108-Year-Old Recipe Is the Secret to Success for This Quanzhou Beef Restaurant
At a hefty 200,000sqm, Hopson One is packed with new restaurants and is slowly becoming a veritable haven for Chinese food destinations, including the likes of Tang Stew and A Bu Noodles, wanting to cash in on Shuangjing's thriving diners. With such fierce competition, how should restaurants go about standing out in the crowd? Stick with what you know, that's how. Luckily Niu Jiu Fen, who got its start in Quanzhou, Fujian province, has been delighting patrons with their secret, delicious recipe for tasty beef for over a century. Now, they bring that magic formula to Beijing.
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After you've navigated your way through the maze-like first-floor basement, you'll find Niu Jiu Fen at the exit to the sunken plaza next to Holiland bakery. The décor is a sunburst of bright and yellow tones, and the leather stools are shaped as a little bull along the façade. The menu focuses specifically on beef dishes, with various beef stews, several soups, as well as traditional Fujian-style dishes.
We dived straight into the beef soup (RMB 25/small, or RMB 59/large) filled with beef strips that are tender and springy thanks to the traditional 90-minute, back-breaking process of kneading the meat with sweet potato flour before adding it to the soup which is thickened with starch and then all mixed together with mashed garlic, ginger, scallions. The result is so flavorful and superbly spiced, that you'll be unable to stop mid-way through even to catch your breath. Even better? You can refill it for free to your heart's content.
Their other must-try dish is the braised beef with soybean paste (RMB 139/small, RMB 179/large), which comes served on a sizzling iron plate. Niu Jiu Fens source their ribs from Australia and cook it four hours with 21 kinds of herbs and spices (some appear often in Southeast Asian cuisines) as well as drizzle of homemade 100-day wine. The absolute king of our meal, these ribs are unlike a steak in that they come well-cooked and have a mellow texture, bursting with flavors that will whisk you away from Beijing to somewhere more akin to Southeast Asia.
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To round off your meal, try the shihuagao (石花膏, RMB 19/bottle), a Fujianese drink made from air-dried and boiled agar weed that grows on the coast and is often drunk in summer. It has a transparent, jelly-like texture, and is sweetened before being served (think the white version of grass jelly). There are also specialty in-house made rice and herb-infused wines (RMB 39/bottle).
Niu Jiu Fen is a testament to how seriously Quanzhou people treat their food and if you want to play by the rulebook you must only pair your braised beef "with plain rice, instead of fried rice or noodles, for it’s a match in heaven," we were told. Fads may come and go, but Niu Jiu Fen's 100-year-old recipes look like they're here to stay, and for that, we can all be grateful.
Niu Jiu Fen
Mon-Fri 10am-10pm. Sat-Sun 10am-11pm. B1, Hopson One, 22A Xidawang Lu, Chaoyang District (135 9991 6989)
牛九分酱烧牛大排：朝阳区西大望路甲22号合生汇B1层（好利来旁边）
Looking for something a little more, well, modern in Hopson One? Try Maru, where Korean celebrity chef Andrew Ahn blends traditional cooking with innovative flourishes.
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Email: tracywang@thebeijinger.com
Twitter: @flyingfigure
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Photos courtesy of Niu Jiu Fen, Tracy Wang
