Butcher's Club Burgers

Butcher's Club Burgers
G/F, Rialto Building
2 Landale Street
Wan Chai

Good quality ingredients, especially the wonderfully juicy thick-cut bacon that literally melted into the patty. The patty was moist and juicy even when it was 100% cooked without a hint of pink. However, it's a bit pricey (100 hkd) for a burger smaller than the size of a whopper and arriving at the table without fries (20 hkd extra).

Gogyo

Gogyo
Shop 3020, Level Three IFC Mall
1 Harbour View Street, Central

Fruit tsukemen with lobster bisque dipping sauce, assorted skewers, garden salad. Fruit tsukemen is a surprisingly good concoction, imparting freshness and balancing out the creamy thickness of the bisque. The noodles are chewy and al dente, and seem ready to soak up a hint of umami dressing covering the fruits. The skewers are average; the garden salad is fresh and, at 60 hkd, a good deal.

Private Kitchen

Braised green vegetables with crab meat and conpoy; steamed summer squash stuffed with scallop and shrimp; deep-fried sliced beef and taro, and prawn balls; double-boiled dried duck gizzard and pork shank with brassica and almonds; braised goose webs with black mushrooms and green vegetables.

Kotarou

Kotarou
朝阳区 新源街2号(近机场高速辅路)

Recently Kotarou has added ramen to its menu. According to the kitchen, they would start cooking the ramen soup base at around noon, and have it ready by around midnight. Customers would flock there late in the evening, and by 2am the soup would be gone and a new batch would start afresh the next day. These are all evidence of a serious ramen proprietor, but on the day of review, the ramen falls short of expectations. The tonkotsu soup base is strong and concentrated, full of flavors of pork and fat. A tinge of smokiness suggests that the chashu pork is slightly charred on the grill before simmering in soup. The pork is tender but, regrettably, a bit too soft and lacking a chew-able body. The noodle is the weakest link: it is surely not made fresh, as evident from an artificial bounciness and a relative lack of flavors.

Koyama

小山日本料理
三里屯路11号三里屯太古里北区NLG-16b

The food here is surprisingly solid for its posh location and relatively reasonable price (by Beijing standards anyways).

 Garden salad.

 Tamago platter.

 Mushrooms in butter sauce.

 Katsudon.

Cartoon motifs in the restaurant.

陈记卤煮小肠

陈记卤煮小肠
取灯胡同3号(近前门大栅栏)

Pig intestines in all its juices and aromatic glory. A world-class dish if one is forgiving to service, hygiene and ambiance.

3 stars to the dish.

Panda Brewpub

Panda Brewpub
Wudaoying Hutong
Beijing
http://www.pandabrew.cn/

This "Red Honey Ale" is an easy-going, all-grain IPA done by this cute-sounding startup microbrew. The ale is sweet on the palate and aromatic on the finish, with robust forces of sappy honey and summer fruits at the back palate. This is definitely the most reassuring and world-class brew I have tasted by a domestic label.

2 stars to the ale.