Gastro Esthetics at DaDong

A seafood restaurant, the environment is high-end, and the black color shows high standards. The service is still very good, after all, the service should keep up with the environment and price. Dongshi Scallion Braised Sea Cucumber, one of the signature dishes of the restaurant, the ingredients are really good, the taste is very good, soft and chewy with a little chewiness, and the side dishes are also beautiful and delicious. June drunken crab is also highly recommended, and the appearance of the finger meal is also very high.

Teacher Dadong, known as the "Master Chef", was entrusted by his friend Mr. Chen Huangyu to carefully design a gathering banquet with the theme of yellow croaker. The leaders of the food circles across the country gathered at the Dadong Food Academy at the beginning of the year. The Dadong Food Academy on the second floor of "Mei-Dadong Sea Cucumber Store" in Nanxincang can be called a holy place for the exchange of Chinese folk food culture. Colleagues in the industry are proud to check in here, and tasting food here can also appreciate the master chef's innovation. Innovation has become a hot word at present, but why and how to innovate are still controversial. Some people regard innovation as a way of performance assessment, while for industry masters like Teacher Dadong, innovation has become a normal state. It is not only a demand for operational development, but also a person's continuous self-iteration. Many people regard innovation as homogeneous replication or simple grafting, but I think that real innovation is to take a breakthrough in cognitive methodology as the core, and all forms are just the extension of "true meaning". The master chef's yellow croaker banquet started with a dish called "Fu Yongjun Peony Yellow Croaker Sashimi". According to the master chef, he was inspired by a dish of sashimi with Chaoshan Puning bean paste at Mr. Fu Yongjun's banquet, so he used beetroot juice to dye the tough yellow croaker spine and performed a beautiful sashimi. The master chef is eager to help others and respects the knowledge innovation in the industry. The dish is named after Mr. Fu Yongjun, which is a respect for the value of creation. The master chef, who learned from the classic Shandong cuisine, developed two dishes for the yellow croaker banquet with the charm of Jiangnan. One is steamed yellow croaker with fermented glutinous rice, and the other is fried semi-fermented yellow croaker, which is inspired by the method of stinky mandarin fish in Anhui. The inland and the coastal areas, the northern frontier and the south of the Yangtze River are often considered to be insurmountable barriers to taste. In recent years, Master Dadong has visited the southeast coast and the water towns of the south of the Yangtze River many times with a posture of being involved in the game. In the "Dong's Aesthetics" of Chinese artistic conception cuisine, the desert smoke and the small bridges and flowing water are in the same book. What really amazed me that night was a dish of "Changhai Abalone Braised with Blue Cheese and Smelly Mandarin Fish Sauce". This dish really achieved "breaking the appearance" and "out of the circle". Fresh abalone has a light taste. The master chef's magic lies in the "double stinks" of blue cheese and stinky mandarin fish. The so-called "stink" is nothing more than some ammonia released when amino acids are decomposed during protein fermentation. If properly controlled, the so-called stink is nothing more than another mirror image of "fragrance". But for a long time. We can only encounter blue cheese, which makes people "love and hate", on the cheese platter of Western food. To use Western cheese in Chinese food, this requires not only the recognition of the characteristics of the ingredients, but also a proper grasp of aesthetic taste. The amino acid molecules of dairy products are different from those of mandarin fish. The combination of multiple amino acids not only enriches the flavor of abalone, but also magically amplifies the umami taste by dozens of times. I like the complexity and depth of this dish, and I appreciate the innovation that dares to break the illusion of form. The true meaning of food is that the world is united and beauty is shared.

I have a lot of feelings for this "Dadong" in Nanxincang. This is where I met the master chef. At that time, the master chef still had long flowing hair, like a football star. Later, I visited the amazing "Dadong Food Academy" here. This time, the upgrade of "Dadong" is a long-awaited sublimation, which contains a belief in the profession and a commitment to time. This night's "Daxue Banquet" adheres to the cultural tradition of "Dadong cuisine" in response to the season. Several new dishes that are said to be under internal discussion and verification make me linger. As a "Dadong Sea Cucumber Restaurant", sea cucumber is naturally the main attraction of the store. Although southern Cantonese cuisine is good at making various dried seafood, in the cooking of sea cucumbers, the northern chefs represented by Shandong cuisine can better demonstrate their skills. The master chef who learned from the master of Shandong cuisine has naturally learned how to cook sea cucumbers. In many previous Dadong gatherings, a thick and red sauce "food sea cucumber" is indispensable. However, what was served to me this time was a plain and elegant "avocado wasabi white brine sea cucumber". This sea cucumber does not have the saturated impact of the traditional taste of salty, fresh and sweet, but can feel a kind of herbal fragrance, lightness and tranquility. A person who really cooks is not cooking ingredients, but expressing his own state of mind. The plain sea cucumber, which is more suitable for pairing with champagne, makes me think of four words: flowers are like plain. "Gaozhi Gaobaiyu" looks like a hardcover version of Chaoshan fish rice, but after careful tasting, it feels different. Chaoshan fish rice uses marine fish, but this Gaobaiyu from the Western Regions is a freshwater fish nourished by glacial water. The master chef has been writing for many years. I think the cultural symbol code is hidden in the text, and the clue to this dish is in the word "Gaozhi". Usually, we only feel that fish rice tastes fresh. Only when we encounter winter aconite and the like, we have the opportunity to appreciate the richness and fatness of "gelatinous cream". The word "cream" in the master chef refers to the micro-processing of the cooking process. Each piece of fish meat is sealed with a piece of meat jelly, and it tastes as smooth and fresh as jelly. This is the essence of eating fish rice. The "Daxue Banquet" of "Steamed Daiqu Tribe Yellow Croaker Roll with Fermented Zao" has a special meaning. The yellow wine in Jiangnan pays attention to "making in winter". The penetrating power of the dregs can not only restrain the fatness of the fish meat, but also accompany a lasting fragrance. The real hard dish is "Bad Butter Big Spare Fin". The luxury of this dish is not only reflected in the cost of 30,000 to 50,000 yuan of ingredients, but also in the fresh bald butter made from more than 60 hairy crabs. The master chef emphasized that the freshness of the bald butter is especially beautiful when it is raw on the spot. In addition to being extremely fresh, the fresh crab roe and crab paste also hide a hint of sweetness. Tasting the master chef's butter-fried large fin, you can clearly taste the white paste of the hairy crab, which has a pleasant stickiness and also tastes the sweetness you like. The small happiness becomes a great satisfaction. The master chef's new dishes are free and unrestrained. Chinese artistic conception dishes are not a show-off, but a self-motivation. The aesthetics of catering is not piling up, but thinking.

Dadong Beijing Nanxincang Store is very close to Poly Theater. I went to see a play in the evening and came to meet friends at noon. Dadong's roast duck has never tasted special, but the dishes are very delicate and taste good. Even a simple stewed tofu is cooked with gusto. Compared with ordinary home-cooked tofu, it is definitely worth the money. The goose liver is fat but not greasy and melts in the mouth. The roasted sea cucumber is particularly tasty and tastes good.

When friends from other places come to Beijing and want to eat roast duck, they choose Dadong first. I don’t know if it’s a psychological effect or something else, but I feel that Dadong is becoming more and more down-to-earth and more and more approachable. Not only can you order a whole or half roast duck according to the number of people dining, you can also choose a single portion. The quantity is also sufficient, definitely enough to eat. The environment is still high-end and classy, ​​and the dishes are still creative, always giving you unexpected surprises.

Dadong Roast Duck Restaurant is considered to be a relatively high-end roast duck restaurant in Beijing. The dishes are generally priced relatively high, the taste is authentic, and the restaurant decoration style is grand and upscale. The service is also warm and thoughtful. But to be honest, this place is suitable for business banquets, and it is a bit expensive for personal consumption. There are parking spaces on the underground floor, which is quite convenient.