The Courtyard, Beijing, China

Entering the stark, serene interior of this restaurant, bathed in white, feels just like walking into any other ultramodern restaurant in a major world city. Creating this type of ambience was likely quite an achievement in 1997, though today, with China's rapid development, many similarly cutting-edge restaurants are finally opening. The Courtyard offers a modern fusion menu, preparing western dishes like grilled sea scallops and roasted veal tederloin with Asian ingredients like bamboo shoots and ginger, while also incorporating other influences (like goat cheese, dates, and baba ganoush).

For the appetizer, I started with tempura-fried shrimp, dusted with a light coating of green tea. For the entree, I chose lamb chops with a cashew nut crust, served with Xinjiang style ratatouille, sweet potato mash and roasted garlic demi glace (some definitions: Xinjiang is a province in northwestern China known for its large Uighur muslim minority; ratatouille is a French-style vegetable stew; and demi-glace is a rich brown sauce, also French in origin). The cuisine was successfully "fusion" in the sense that I would stop for a while and just absorb the mix of familiar and unfamiliar flavors, deciding in the end that I liked them.

Dining at one of Beijing's best-known restaurants, I had high expectations, and appreciated the service, the ambience and the creatitivty of the menu, though I found the preparation of my dishes a bit short of ideal, with the tempura shrimp slightly soggy and the lamb chops somewhat tough. Aside from those small imperfections, however, the restaurant is still one of a kind in Beijing, and also sits at a fantastic location right next to the Forbidden City, offering a remarkable view of the palace's eastern walls from the restaurant windows.

The Courtyard Restaurant
95 Donghuamen Avenue
Beijing, China
86-010-6526-8883
www.courtyardbeijing.com