Capital Bites: Restaurant Week, Cloned Cows, Space Vegetables and Breakfast Burritos

It's Beijing Restaurant Week. Have you booked a table yet? We have an update with links for booking and to other guides. Also, we round up our reviews of all the new spots we've been trying recently, from bread bars to cafes to sushi bars. Lucky Lopez is branching out a bit, and there's a new French patisserie in town.

If you haven't secured a spot at any of the Dining City Restaurant Week venues, follow this link to book reservations.

Currently, the only restaurants all booked up are Maison Boulud, Terra and Whampoa Club. Other than that, there are still tons of great ones to choose from, including Agua, Bei, Capital M, Ellingen Brauhaus, Lost Heaven, Modo, Mosto, SALT, Tadka, The Cut and Yi House (at Grace Hotel). We've also heard that restaurants like Ganges, Hatsune, Kagen tend to really splash out with amazing feasts for Restaurant Week, so don't overlook those! For more guides, you can visit the post on City Weekend here, or Lumdimsum's post here.

Lucky Lopez is starting a weekend brunch, with breakfast burritos. Egg, bacon and potatoes in a warm tortilla – what's not to love? They're also testing out three new sauces: a chimichurra, smoky chipotle with tomatilla, and what owner June Chow calls her version of a Louisiana hot sauce. All three were delicious and coated our tortilla chips quite nicely. Stop in for a try if you're in the area.

Les Bijoux is a new French patisserie at Guanghualu Soho. They'll be serving up some competition to Comptoirs de France if our sample of their luscious macarons was any indication. They only just opened officially on Saturday, September 1. The location is tiny, but they're looking for a larger cafe venue as we speak; their desserts are a bit pricey but they look like they'll pay off. The pastry chef studied at Le Cordon Bleu, and worked a stint at Fauchon in Paris as well as the Sofitel here in Beijing.

And of course, we've been hitting you hard with reviews. See our take on Baochao Hutong's newest Yunnan restaurant, Southern Barbarian, coffee and pastries from Sunfish Hut (whose chef hails from the Kempinski) and the very Korean Hollys Coffee, Beiluo Bread Bar over at (you guessed it) Beiluogu Xiang and Eastern Fusion Sushi at China View near Gongti.

Last but perhaps most fascinating, China's playing mad scientist with its food supply, which really really shouldn't surprise us at this point. The latest exploits: cloned cows and vegetables grown in space. The cows are meant to make for more flavorful beef, while the veggies are being cosmically cultivated to produce larger varieties and higher yields. Now how will they register for that organic label?

Eat safe.

Photos: Globaltimes.com, Marilyn Mai