If you are a spicy food fan, you might like to check out Southern Beauty (or Qiao Jiangnan), a chain of 19 restaurants in Beijing and Shanghai that serve Sichuan cuisine.

Sichuan cuisine is already warmly welcomed by Beijing residents, but Southern Beauty can be easily distinguished from its counterparts, such as Chengdu Snacks (Chengdu Xiaochi). This may be because Southern Beauty has combined other atmosphere elements from outside Sichuan and even beyond China. For example, they managed to blend the eastern appeal of large, open, busy spaces filled with happy eaters and the western desire for subdued lighting and a bit of coziness.

The outlet we visited is located in Sunny Square (Yangguang Guangchang) in northern Beijing. The restaurant takes up two whole floors of the building. Classic black is the main color of the interior design, and they have used as much glass material as possible in the decor, which makes the whole place look modern and a bit exotic. And you can see masks and prints of Peking Opera makeup faces everywhere, as it is also the logo of the company.

Claiming to be a Sichuan cuisine restaurant, I have to say that Southern Beauty has certainly changed its flavor a little, compared with authentic Sichuan food. We ordered one of their famous dishes "Hot Stone Fish in Spoiling Oil" that day. (Actually, it should be "Hot Stone Beef in Spoiling Oil", but one of my friends doesn't eat red meat, so we changed the beef to fish. Luckily this Chinese restaurant chain doesn't serve unchangeable standard dishes like fast food chains do.)

The exciting bit about this dish is that they cooked it right before our eyes. A chef and his assistants brought the raw materials to our table: hot stones dipped in spoiling oil, fish, onions and caraway. They put everything together to cook in the spoiling oil. And as they were doing this, they explained to us the whole process. Few Chinese restaurants have this kind of service. Maybe they learned this from the Japanese way of doing a cooking show for guests.

The show was cool, and the flavour lived up to its opening presentation! The fish was tender and a bit spicy. And it was not as oily as ordinary Chinese dishes, I guess because it was cooked with stones.

Considering the relatively high prices on the menu and our limited budget, we then ordered two more relatively cheap dishes: fried tofu with egg yolk, and aloe and chicken soup. The aloe was a total failure, because the all three of us wondered if it had gone a bit rotten. We even asked the waitress to confirm with their chef, but they insisted that it was OK.

All in all we have to say that the dishes did measure up with Southern Beauty's high reputation (except for that weird aloe!) But, don't they realize they are a bit overpriced? It cost us around 300 RMB for three dishes and a soup. It's no wonder that most people only consider the restaurant a suitable place for taking business clients or for important celebrations.

Location: F1, Yangguang(Sunny) Plaza, No.68, Andinglu, Chaoyang
Tel: 010-64951201/64951202