Bon Appetite!--Sunday Brunch at the Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza If you're looking for a cultivated way to spend your Beijing Sunday, you might consider brunch from 11:45 AM to 2:00 PM in the huge central atrium of the Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza, #48 Wangfujing Avenue (Tel: 6513-3388). The food is very good, an All-You-Can-Eat buffet whose price has recently been lowered to RMB 88 per person, plus a 15% service charge. Personally I have never been all that thrilled by hotel cuisine, unless you happen to be visiting the George V in Paris, or maybe The Plaza in New York. The Crowne Plaza is above average for this sort of venue. The two times I've stopped by, they've had a very nice salad bar which includes various sorts of lettuce, cold cuts, cheese, sushi rolls, tomatoes, cucumbers, marinated beef, and several vegetable salads as well. There are a half dozen kinds of dressing to choose from, as well as croutons and bacon bits, the works. A good salad bar in China is a real treat for the foreign traveler, since this is such un-Chinese fare, and the Crowne Plaza delivers the goods. As for the hot dishes, you will find several kinds of soup, fish, curry chicken, leg of lamb, generally a pork dish, vegetables, rice, and different kinds of potatoes. Plan on spending a couple of hours here if you want to sample everything. The buffet, as I say, is above average -- possibly very good for Western-style food in Beijing, which can be terrible. But the real reason I am recommending brunch at the Crowne Plaza has nothing to do with the food -- it is the music. Every Sunday a really splendid small orchestra of about twenty musicians sets up in folding chairs in the atrium to serenade you with Bach and Vivaldi and various classical pieces as you munch. The musicians are students from Beijing's Central Conservatory and they are really very good, putting on a much better performance than the stilted, formal music you are generally apt to hear in hotel lobbies in China. (I heard a similar orchestra recently at the much more expensive Kunlun Hotel, for instance, and it was terrible!) As far as I am concerned, the concert you get with your Sunday brunch at the Holiday Inn is worth the price of admission alone. The orchestra does a particularly good rendition of Vivaldi's "Four Seasons," which will put you in a very good mood as you gobble your sushi rolls and salad. The Atrium Coffee Shop (which is the official name of this restaurant) also offers opera recitals on Tuesday nights, and in the "Art Salon" on the second floor there is an entire music series that changes each month, and is given mostly on Thursday and Saturday nights from 7:30 until 9:00. (RMB 30 for adults, RMB 15 for students and children.) You should telephone for exact information, since the brochure that is available in the lobby is less than specific. On Wednesday, April 16th, for example, the program is described (I quote exactly): "Chamber Music. Violin, Panio, Celio Recital and so on." "Panio" sounds a bit like bread in Italian, but what could be more tasty? These are student concerts, so it's a bit the luck of the draw -- but if you love music, you probably won't be disappointed. The Crowne Plaza should be commended for supporting the arts in Beijing. Besides their musical offerings, there's an art gallery on the ground floor which has some interesting exhibits, both painting and photography. It's worth checking out. And if you're still in an artistic mood after brunch, you can walk off some of that chicken curry by strolling a block down the Wangfujing Avenue to the China Art Gallery on Chaoyangmennei Dajie. So have yourself a cultivated Sunday! From the Editor in Chief: If you have some travel or work experience in China to share with us, we will be very excited to hear from you! Send your feedback by e-mail or regular mail to ASM Overseas Corporation. Thank you! And if you liked this column, please check Expats In China (International Community in China) for more interesting and useful information on life in China as a foreigner, including calendar of events, entertainment, housing, employment, classifieds, personal, etc. |
