Come for the Chuan'r, Stay for the Seafood Rice on White Tiger Village's New Menu

From the get go, Xiang'er Hutong restaurant White Tiger Village offered a new and interesting take on that most satisfying of street foods: chuan'r. Around a year and a half after opening, they are taking their creativity even further with the latest iteration of their menu. 

The menu now features 13 different skewers, ranging in price from RMB 16-38 each. "A bit expensive for chuan'r," you might say, but these are nothing like the skewers slung by your average street vendor. The skewers bring together elements of Chinese, Japanese, Southeast Asian, and Mediterranean cuisine – a true fusion of tastes and textures.

We tried at least 10 varieties, of which our favorites were the house special meatball (a blend of pork and beef) with Sriracha mayo and Brussels sprouts sprinkled with shichimi togarashi (RMB 30); the creamy Yunnan goat's cheese (RMB 22); and the extremely tender beef fillet with beets and pickled mustard seed dressing (RMB 25). If you can't decide which ones to order, they also have two different sets of five skewers, priced at RMB 108 and RMB 128. 

This new burst of creativity comes courtesy of Chinese chef Starry Xiao, who hosted two successful pop-up dinners at White Tiger Village in 2016 alongside fellow chef Mo Zhou. Starry fell in love with food while studying fashion and visual communication in the UK between 2009 and 2013. After he graduated he started working as a food stylist, before going to Australia to do an internship at Attica, an award-winning restaurant on the outskirts of Melbourne, in 2015. He has been hosting pop-up dinners in and around Beijing since 2014.

The chuan'r are great but Starry has come up with a real winner in the form of the seafood "risotto" (RMB 168). I say risotto in inverted commas because the dish is really more of a combination of a risotto and a paella; Starry starts out the cooking process in a similar way to a risotto, sautéeing shallots in butter and white wine, before adding the rice and a selection of seafood, which is then covered with a Japanese-style dashi broth and sealed in a heavy pot to steam through. This results in tender seafood and just steamed rice, with an ever-so-slight Japanese flavor (enhanced by a final sprinkling of dried seaweed). With a few chuan'r on the side, the portion is more than enough to feed two to three hungry guests. 

While we're glad they've changed up the menu, we're glad White Tiger Village have stuck to what they know best when it comes to the drinks, offering a small selection of craft beers (including Jing-A draft) and reasonably priced wines, starting from RMB 168 for a bottle of eminently drinkable French white. 

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Photos: Robynne Tindall