Feudal Official Cuisine

Feudal official cuisine is also called bureaucrat and scholar-official cuisine, includes some famous dishes from the wealthy and powerful families. In the specification, the feudal official cuisine generally doesn’t surpass the imperial cuisine, but it does differ from the ordinary food eaten by the common people. As Beijing is a place gathering feudal official cuisines, which restaurants do you know cook feudal official cuisine in Beijing?

The late Qing Dynasty and Republican period was the flourishing age of feudal official cuisine. At that time, apart from the Tan’s cuisine, there were Duan’s cuisine in the military circle, Ren’s cuisine in the banking circle, and Wang’s cuisine in the financial circle of Beijing. But later, many feudal official cuisines cannot be found anywhere due to the continuous wars. After liberation, under the protection of Premier Zhou, the Tan’s cuisine entered the restaurants in Beijing. However, the others disappeared gradually. And even the later generations of those cook have never been heard of since.

Feudal official cuisine has many other names such as private cuisine, Mansion cuisine and Chamber cuisine, etc. In fact, they show many common tendencies that the restaurants are usually located in the covert places such as the courtyard in the hutongs, in secluded and quiet parks, and houses alongside the lake. In addition, the dishes have their unique characteristics and the high price often makes the common people hesitate to enter the restaurants. The general characteristic of feudal official cuisines lies in the sumptuous materials, exquisite processing, seasonality and freshness, and the highlighted features in etiquette, custom, and food culture. Therefore, if you pay attention to identity and want to display splendor, you may want to choose the feudal official cuisine in Beijing.