Staying Cool

Roof Terrace: Assaggi, Italian Restaurant and Bar, 1, North Street, Sanlitun. Tel: +86 10 8454 4508

The worst rainstorm of the summer so far is not necessarily the best time to review roof gardens and terrace dining al fresco but hey, what is fun without variety?

All in the name of culinary science, Assaggi was to be the site of a spectacular feast of dining al fresco. But the rain gods had other ideas and the rain lashed down around the streets of Sanlitun in late June. Never mind. A glass-covered terrace, nice and cool and well-served by attentive and diligent staff provided an alternative. In a hot climate there is nothing quite like a refreshing downpour.

Even through the sheet rain that ran down the windows, the terrace outside looked temptingly cool, covered as it is in summer in lush green trees. True, sweltering humidity doesn't always lend itself to dining outdoors, but restaurants like Assaggi provide alternative indoor dining that is just as cool.

Bread sticks and mineral water, homemade pesto, string-tied napkins, tasteful art, halogen lighting, cloth-covered chairs and the hushed chatter of gentle looking customers sets Assaggi apart as a classy joint. Long-stemmed wine goblets and not a chopstick in sight confirm Assaggi as a western restaurant, except that it is usually filled with an eclectic mix of nationalities including many Chinese.

The food arrived in a subdued atmosphere, perhaps owing to the thunderstorm that had quietened down the diners: carpaccio of beef topped with freshly grated Parmesan cheese and olive oil and confit of roast peppers and mushrooms got the meal off to a delicious start.

Large plates and smallish portions are a good idea in restaurants like this where the food is rich.

To follow, tortellini parcels with pork stuffing, fettuccini in a tomato sauce and roast chicken and new potatoes provide good balance when shared out and tasted by everyone. Again, food like this and restaurants like Assaggi invite tasting everything that comes. Besides, passing the plates around in a continuous taste-testing is fun.

Although Assaggi has an excellent, well-chosen wine list, this time calories were overlooked for the tempting delights of the dessert trolley instead.

In deep anticipation, coffees, lattes and decaffeinated coffees were downed with light and fluffy fresh cream cheese cake served with a strawberry coulis, a mixed fruit tart in an ingenious jelly pastry base, also with a fruit coulis and flavours of home made ice cream were absolutely delicious. Dessert dishes were licked clean, literally, by delighted diners on all sides of the table.

While the meal was supposed to have been about staying cool in the summer, by the time it was over the rain had stopped and the temperature outside was noticeably cooler. Desired effect achieved! Definitely worth another round.

Sidewalk Terrace: The Pagoda Tree Restaurant, North Street, Sanlitun. Tel: + 86 10 6460 3055

The pagoda trees that line North Street in Sanlitun are part of the inspiration behind the name of this fine six-month-old restaurant. The other part comes from Liu Tiezhu's love of the trees that are a common sight around Beijing. Liu is the owner of the Pagoda Tree Restaurant.

During the hot summer months in Beijing, the pagoda trees provide protective leafy covering from the hot midday sun and sudden downpours that surprise even weather-hardy city locals.

A cool breeze runs up North Street as diners settle comfortably at their tables on the bush lined side-walk terrace of the restaurant, that is just up the road from Jenny Lou's western supermarket. Large garden umbrellas are at hand as the sky turns dark and rumbling sounds overhead predict a summer a rainstorm. Diners remain unperturbed and wait staff continue to move in and out of the restaurant bringing food and drink.

Owner Liu has devised an interesting concept for the restaurant combining Spanish and Chinese themes with food from Taiwan. A former restaurant owner from the Sanlitun area, Liu clearly knows what's she’s about. The restaurant building resembles a Spanish farmhouse, with wooden shutters and Picasso etchings. The music pouring onto the street is Chinese and inside the main door is a trunk of an old tree upon which a Chinese tea set is displayed in accordance with traditional customs for drinking tea in China. Nearby the restaurant bar, international fashion magazines are displayed from a rack.

Outside, the temperature has dropped and rain drizzles on the pavement. The food is being served. On the three floors above the sound of the rain can be heard through the open shuttered windows.

Right in the centre of a leafy diplomatic enclave, North Street is the other part of Sanlitun, just across Dongzhimenwai. North Street has the rarefied and peaceful atmosphere you might expect from such a neighbourhood after hours. It is quiet most of the time, in contrast with bar street that is anything but.

On the table Taiwanese food needs some explanation for the uninitiated. Stuffed long-life bread loaf is a good place to start. A deep-fried loaf of bread stuffed with chopped vegetables, green peas, corn, and seafood doesn't sound that appetising, but if you need to go to this restaurant for one thing it is to taste this. It’s great! Also on the menu is another local Taiwanese speciality that involves mouth-watering pineapple, sweetened vegetables and pan-fried pork. Lychees and shrimp provide an unexpected pleasure in opposing textures and flavours that work well.

Liu explains that Taiwanese cuisine is only subtly different from other regional Chinese cooking, involving perhaps sweeter tastes and a more unusual combination of ingredients. And as if to illustrate this, a yellow fish dish arrives that is quite literally smothered in whole garlic cloves. No worries, she says, taste it, it's gorgeous. And she was right, it was.

Rain thunders onto the pavement but the table and the delicious food are protected by the thick fabric of the garden umbrella. The evening is now wonderfully cool as Liu tells how she started in the restaurant business and how unlike her very industrious neighbours, the women who own Assaggi and Gold Barn hail from Sichuan, she is a Beijing girl who favours a more lazy attitude to life. Lots of work and play she says makes life work well.

Happy to chat with her customers and move from table to table sharing food knowledge and local gossip, Liu is a welcome addition to the evening and the delicious food at the Pagoda Restaurant on North Street, Sanlitun. A meal for two would be easily achieved for 200 yuan. The service was efficient and speedy and constantly monitored by the owner herself, as you might expect. Note: A place to go back to and make a regular spot.

Outdoor and Indoor: The Iowa Plantation, near Juxingqiao North Rd, off Fifth Ring Road Tel: +86 10 6431 3514

Staying cool in the summer in the city is not so difficult after all, nor, as it turns out, is it a little further a field. Just off the Fifth Ring Road from the Airport Expressway, is the Iowa Plantation, the brainchild of S.C. Hu, a Beijing-born retired university lecturer from Iowa in the United States.

Iowa Plantation is the place to visit when you have a few hours to while away, particularly if you dine with “SC” himself. A raconteur and great company, the Plantation proprietor is a tour de force of ideas on dining, entertaining and building alternative ways to live and make a living.

In what might be variously described as well-insulated large Quonset huts (or small hanger buildings) SC has built two large entertainment spaces, one for reception-style events and the other a 150-seat restaurant.

Under the curved ceilings of the Plantation's Quonset buildings, insulation that was specially designed and patented by SC dispels the summer heat. Equivalent to two-metre-thick concrete, SC's patents work to keep the building’s interior cool, ably assisted by small wing fans, sprinkler jets and humidifiers that water the small forest of plants around the tables and across the polished flagstone floors.

But that's not the real reason for going to the Iowa Plantation. The place is all about thick juicy Iowa steak! Raised on a farm in rural Iowa, SC knows a thing or two about beef and expounds at length, given the chance, on the richness of its taste, the thick and juicy quality of the beef from the right animal.

And to be fair, not many places in Beijing could match the value that the Iowa Plantation offers the discerning beef eater. Open for a number of months now, Iowa Plantation attracts regulars who don’t go anywhere else for their meat.

SC offers an outrageously good value, 68 yuan "combo" for seven courses including a prime steak.

Hu returned to China in the 1980s having left for America as a boy in the late 1940s with his family. He worked as a professor of mathematics in universities in the States and also had business interests in a range of sectors. He is back in China with his family and is enthusiastic to share his retirement with the local Beijing people that are employed on the first Iowa Plantation, as the second, soon to open in Shunyi, will employ even greater numbers of locals

After lunch or dinner, SC welcomes guests to wander the Plantation and step inside the other Quonset buildings that house specially imported plants, all for sale. A small swimming pool is also available for use by the public.

For interest to corporate entertainers, SC provides a large space called the "Red Banner Bar" that so far has held diplomatic functions and public and private celebrations for government personnel and friends.

SC will tell you he likes to think of the Plantation as a place for his many friends to come and eat and drink and have fun. Indeed, after just one visit to the Iowa Plantation, you will feel a friend of SC’s too.