Beijing Boyce

Element Fresh opened Saturday and seems aimed at offering something for everyone - from coffee, smoothies, soups and salads, to main courses for around ~RMB150, to wine, beer, and house cocktails. The place can seat more than 150, includes a nice rooftop deck, and could become a regular stop for the laptop crowd given a large coffee is RMB22 and the wireless signal is decent. (Note: If your power source plug includes a round prong, bring an adapter, as the place doesn’t have any.) I’ll soon have a longer write-up on Element Fresh.

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One place that already is an excellent stop for wireless is Le Petit Gourmand, although the staff can get quite noisy at times. No such problems yesterday, and after several hours of glancing up and seeing the “beef sandwich” special chalked up on the board, I bit. With a generous slab of French bread, garnishes, and roast beef, as well as sides of Bearnaise sauce, fries, and salad, this is good value at RMB35.

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Sunday quickly transformed from a get-healthy day to a double-my-weight one as I ended up joining about a dozen of the city’s French chefs for brunch at VIC - “Voyage of International Cuisine” - in the Sofitel. While this place has about as much charm as a Starbucks, the buffet is pretty good and offers the usual seafood, cheeses, roast beef, desserts, and so on, though don’t expect to get the full Chinese food throwdown you find at the Westin and other places. My burning question: what do chefs eat when they hit a buffet? My observation: I saw heavy activity around the shellfish, sashimi, pan-fried goose liver, cheese, and desserts.