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Hawking Fine Food

Lau Pa Sak

Offering claimed genuine Singaporean "hawkers'" food, one of the city-state's greatest tourist attractions, Lau Pa Sak café-style restaurant gained immediate popularity when it opened last year. The range and quality of listings apart, interior coolness is thankfully generated by a fan that is far preferable to finger-numbing air-conditioning, even on feverishly hot Beijing summer days.  

Meanwhile, including early spring in Beijing when winter still bites the heels of warmer winds, Lau Pa Sak's ceramic-tiled floor and marble-topped tables create the illusion of shielding customers from a scorching midday sun.

Old black-and-white photographs gleam from the restaurant walls and tell of the street life of Singapore in its colonial days. Amazing how nostalgic they can still be to old Asian hands who frequent the eatery.

To the background buzz and clatter of an authentic colonial café, waitresses in bright red Adidas tops serve authentic Singaporean hawker fare with speed. Food hawking is an enthusiastic Asian phenomenon and, until recently in Beijing, was epitomized by street stalls and makeshift bicycle cabinets from which all types of snacks were sold hot or cold throughout the year (and never mind the hygienic dangers). Now the Chinese capital has regimented "food streets", with purveyors enclosed by walls of one kind or another or in decent premises.

Chilled Tiger beers, steaming spicy-hot curries, poppadums and crispy satay come flying out Lau Pa Sak's kitchen hatch from which owner and head-chef Johnny Tan occasionally peers, sporting his trademark broad smile to say hello to customers and friends.

An unexpected gift to Beijing's international cuisine, Lau Pa Sak is perfect for a ravenous lunch or mid-afternoon beer and curry, or evening meal with foreign friends. You can drop in any time until 11:00pm.

Find Lau Pa Sak on the ground floor of Commercial Building on Xingfuercun, Chaoyang District. You can book a lunchtime or evening table by calling +86 10 6417 0952.