As the Spring Festival of the Year of the Dragon in 2024 is approaching step by step, in Beijing's time-honored restaurants and brand stores, the taste of the New Year is booming. Laba garlic pickled from Laba, a table of chicken, duck and fish, and creative new dishes of Chinese New Year's Eve rice, steaming tea soup, snow-white round Lantern Festival ......What is New Year's Flavor? Everyone who lives in Beijing has a different understanding, but more or less inseparable from Beijing's time-honored brands. The Spring Festival in these time-honored brands is when the children of thousands of families grow up, their parents have gray hair on their sideburns, the days are becoming more and more prosperous, and the years are wasteful.
On October 8 last year, Fengze Garden opened reservations for the 2024 Chinese New Year's Eve dinner, and the first table of guests still came to line up in down jackets in the early morning, and it was also a family of relatives who "shifted" to book the most favorite private room. On January 31, the New Year's goods greenhouse that "opened the shelf" at the Fengzeyuan main store is a "must-check-in" New Year's goods collection place that many Beijingers are looking forward to. Burnt roasted steamed buns, sweet bean paste buns, wisps of silver silk rolls ......In this year's New Year's greenhouse, the sales of various "bulk goods" have increased by nearly 10 kinds compared with last year, reaching more than 40 kinds. The old Beijingers have the custom of "not moving the fire" during the Chinese New Year, and almost all the staff of the Fengze Garden New Year's Greenhouse spend the week before the Spring Festival in non-stop packing and handling. In addition to the signature noodles and cooked food in bulk, a gift box containing red bean rolls, jujube buns, rice cakes, rice noodles and meatballs, and braised meatballs has also opened a mailing service this year, so you can taste the taste of the Spring Festival of the time-honored brand even if you are not in Beijing.
In the Fangshan Restaurant in Beihai Park, the only "oolong spit pearl" that was once preserved in the "Quanlong Banquet" is destined to become the most auspicious and popular dish in the 2024 Jiachen Year of the Dragon, and Xu Xianlin, the current kitchen director of Fangshan Restaurant, has been working in Fangshan for 32 years. According to reports, the "oolong spit pearl" on the banquet needs to use 9 40 stinging cucumbers with good color, and then with quail eggs, before they can be put on the table. Nowadays, "Oolong Tuzhu" is still the top three signature dishes of Fangshan Restaurant, and it has simplified a more economical "home-style version": replace the whole cucumber with a broken sea cucumber, the production process is a lot, and the taste is not half a point, but it has become close to the people.
In Quanjude, each roast duck has a unique number, and the duck chef can turn the jujube red and shiny duck into a "prosperous peony". Quanjude is the first choice for many Beijingers to have a New Year's dinner, and recently Heping store has 4 reservations a day** ringing from morning to night, general manager Wang Yajing picked it up**, and the first sentence of many guests is "Oh my God, I can't call in for half an hour!" This made Quanjude, known as Beijing's "golden business card", feel the unprecedented enthusiasm of consumers during this Spring Festival holiday: up to now, the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner rooms and even scattered seats in major stores such as Quanjude Qianmen, Hepingmen, and Wangfujing have been fully booked; The Group's overall reservations for the 2024 Chinese New Year's Eve dinner have reached more than 116% of last year's total. Wang Yajing took the Spring Festival schedule in the store and checked it again and again: during the Spring Festival, except for some employees who have not been home for 3 years, they can ask for leave, and all employees of the Heping store are closed from the "duck class" to logistics. In addition, it is necessary to temporarily supplement the frontline support of some college students who work part-time during the holidays.
Wang Yajing said that while some consumers "regretted" not booking the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner earlier, they hurriedly "switched" to ordering the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner to be taken out. In the merchandise department on the first floor of the Heping store, customers who buy New Year's gift boxes and hand-sliced roast duck wait to open at 8:30 in the morning, and there are still people queuing until the door closes at 8:30 in the evening. From the current statistics, the sales of Quanjude's Chinese New Year's Eve lunch box are expected to increase by more than 10% over last year.
In Cuihua Building, which has been newly selected as a time-honored brand in China, the 2-meter-long hibiscus chicken slices are the "hot style" of the short ** platform, and the classic signature Lu dish of mandarin fish in sauce is also the "only one" of Cuihua Building. Every year, there is a surplus of six animals, and the Chinese celebrate the New Year, and these beautiful expectations that have remained unchanged for thousands of years have been passed down from generation to generation. On days like the Spring Festival, general manager Wang Peixin predicts that the daily stock of mandarin fish, the ingredient for making mandarin fish in sauce, is conservatively estimated to be hundreds. In Cuihua Building, Cuihua Elbow, the most popular reunion banquet, in addition to ensuring dine-in during the Spring Festival, also has to deal with the sales of about 100 orders of sauce gift boxes every day.
Over the years, Di'anmen, Drum Tower and Shichahai have changed from the back garden of Beijingers to a check-in place for Chinese and foreign tourists. The combination of tourism and food has made many time-honored brands adjacent to scenic spots skyrocket in popularity every holiday. Since New Year's Day, the Gulou ** restaurant has maintained a fairly high turnover rate, and the year-end and New Year festivals are coming one after another, and students are entering the winter vacation, which indicates that the Spring Festival sales will be booming. In addition to dine-in, special delicacies such as mutton skewers and sugar cakes at the take-out window should not only ensure the daily consumption of local diners during the Spring Festival, but also meet the "eating while walking" of tourists. Zhang Xuexiao, the front office manager of the Gulou ** restaurant, estimates that only mutton skewers, 1,000 skewers a day, is just a "starting number".
On February 1, ** restaurants appeared in a new batch of Chinese time-honored brands, ** presented high-end stores - *1953 also welcomed the first batch of guests to eat here for Chinese New Year's Eve dinner in 2024, which represents the rebirth of time-honored brands in the new era. The traditional chopped pepper fish head ingredients are upgraded to Qiandao Lake organic fish head, and the sour and spicy belly tip is the best of the best, and the belly tip of six pigs is enough to produce a dish of high-quality ......From the dishes to the environment, the upgrade of ** has made many old customers applaud.
In the view of Lv Yongjie, the inheritor of the Hunan cuisine production skills of the restaurant, among the "six major dishes" in 1953, the first-class chopped pepper fish head emperor, the high-quality hot and sour belly tip flower, and the 1953 master black pork are all classic reproductions of the signature dishes of the Gulou ** restaurant. Braised tiger grouper with chili pepper and sea tiger wings with crab roe and chopped pepper adopt the special techniques of Hunan cuisine, and at the same time incorporate elements of Cantonese cuisine. Lu Yongjie noticed that the guests who dined in **·1953 and the consumers who signed orders for the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner did not forget to take photos and shoot ** in the immersive light and shadow corridor specially designed by the store. The light and shadow corridor gathers the beautiful scenery and culture of Beijing and Hunan, the busy Di'anmen Street, and the first-class old store, such a "meeting of time and space" is the youthful past and memory brought by the time-honored brand.
Beijing News reporter Wang Ping.
Edited by Wang Lin.
Proofreading by Zhai Yongjun.