I took a friend visiting to Xinjiang Fan Zhuang today for lunch as he had never tried Xinjiang food before. It was my first time trying this restaurant but I eat this kind of food quite regularly.
I would say the description given in the Beijinger listing is no longer accurate, unless things change between lunch and dinner. There was no Xinjiang style music or TV playing in the background. Also, like many "Xinjiang" restaurants in Beijing, all of the waiting staff and chefs (that I could see) where Chinese. No one looked Uyghur or anything other than Han Chinese. Equally, none of the customers looked like they were from Xinjiang. With the execption of one foreign women, we were the only two foreigners there.
As soon as you enter the restaurant you can see a 'bread shop' to the left filled with lots of really fresh, fantastic looking breads of all shapes and sizes. We got taken to a table almost immediately. The menu had the usual items and a few i'd not seen before. We ordered the Da Pan Ji. There were 3 different types with 3 different prices, the waiter told me the meat used in each was different but I couldn't get a clear idea of what the difference was. In the end, we went for the 50rmb one which ended up being a good choice as it looked like Dapanji generally does. There dapanji was excellent. The sauce was flavorful, moist chicken, a good amount of noodles, potato and peppers. We also ordered the yogurt which, again, was excellent. I couldn't see the usual sesame bread on the menu (it is there somewhere!) so we tried a different kind. It was also very good, very fresh. We tried the smaller lamb kebabs at 5rmb each and they were also fine. I think the meat was good quality but the seasoning was much the same as always. Finally we got an order of green beans/eggplant. This was fairly standard. To drink we had a couple of Dark Xinjiang beers. This was the first time I'd tried it and, as a beer alone, it was just okay but it went very well with what we were eating.
The waiters at this restaurant were all very nice and very attentive. Everything was done very quickly and efficiently. The food came quickly and without a big gap between dishes.
I would definitely go here again and I'd also like to try the other restaurant in the same location.
I used Baidu Maps to find the restaurant. We took the subway to Chegongzhuang station then just walked from there. It took about 10 minutes including a few minutes getting lost. The restaurant is down a tiny street and at the back of a small courtyard. The courtyard has a few shops selling dates and other imported things. It didn't look like anything too specialist though.
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