Yen Restaurant: Fashionable Chinese Dining in W Hotel

Margaux Schreurs | Oct 6, 2016 7:34 pm | Add a comment | 1149 reads

Walking into the W Hotel, you can tell just how much thought has gone into the high-tech lighting, stunning colors, and carefully placed reflecting surfaces throughout the lobby and in to the lifts. This fashionable theme continues into Yen Restaurant, their Chinese restaurant featuring mostly Cantonese and Northern dishes, along with Sichuan, Hunan, and Zhejiang cuisine.

Similar to the décor, the dishes are equally well presented and intricate. A particular example is the salmon and salmon roe in wasabi sauce (RMB 156), which confusingly is served on a plate and spelled out “I <3 U,” with the salmon sculpted into a fishy heart. While most hotels might only brave such a dish for Valentine’s Day, this romantic seafood dish is a permanent fixture on the menu and is perhaps one to avoid at your next business lunch, unless there is something you are trying to tell your dining companion.

Another example is the flambéed cod in beer sauce, thematically served in a bottle sliced open from top to bottom, laid out horizontally, and perched on a bottle stand. Unfortunately, the curvy features of the bottle rendered it difficult to eat the fish without careful consideration and an overbearing feeling that the entire structure, which was placed precariously high above the table, might at any moment topple over. This was a real shame, but presentation clearly took precedence.

These foibles in food assemblage experimentation were reeled back in by the mango and peach skin roulade and red bean paste bun (RMB 56). The bun comes in the shape of a little bird, served tucked away in a small wooden cage, giving a genuine lao Beijing feel. This dish is presented quite delicately – the mango and peach skin roulade served in a hollowed-out egg shell on the adjacent corner of the dish, acting as the egg yolk.

Looking past the thematic oddities, dessert was definitely the highlight of the meal and will satisfy anyone with a discerning sweet tooth. If the sugar rush won’t let you sleep, head to the hotel’s bar X25 upstairs, especially if you’ve caught a rare clear sky day in Beijiing, so as to appreciate our city’s skyline from the centrally-located 25th floor.

Yen Restaurant in W Hotel
Daily 11am-2pm, 5.30-10pm. W Hotel, 2 Jianguomen Nandajie, Chaoyang District (8590 1768)
朝阳区建国门南大街2号

This article first appeared in our magazine. To read the entire September/October issue online, please click here.