Siji Minfu is one of the best-known roast duck restaurants in Beijing. It got famous for the duck itself — crisp skin, tender meat — and for service and a comfortable room, and it sits near the top of the city's roast-duck lists year after year. It is also the queue everybody tells you to join.
What to order
- The crisp-skinned duck
- This is the reason to come. Roasted over jujube wood in a hanging oven, so the skin comes out glossy and brittle and the meat stays moist. The chef carves it at the table, which is half the point. Dip the skin in sugar, or roll it with scallion, cucumber and sweet bean sauce in a pancake.
- Tossed pea shoots
- The best thing on the table for cutting the fat: tender pea shoots with crisp fried shreds of potato, sharp and lightly sweet.
- Beile grilled lamb
- It arrives on a hot iron plate still spitting. Thin lamb, tender and without the mutton smell, with onion and scallion, in the old Beijing grill idiom.
- Honey crisp-shell prawns
- Whole prawns fried until the shell can be eaten, then coated in a sweet-sour honey glaze. Crisp outside, plump within.
- Peppery duck carcass, or carcass soup
- What is left after carving can come back either dusted with salt and pepper and fried dry and crisp, or simmered down into a milky broth. Nothing is wasted.
Order with care
- Imperial almond junket
- Some people find it tastes of cough syrup and is too sweet. Try it knowing that.
- Old Beijing noodles with bean sauce
- Perfectly acceptable but unremarkable, and salty if you tip in all the sauce. The specialist noodle shops do it better.
- Douzhi
- Sour, astringent, strange. It is a curiosity rather than a drink; do not order it casually if you do not know the taste.
- Clear-simmered lion's head meatball
- Some reviews find the meatball loose and the seasoning thin for the price.
Which branch, and how to queue
- The busy branches
- The Forbidden City branch has the view seats and looks over the palace corner tower, but its queue is extreme; then Wangfujing Donganmen, Shuangjing and others.
- Where to go instead
- If you would rather not stand in line, avoid the Forbidden City branch and the ones near sights. Branches a little further out — Hujialou, Andelu — have a better waiting area and more attentive service.
Queue tactics
- Take a number online
- Take it in advance on Meituan or the restaurant's account — some branches only open the queue at 10:30 — and stay away from the 12:00 and 17:30 peaks.
- Go off-peak
- Between three and four in the afternoon there is essentially no queue.
- If it is the Forbidden City branch
- For lunch you have to scan for a number before you go through security at the East Gate — once you are inside, you cannot. For dinner, take a number on site after you leave the palace by the north gate.
How much to order
- Budget per person
- Around 120 to 150 yuan.
- How much to order
- Two people: half a duck, one hot dish, one cold. Three: a whole duck and two sides. The duck turns cloying, so do not over-order the sides.
- Pancakes and condiments
- Pancakes and condiments are charged by portion, not per head. With a small table, order one portion and ask the server to demonstrate the rolling — that usually comes with a free set of condiments, which saves you a portion.
- How the regulars eat it
- Skin dipped in sugar with a strip of hawthorn: it dissolves and the hawthorn cuts the fat. The meat is good with a little pickle alongside.