By Manuela Zoninsein (City Weekend)
Updated: 2008-01-04 09:56

There was a time when El Bulli, the world's most famous restaurant, couldn't have been farther from Beijing's culinary reality than the geographical distance that separates its mountainous Spanish Costa Brava home from the hutongs of our home city. True, both are competitively food obsessed. Yet while El Bulli and its chef, Ferran Adrià, initiated "Molecular Gastronomy"–the hottest revolution in culinary technique since man tamed fire–Beijing, for a long time, continued to steam, stir-fry and shish unswervingly.

Without a doubt, recent openings around our city reveal a quickening approximation to global trends in dining. Mare Nostrum, the recently-opened high-end Spanish spot in Beijing's CBD, stands as an example of what Christian Hoffman, Executive Chef of the Raffles Hotel Beijing, identifies as a worldwide increase in demand for the Iberian country's cuisine. And what's a classic city without a classic Parisian meal like that just unveiled at the Sofitel Wanda's Le Pre Lenotre (inspired by famed 3-Michelin star-rated Le Pre Catelan)?

That said, let's contend–and take Adria as support–that the true sign of a contributing culinary center is confidence in innovation. In this sense, Beijing is beginning to blossom. We're seeing haute cuisine that isn't simply mimesis; rather, there's an originality true to the locale.

The newly-opened SALT, for example, riffs on fish roe, filling small "caviar" balls with different tropical flavors like passion fruit and citrus–of utmost familiarity to its Venezuelan-born Chef Daniel. It's a foreign concept with exotic flavors, prepared with local ingredients. Raffles Hotel's JAAN, under Chef de Cuisine Guillaume Galliot, serves a codfish foam which nearly transported me straight to Cape Cod (had it not been drizzled with truffle oil and served in a champagne glass under the Raffles Ballroom chandelier). Dessert capped off the meal with a delicious tempura take on your traditional post-French dinner molten chocolate cake, appropriately paired with green tea gelato.

In other words, global trends locally conceived. When you have the top chef at old-school Raffles promoting "contemporary French" that distances itself from the traditional rich-and-creamy, and SALT "playing, taking techniques and applying new flavors," you know we're moving in the right direction. On the one hand, closer to Catalunya. And on the other, ever closer to home.

Mare Nostrum Restaurant
Location: 2/F, Commercial Zone, Vantone Center, A6 Chaoyangmen Waidajie
Tel: 010-5907-0088

Le Pre Lenotre
Location: Wanda Plaza, 93 Jianguo Lu, next to Wanda International Cineplex
Tel: 010-8599-6666 ext. 6528
Website: www.sofitel.com/asia

SALT
Location: 1/F TRIO Building, Jiangtai Xilu, West of the Rosedale Hotel
Tel: 010-6437-8457

Jaan
Location: 33 East Chang'an Avenue
Tel: 010-6526-3388 ext.4186