A heroic feast

Beef Wellington is a time-consuming challenge to prepare, but this photogenic star of British cuisine is a favorite for special occasions. Mike Peters tucks in for a warm feast on a cold Beijing night.

Christoph Zoller's gleaming chef's knife slices easily through a picture-perfect pastry crust and the tender Wagyu tenderloin inside. It's easy to see why beef Wellington has become a pastry-crusted British classic.

Zoller is a tree trunk of a chef, a towering Swiss who looks impossibly young to be running a kitchen like The Cut, the award-winning steak restaurant at the Fairmont Beijing. Zoller started cooking in a vocational program at age 15 (one day of school, four days in a commercial kitchen), and the plates now before us prove he was a quick study.