Beijing Imperial Cuisine, also called Fangshan in Chinese, consists of dishes once prepared exclusively for the Imperial Palace. Nowadays, Imperial Cuisine is based on the dishes prepared by the Qing imperial kitchens but further developed ever since.

Different from common Chinese dishes, Imperial cuisine highly values a subtle balance among color, fragrance, and taste and stresses the original stock and taste of the dishes. In the old days, rice, flour, meat, vegetables, melon, fish, fruits and unconventional delicacies from land and sea were carefully chosen as tributes by local officials throughout the country. The Palace dishes usually were named simply, for their cooking methods, main ingredients, or for the major and minor ingredients so the emperors knew what was in the dish as soon as they saw it.

The followings are some typical imperial cuisines you can eat in Beijing:

Man and Han Banquet

Slices of Chicken Breast

Pork Loin in Egg

Imperial Steamed Abalone with Shark's Fin and Fish Maw

Wanfu Meat for Qing Palace

Braised Sharks Fin

Braised Deer Sinew

Stir-fried Prawn

Stir-fried Pork Loin

Imperial Snacks

 There are several restaurants offering Beijing Imperial Cuisines in Beijing. The famous restaurants include Beijing Beihai Fangshan Restaurant, Li Jia Cuisine Restaurant, Ting Li Guan Restaurant, Tan Jia Cai Restaurant, Grand Mansion Hotel, Hui Zhen Lou Restaurant, etc. You can have a try in any place of them.