Location

Hilton Hotel, 8 Wangfujing East Street. //北京王府井希爾頓酒店內，北京王府井東街8 號 Tel:010-5812-8888

I have never had a bad experience at a Hilton restaurant. The caliber has always been above and beyond expectations, with elegant and sometimes ostentatious dishes that are hard to forget. Chynna, the Chinese restaurant of the Hilton, is no exception. Providing gourmet style cuisine, Chynna shows how Chinese food would taste without being doused in various oils and sauces.

The Chinese tea is cloyingly serene and on offer is various European beers and wines and even traditional fun cocktails. Though not usually paired, a light medium pink wine easily blends with the sweet and savory Chinese dishes.

With new signature dishes, there is much to try and hard to decide between. The Beijing Style Assorted Vegetables is an excellent dish with its own original spin. Consisting of mushrooms and tofu, it is lightly sauced and allows the excellent savory, sweet, and succulent fungi to shine. It is a refreshing and perky yet savable appetizer. The fungi are of different textures and tastes with crispy, starchy slimy and chewy pieces, and is a dish I will keep going back to as I try the other courses.

The chilled Goose Liver is served in a parfait style glass on ice and topped with fresh fruit. Creamy, and rich and half fat, half meat, it is sweet and succulent with a duality that does not overwhelm or overfill. The Chicken with Carrot Salad is a nice serving of plump, tender morsels that are very juicy and soft and prepared like traditional Chinese fatty duck . It tastes like it has been cared for, and is a dish any meat connoisseur would adore.

Chynna also offers Abalone Shark Fin Soup. A controversial dish, I have to say it is divine, and if you must try it then try it at Chynna. Shark Fin is typically a bland dish sought after because it is considered rare. At any typical Chinese or Chinese themed restaurant, it would be forgettable, but Chynna has managed to pair it with effervescent opaque and luminescent chewy and squiggly noodles, cucumber, plump fresh shrimp, and scallops, which create a light home-made lovely soup. The shark fin itself is light yet pleasantly so and does have a subtle aroma and flavor that plays on the senses. It is of excellent quality and it shows.

Another must try dish is the Large Garlic Prawn, and it is indeed one of the largest prawns you will see, and is the length of a piece of steak. Exotic, unique and chunky, it certainly arouses salivation by the taste buds. The prawn is fresh and layered with melted cheese, and topped with garlic shavings to give it a strong garlic and savory taste. It teeters on the line of being light and heavy, and does so perfectly.

An artfully presented Stir Fry Fish with Leek and Celery is served on a plate with soy sauce in the form of calligraphy decorating the side. Served the way you would find in any local Chinese restaurant, the fish is spongy and chewy and guiltily tasty.

The Black Fried Fungus Served with Yam is not the best dish of the evening but is not bad either. The dish depends on if you enjoy Chinese crispy yams. The yams are crisp but bland, and the fungus is warm but fails to enhance the dish.

A favorite of the evening is the Porshel Crab Meat with Taro Vegetables. The crab is cooked, and the dish has a good blend of flavors with the crab and quality taro equally balanced and noticeable within the delicious oyster sauce.

For dessert, the Chocolate and Mango ice cream scoops are fabulous, rich in cream and in wine and served with fresh fruit and white chocolate.

These new dishes are more than worth a try, with each unique and original in its flavor and textures. I recommend though that you also order additional meat dishes, as the numerous seafood and vegetable dishes will begin to blend together due to the similarity of levels of flavor. Though I only had one chicken dish, it was excellent and provided an enjoyable fun and almost fried/greasy feel that the most popular Chinese dishes have such as Kung Pow Chicken or Sweet and Sour Pork. However with that in mind, each of these dishes was a standout and would not disappoint.

Chynna provides a shining example of elegant Chinese cuisine.

Service quality:

very good

Food quality:

very good

Environment:

very good

Price per head (RMB):

100-200

This article is brought to you by Best Food in China (www.bestfoodinchina.net ). Best Food in China is the first and leading English-medium website featuring reviews on food, cuisine and restaurants in China. For more information, please visit www.bestfoodinchina.net.