Beijing Boyce

When the new Saddle opens in Nali Studios, expect different eats both from the original and from the owners’ current establishment, The Rickshaw.

Last Saturday, I found myself sitting in The Rickshaw near one of those owners, Nick Ma, the man behind the new menu, and he let me in on a taste test of potential menu items, including the seven-layer nachos, vegetarian burritos, a type of burrito topped with loads of melted cheese (we had one stuffed with slow-cooked beef and one with pork), and deep-fried apple-filled wraps with chocolate and whipped cream. We ate several variations of each, thanks to chef Sabrina, and they were tasty indeed. Some fine-tuning is to come, but this gives you an idea of the menu’s direction.

The Saddle will also see a much different drinks lineup:

• Beer made on the premises
• Fifty kinds of margaritas
• Mucho tequila. As reported earlier, Chad Lager says, “I guarantee you that the new Saddle will have the best selection of tequila in all of China.”

That’s a lot going on, given I associate Saddle and The Rickshaw with simplicity — good eats, a limited but sufficient beverage menu, and a homey atmosphere. The strength of Saddle and The Rickshaw were to provide something that local eaters and drinkers actually want, as to opposed to so many establishments who try to bring in some concept from another place and to “raise the bar”, so to speak. It’s the difference between serving the market and trying to create it. Let’s hope the new Saddle keeps on that less well-worn path – the food suggests it is.

More on the place to come…

… please stay tuned.

The bad news – about 25 posts are gone from my blog. The good news – my blog roll wasn’t accidentally deleted this time around.

I’m trying to upgrade this site by adding “plug-ins” and am about as good at figuring that out as I am at making sparkling wine in my bathtub. If anyone out there is a plug-in expert and could let me know how best to upload / install them, much appreciated.

Meanwhile, I will have the posts back up ASAP and have plenty of material in the pipeline, including posts on Sino-French Demonstration Vineyard, a tasting of ten Chinese wines held today, a tour of the new Nali Studio (which will house Saddle, Project H20, Ciro and other establishments), a flashback on 2007 Beijing booze news, the Time Out-Summergate wine guide, and my long overdue wireless winter spots report.

Finally, while enjoying the weekend, take a few minutes and enter The Haiku Challenge. The details are below…

UPDATE: The Ice Bar has melteth.

China World Hotel opened Ice Bar a few weeks ago, just outside Aria. As reported earlier, the bar is, not surprisingly, made of ice and is cosponsored by Moet-Hennessy Diageo, so expect Moet Chandon Champagne, Belvedere Vodka and Grand Marnier. The bar itself is modest and fun for a quick drink. And the Champagne is definitely chilled. The only weird thing is the deafening hip hop – something a bit more relaxed would work better. For some reason, ABBA pops into my mind…

Coats are provided for those venturing outside.

(Thanks to Marc at MHD for the photo.)

Yesterday, Chad Lager of the The Rickshaw took me on a tour of the new Saddle location in Nali Studios (more on this later)  and we then went on a walkabout that ended at Scandinavian restaurant and bar The Little Mermaid.

The Little Mermaid offers more than a dozen kinds of Akvavit, Schnapps and bitters, at RMB 15 for 20 centiliters. Dane Torben Vester, who runs the place with wife Celine, gave us a tasting of his homemade concoctions, including walnut Schnapps made with eight-year old walnut essence, another drink infused with 11 herbs, and one that tasted of licorice. He also has a homemade candy-flavored drink called Blaa Ugla, a dill Schnapps, and imported Gammel Dansk and Gammel Dansk Citrus, which he says, “is a bitters, the most well-known one in Denmark.”

Given his background, there is plenty of Carlsberg, and at reasonable prices, too. Draft is RMB 20 for 500 ML and RMB 40 for 1.25 liter, with bottles costing RMB 25.

The Little Mermaid has food, too. Torben says the herring, beef stroganoff, and the dark bread (made in-house) are most popular. Even better, he and Celine are experimenting with cheese, though it is not on the menu. We tried homemade Brie that had a nice gooey-ness, a decent rind and pungent aroma, though it was salty – Torben says this is because it isn’t dulled down with preservative as are many store-bought ones.

To get to The Little Mermaid, go north on Sanlitun, past the main bar strip and turn right at the corner directly across from the 3.3 building. Walk down that street past the first corner and you’ll find The Little Mermaid on your left.

This blog is warming up winter with The Haiku Challenge! Write a haiku about Beijing’s nightlife scene and you could win 42 Below vodka. As announced Thursday, the author of the best haiku gets three bottles of vodka.

On Friday, Song, the newest place in The Place, donated a 500-kuai gift certificate for the winner.

And why not? 42 Below’s Martin “Party Marty” Newell will be on hand at Song this Wednesday (from 7 PM) for a “cocktail concierge” night that features two-for-one martinis and Newell tackling your cocktail questions.

Details on the challenge are here. The panel of judges includes:

• Witty/wacky wordsmith Will Moss of the Imagethief blog
• Jo Lusby of Penguin Group
• Modern-day vagabond, able bartender and IT guru Badr Banjelloun
• And last, but certainly not least, hailing from the land of the haiku, Naoko Aoki of Kyodo News

In order to ensure fairness, I will provide judges with the haikus, but keep authors’ names secret until the winners have been picked.

Send your haikus (maximum three) by noon on January 17 to beijingboyce@yahoo.com. Thanks to those who’ve already entered the challenge.

Note: I have received no financial or other rewards from Song or 42 Below vodka in exchange for running this contest. If, however, any readers want to buy me a martini, well… you won’t need to twist my arm, just my lemon rind.

All work and no vodka make for dull boys and girls. To brighten things up in Beijing, this blog is holding its first contest. Write a haiku about a Beijing bar, pub or club or about this city’s nightlife, and you could win winter-warming vodka from 42 Below.The writer of the best haiku, as determined by a panel of judges to be announced tomorrow, receives three bottles of vodka. There will be one bottle of 42 Below for each of the three runner-up writers.

I’ll publish the top 17 haiku – that’s how many syllables are in these poems – so even if you don’t win the vodka, you’ll still win some, uh, glory.

A few haiku examples (and yes, I’m not a poet, and I know it):

(1)

Bar bill hundreds high
Temperature nineties hot
Alfa eighties night

(2)

Parched, dusty, and bruised, I
Slake my workweek desert thirst
Q Bar martini

(3)

Standard Scot lad dates
Sweet local lass with dry wit
Chivas and green tea

Here are a few rules:
- The haiku should be about Beijing – a bar, a club or a lounge or the city’s nightlife scene
- The haiku should be in lines of five, seven and five syllables. For example:

Bar bill hun-dreds high (5)
Tem-per-a-ture nine-ties hot (7)
Al-fa eight-ies night (5)

- There is a limit of three haiku per writer
- Contestants must be in Beijing
- The deadline for submissions is noon on January 17. Winners will be announced on January 22.

Send your haikus to beijingboyce@yahoo.com. I will have have more details tomorrow.

(By the way, how did I get six bottles of 42 Below vodka? Last month, I sent out my 42nd Beijing Boyce newsletter and my mailing list includes Martin “Party Marty” Newell at 42 Below, with whom I’ve shared a few drinks and who asked me to be a judge in the Beijing qualifier of the 42 Below World Cocktail Cup last year (a decision I am sure he now regrets). He congratulated me on the newsletter, I thanked him and suggested he give me six bottles of vodka to help promote haiku in Beijing, and he agreed (another decision I’m sure he will regret). Plus, I’ve seen this vodka up at Q Bar, Centro, Aria, Song, and other places, and once watched Special K guzzle triple shots of the honey version. Hmm, the latter might be worth a haiku.)

Browns replaced by a restaurant called Revelations? A place called The Rickshaw becoming a hotspot? Large-scale outfits RBL, Rui Fu and nhu biting the dust? Good Chinese wine popping up in bars, restaurants and five-star hotels? They’re all part of Beijing’s 2007 nightlife story. A few highlights from that tale, as seen in this blog…

January-February

Now, *that’s* a topic for a blues song
Backed by Handel Lee (The Courtyard, Three on the Bund), featuring live Chicago blues bands in Icehouse, and lacking obvious signage on a street heavily visited by tourists, RBL sinks in Wangfujing and drags down more investors than you can count on your fingers. The venue is expected to resurface this year in Lee’s next project – The Legation. Perhaps, the best take on this is from a reader.

See Meltdown at Icehouse; Icehouse: Did It Stand a Snowball’s Chance?

Dang, my tanktop is at the cleaners
My first pub crawl of 2007 is with Eddie O. We hit Cheers (Wild Turkey and live Xinjiang music), China Doll (people watching), Swing (great band but minimal toilet facilities; as Eddie says, “They want you to buy the beer here and process it somewhere else”) and Browns (featuring what seem to be bit players from The Dukes of Hazzard or Talladega Nights).

See On the Go with Eddie O (Again)

Then I craved sunflower seeds
Rather than allow a rude mobile phone-using jerk in The Bookworm raise my blood pressure, Beijing Boyce (v2007) uses the inane conversation to play a game.

See Choose the gerbil! 

And he even started to like sparkling wine
Frank Siegel holds his first weekly wine tasting of 2007 at Sequoia Café, with four wines and five cheeses from Canada. Over the next year, he will build the city’s best wine community as he covers vino from six continents, organizes vertical, varietal and blind tastings, brings in winemakers and winery owners, and patronizes a wide range of distributors.

See Say Cheese, Eh?

Buy 2, get 1… hey, wait a minute!
Reigning “bar of the year” Browns nears its first anniversary – bad specials, rotating personnel and unfinished décor suggest the place is on the decline and needs to get its act together. Six months later, the place is closed, with its contents gutted and the whereabouts of its managing partner a mystery.

See Browns: Love It…?

Neither do references to “smoked meat”
Taking a page from danwei.org, I sex up the site to see if it generates traffic. I learn that deliberately including typos – i.e. changing Tim’s Texas BBQ to Tim’s Sex-Ass BBQ – doesn’t work.

See Did Someone Say Sex?

If anyone needs some quality used underwear…
The newsletter that spun off this blog reaches its thirty-third edition and… 100,000 words. Book deal, reality TV show and newspaper column offers pour in, a flock of 88 doves continually circles my whereabouts, thousands of women throw their panties on stage, and global peace / a baby boom ensues. Or, I start working on the next 100,000 words. It was one of those two…

Please save the “leaded or unleaded” jokes
My mission for 2007: find seven decent Chinese wines that you can buy in Beijing for less than 700 kuai total. My first blind tasting: during Chinese New Year, with ten wines, seven tasters and a few clear winners. (Note: the best wine glass deal is at the Flower Market, where 22-ounce, thin-rimmed, Bordeaux-style Stone Island beauties are 10 kuai or less.)

See Say Grace: The search for seven good Chinese wines, part 1

All in the name of science
The Bourbon, Rye and Whisky League (BRAWL) meets at Tim’s Texas BBQ (now Sequoia Café) for a blind tasting of Kentucky Bourbon, Irish Whisky, Scotch and Canadian Rye. The Rye (Alberta Springs) edges the Irish Whisky (Bushmills) as favorite.

See BRAWL makes the call

Hints of minerals, notes of worms
Campbell Thompson gets down to earth and provides wine advice for an Inner Mongolian woman who subsists solely on dirt. Think about “terroir”, says he.

See A Shovel-full of Your Finest, Please

Or perhaps it’s a sprouting potato?
My long-standing discussion with Eddie O as to whether the Jagermeister mascot is a moose or a reindeer continues into the New Year.

See Moose or Reindeer?