Beijing Boyce

No one handles a collar -- or a restaurant opening -- like Kawaja.

Switch Grill “popped its collar” last Friday night and officially opened its new digs in the Regentdale Center, just behind Swissotel at Dongsishitiao, thus completing the move from the 798 Art District. This new venture from Culinary Capers’ Debra Lykkemark and Billy Kawaja, and managed by Adam Goodman, has been open for about a month and I’ve written about the decor and menu here and some of the food here. I’ve had the lunch special three times now — it’s rmb68 for two courses, with an American coffee at rmb26 — and liked the slow-cooked salmon and the calamari chips with black olive dip. The party included a flow of red, white and rose wine from The Wine Republic as well as snacks, with the sweet chili corn dip, the curry chicken pizza and the butternut squash soup my favorites. A bubble machine at the door amused most attendees.

Switch is a pretty big place. It has more than 100 seats, options that range from the long bar on the first floor to a semi-private “board room” on the second, and a decor that provides plenty of flexibility. It’ll be interesting to see how the team positions the place, especially given what is available in the Workers Stadium and Sanlitun areas, but there is lots to work with here.

By the way, that photo above comes from Kawaja’s Weibo page. He’s only a few hundred short of 10,000 followers — add him to your friends and help a collar aficionado out!

Triple-dipping

No office? You can still feel like you have a boardroom.

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Some might call them hot dogs, others might call them handheld cardiac arrest units, but I call them delicious. Look for Switch restaurant in the 798 district to formally open its deck this Saturday. It will be known as Billy K’s Lemonade Stand, after co-owner Billy Kawaja, and will obviously have homemade lemonade, and in two versions, standard and spiked, the latter including one shot, two shot or three shot vodka options.

While it is still touch and go whether the lemonade stand will be ready for this weekend, the hot dogs will be on the grill, and I had a chance to try some at a recent wedding reception held at Switch. Each wiener is split in half and cooked well before being slid on a grilled bun with a slice of bacon plus cheddar cheese, smoked ketchup and Dijon mustard. In the interests of research, I ate four hot dogs at the wedding and found each one better than the last. That the normally finicky Cellar Rat ate not one but two hot dogs stands as even more of an endorsement.

I spent a night with catering company Culinary Capers last month at its restaurant — Switch in the 798 art district — as the team put together 6500 box lunches for a conference at Wukesong Stadium the next day. This not only required a mountain of food but also days of kitchen preparation, two refrigerated trucks out front to store the meals, and an assembly line involving dozens of people that put together six options — Chinese, Indian, Southeast Asian, Korean, Japanese and Western. That’s a lot of Tupperware. Some photos from the night…

Food and art at Switch

Culinary Capers' Billy Kawaja explains the assembly line.

Culinary Capers' Debra Lykkemark (bottom left) leads the team.

The Caesar salad assembly line in action.

Two trucks were needed to handle all of the meals.

The kitchen survives to prepare another meal... or 6500.

Update: As usual, I asked someone to oversee the draw, which involves writing each participant’s name on a piece of paper, scrunching up the papers, and then picking one of them. Flamme chef Jeffrey Powell did it this time, and the winner is Alex B.

I’m teaming up with Culinary Capers again for a turkey dinner giveaway to celebrate Thanksgiving (U.S. edition). The past two years, the winner received a takeaway bird, all of the trimmings, and vino from The Wine Republic. This year, the winner needs to dress up and find a date: the prize is a turkey dinner for two with six oysters and two glasses of sparking wine at Culinary Capers’ restaurant Switch in the 798 Art District on November 25.

To enter, all you need to do is leave a comment and let us know whether you like dark or light meat. This will be a draw but rest assured I am working on a merit-based contest for those who have been asking for more of those. Deadline is Monday at 2 PM.

Note: The Switch turkey dinner includes a choice of butternut squash soup or salad with pears, hazelnuts and maple apple cider dressing, plus turkey with gravy, cranberry chutney, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and root vegetables, plus citrus pumpkin tart for dessert. Turkeys with all the trimming also available (RMB850 pickup, slightly more for delivery).

There will be two seatings on November 25, from 6 to 8 PM and from 8:30 PM onward, and turkey dinner will also be available on November 23 and November 24. RSVP with Jenny at 136-9338-6984, 5978-4918, or jenny.zheng@culinarycapers.cn.

See also:

• Turkey time: Win a Thanksgiving dinner for six and a bottle of wine
• Gobble, gobble II: Win a free Thanksgiving turkey dinner and wine

Table for 120, sir? (Photo: Culinary Capers)

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Canadian catering company Culinary Capers will open a restaurant in the Super Ganbei space in the 798 art district in Beijing. The place will be called Switch, appropriate not only because it is usually restaurants that expand into catering, rather than vice versa, but also because it will involve rotating food and wine menus as well as a “theatrical” edge. A source at Culinary Capers says about 40 people have been hired for the expansion, including chefs and managers from Beijing  establishments such as Brasserie Flo, Jasmine, and Aman Resort.

Culinary Capers first made a splash in Beijing during the 2008 Olympics when Debra Lykkemark and her crew handled food and drink for the British Columbia Pavilion, across from the Legation Quarter. The company is headed in Beijing by Billy Kawaja, who is also executive chef, and Yi Li and Graeme Lahman, who handle operations and business development respectively. It has been using the former Tim’s Texas BBQ kitchen on the first floor of Sequoia Café near Ritan Park and is known for organizing business lunches and dinners on the Great Wall.

The Super Ganbei space has bee the site of everything from the El Bulli dinner organized by Brian McKenna of Room Beijing to a series of wine tasting events by importer and distributor East Meets West.