Beijing Restaurant joins the ranks of SLC's best Chinese eateries
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Tibetan lamb chops at Beijing Restaurant. Photo: Erin Alberty/Axios
If you've lived in China, it's a rare treat to walk into an American restaurant whose particular mix of aromas pings the hippocampus and immediately transports your salivary glands 6,500 miles to the east.
- Sugar House's Beijing Restaurant is one of those geography-defying kitchens, where the rice comes à la cart, the "ma la" (麻辣) buzzes like a hive, and the specials board is written only in characters.
Catch up quick: Beijing opened late last year, and after months of scrumptious deliveries I finally made it there in the flesh.
What's inside: The menu has a few takeout standards like Mongolian beef and stir fried noodles — but many of the selections are at least adventurous enough to make Google Translate hallucinate.
- The diced rabbit appetizer has a lot of kick, the frog entree is tender, and four season Sichuan green beans are blistered and seasoned to tongue-numbing perfection.
Erin's thought bubble: My family has ordered about 10 different dishes with nary a zonk among them — but we were missing out on big time on presentation until we dined in.
- My Tibetan lamb chops were served in a bed of flames, and the golden egg yolk jumbo shrimp were arrayed behind an orchid.
About that ma la: "Ma la" is a uniquely Chinese flavor that feels like pins-and-needles on the tongue and causes a curiously addictive numbing sensation.
- It comes from Sichuan peppercorns and is liberally used in most of the dishes I've ordered here.
The bottom line: Beijing is giving Salt Lake City faves like Mom's Kitchen, Little World, Hong Kong Teahouse and Drunken Kitchen a run for their money.
