I've always had a soft spot for Lanzhou - sure it's an awkwardly shaped, ugly city a long way from anywhere, but the people are great and the local lamian noodles are even better.

There are lots of fast food joints serving the dish in Beijing, but frankly the soup in these places tastes nothing like the distinctive tasty brew you get in Lanzhou itself. Yanlan doesn't quite replicate the unique flavour either, but they come pretty damn close - certainly the closest I've found in Beijing.

The other dishes here are good to, including some Gansu provincial snacks that are hard to get anywhere else in Beijing.

The staff are polite and the service brisk and efficient. The setting is also wonderful, sitting as it does in the west-side shadow of Jinshan, directly behind the Forbidden City.

So if you can't spare the time to travel the 2000-odd kilometres to Lanzhou, I highly recommend visiting Yanlan and ordering a bowel of Lanzhou niurou lamian - the winter cold only makes the beef noodle dish all the more tasty.