Beijing Boyce

One mall, three levels, fifteen restaurants

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Several weeks ago I did a walkabout in Lido and found moderate to large crowds at every place I visited, including The Irish Volunteer, Eudora Station, Parkside, Frank’s Place and the new Peter’s Tex Mex. As with Shuangjing, this area has enough options that it feels like one to patronize even if you don’t live there.

Swire Properties, best known in Beijing for its two “Village” projects and The Opposite Hotel in Sanlitun, is hoping to also provide a draw with a complex called Indigo that will include the second of its EAST business hotels (the first is in Hong Kong), more than 50,000 square metes of office space, and a mall that includes a cinema with more than 1200 seats inside and a 16-hectare park and IMAX theater outside. (According to this Swire site, the company has a 50 percent stake in the venture.)

More relevant to this blog, the Indigo Mall will have fifteen food and drink outlets on three levels that face a spacious and lofty lobby (see above photo). These will include Western brands such as Element Fresh, Hercules, Coldstone Creamery and Blue Frog (more details here), Chinese restaurant Xi He Ya Yuan and Japanese outfit Toyo Jazz, and establishments that focus on everything from ramen and hot pot to Cantonese, Vietnamese, Taiwanese and Korean food.

That is a lot of capacity. Then again, a good mix of retail, restaurants, cinema and, one can only guess, events should be a draw for many residents in the city’s northeast. And a subway stop right at the complex, expected to be done in 2014, will provide relatively easy access for most anyone else.

Look for restaurants to start opening as early as the end of the year.

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Look for a pair of Blue Frogs to open over the next few months, with the Dongzhimen Chaoyanmen outlet in U-Town, beside the new Crowne Plaza, possibly serving burgers and beers within the next two weeks, says Greg Dover. (That will create a one-two patty punch given Burger King is just around the corner.) Dover says the venue will seat about 140 customers and have more of a bar feel than the one in Sanlitun Village. The patio out front will fit another 60 people along a lengthy facade with sliding windows that can be opened to provide an airy feel when the weather is good. (Note: This might be the neatest construction site I have ever seen in Beijing.)

The second venue will be in Indigo, the new Swire project in Lido that includes office space, hotel East, and an indoor “garden” with fifteen food and beverage outlets. The Blue Frog outlet will have one of two first-floor corner spaces that provide direct access from outside as well as from the lobby. Dover says the restaurant will measure a whopping 630 square meters, with an additional patio of 100 square meters, and seat around 400 people. The design includes two bars as well as areas that can be easily partitioned for events. Look for an opening late this year or early next year.

Both new Blue Frogs will have the same menu and specials as their predecessors. That means more Burger, Burger Monday about town.

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Was heading from Lido to Sanlitun and decided to stop at Home Plate to grab a bite and send some emails. Sometimes timing is everything: Brandon Hess of beer distributor Dxcel had just arrived with a case of Kentucky Bourbon Barrel Ale. This is the only case in Beijing, he says, though more will be coming to market in a few months, so head to Home Plate if you want a try. This beer is aged six weeks in Bourbon barrels, adds Hess. Expect a strong brew as it checks in at 8.19 percent alcohol (how precise!). A few more emails and I will be trying one of these…

Update: And we have a winner! Trevor Metz of Grinders checked to make sure the draw was on the up and up. I wrote each entrant’s name on a paper, put the papers in a glass, and Metz drew one out. The winner of four Beijinger party tickets: Mike Cormack (and, ultimately, three of this friends).

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Ten years ago… I might have been a senior in a Canadian university, dragging about a backpack of books and Jolt cola and dreaming of — some day! — a move to Beijing to write a smart-ass blog about the bar scene. Or a university “professor” in Korea teaching the third conditional to students, the males of which warned me to stay away from the womenfolk. Or a reporter for a Taiwan-based trade magazine by day and proprietor of a hair salon / cocktail bar by night – would you like some punch with that bowl cut? I don’t know. I was probably doing one of the above, but my memory is hazy, because ten years is a long time.

So, kudos to Mike Wester and his magazine for surviving that long – a decade – in the highly competitive publishing industry. It started out as that’s Beijing and, after a nasty split with the publisher a few years back, became The Beijinger without missing an issue, and for me is the most relevant – and certainly most amusing – of the lifestyle magazines in our fair city.

The Beijinger will mark its tenth with a rmb100 all-you-can-drink five-hour bash this Saturday, from 4 PM to 9 PM, at Sanlitun Soho, which seems a fitting spot given it sits on the former Sanlitun Bar Street.

I have four tickets to give away. Leave a comment and tell us what you were doing ten years ago. Deadline for entries is tomorrow, Friday, at 3 PM. All legitimate entries go into a draw that I will do tomorrow afternoon.

(By the way, I’ll be contacting everyone who has yet to claim a prize from past contests, or who I have yet to give pick-up details to, in the next day.)

Finally, one of my favorite covers by Wester and the team — I can only imagine how long it took to get all four dogs into position.