that popularity right through the voting. If our Reader Restaurant Awards tell us anything about you, it’s that you still have an appetite for new dining experiences. And luckily for us, you still care enough to form opinions about them. Everyone has their own opinions on the best spot in town, and we expect as much contention as we do consensus. But if, like me, you’re on frightfully familiar terms with the McDonald’s delivery fleet, and every pizza joint in town seems to know you by name, then at the very least, the results of our Reader Restaurant Awards can serve as a guide to where to start expanding your dining horizons.
6
I was delighted to rediscover a sweet tooth I thought I’d long had extracted this month. It seems it could be the year of the dessert and the production of this month’s cover feature was as delicious as it was fattening. As for the rest of this month’s issue, we’re making life a little bit easier for you with a foolproof guide to baking in Beijing, the best places online for you to find up and coming designers, as well as how and where to get a mani or a pedi – don’t worry, the gents are taken care of, too. Elsewhere, we introduce you to the Más boys and their signature styles and cocktails, while Kyle Mullin looks at a potentially clean future for gutter oil, and Peking Man describes how a rather unpleasant restaurant experience led him to some philosophical musings.
Paul Ryding Managing Editor
April 2014