Last Orders: Julian Tavalin, Founder, Tavalin Bagels

“Last Orders” is a regular magazine column in which we ask noteworthy Beijingers to imagine their final meal before leaving the city for good. This month’s host is Julian Tavalin, founder of Tavalin Bagels.

The venue
Our first stop would have to be our local hole-in-the-wall, Hangzhou Xiaochi, across from the Sanlitun police station. I’ve become friends with the owners over the years (I eat there literally every day) and their food is cheap, standard and doesn’t make you sick. As my friend Ben puts it: “You never have to worry about the woks being clean because the turnover there is so high they’re washed with food.”

The starters
We would start with di san xian, tudou jiding, and yuxiang qiezi, and while waiting the customary two minutes for the dishes to come, we’ll send somebody to Heaven Supermarket to get some Budvars. As we chat with the guys at Hangzhou and they find out it’s our last night, they’ll force some of their weird Hangzhou overly-sweet wine down us. Then we’ll head east to Sanlitun bar street.

The mains
We’ll dip into the hutong just north of the frame shop and across from 3.3 Mall and head to Middle 8th. The place will be extremely crowded as usual, making it impossible to get a table, so we’ll ask for one of their mushroom dishes to go. When I found out a few years ago that mushrooms could taste like that, it changed everything.

The desserts
Lastly we would go to Crescent Moon and order some kao baozi. The waitresses there will ignore us completely, but then, when we are just about to lose hope, they’ll tell us they happen to have six left and we can have them all. We would then spend the next eight minutes trying to get one of those Xinjiang yellow beers, also with success.

Something from your own kitchen?
My last dish from our venue would have to be a sesame seed bagel with chive cream cheese and a slice of tomato. It reminds me of being a kid.

The music
After finishing up our kao baozi, we’ll jump in a cab and head to Party World KTV on Chaowai, where we’d crash into each other, roll around on the floor, bang the tambourines, dance on the little ledges built into the walls and sing the same songs we sing every time. We’ll sing ’til dawn in the classic Beijing sendoff. At this point, I would either stop or start sobbing.

Click here to see the November issue of the Beijinger in full.

Photo: Mitchell Pe Masilun