The food is served buffet style. There are four main display areas for the different courses: entrees, cold dishes, salads and desserts. As the executive chef, Josef Gschwandtner, an Austrian, recommended several typical, delicious dishes to Beijing Today.

Gschwandtner strongly recommended the Vienna fried chicken and roast pork knuckle. The fried chicken pieces are salty with crispy skin and tender meat. The roast pork is tender and served with sauerkraut and vermicelli. The pork is spiced with cumin seed and has a slightly smoked flavor, and soaks up the sour flavor sauce from the surface of the sauerkraut and vermicelli. The pork's chewy texture is smooth and exquisite.Bread dumplings - made with dried bread, butter, onions, eggs and nutmeg are a must in Austrian soup.

Gshwandtner loves apple strudel - a thin sheet of dough, filled with apples - but his restaurant packs a wide range of strudels, sweet and spicy. Apple strudel ibest enjoyed with a cup of coffee, or as dessert with vanilla sauce or a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

The bauern krapfen, another kind of dessert, is bread with sweet jam inside. The bread itself is deliciously flavored.

The Silk Road Crattoria

Address: The Great Wall Sheraton Hotel Beijing, No 10 Dongsanhuan Bei Lu
Open: 6pm-10:30pm, March 11-17
Tel: 6590 5566 ext 2117
Cost: 235 yuan per adult, children aged three to nine enjoy a 50 percent discount (an extra 15 percent service fee will be charged)

Josef Gschwandtner

Gshwandtner is a professional executive chef. He has worked at upscale establishments like the International Michelin Star restaurant, hotels and resorts.

Gschwandtner has experience in a broad range of culinary styles: Austrian, German, Italian, French, east-west, Russian, nouvelle cuisine, fusion cuisine and patisserie, as well as some tapas, Lebanese and Chinese and Japanese cooking, stone-grilled barbeque and vegetable, ice and margarine carving.

In over 20 years, Gschwandtner had worked in hotels in many cities, including Moscow, Salzburg, Vienna, Stockholm, Sydney, St Moritz and Kuala Lumpur.