>I'll be travelling to Beijing for a week, and am looking >for good places to eat. I'm particularly interested in inexpensive local >places with authentic cuisine and not expensive places in the tourist >hotels. Here are 3 places that are not in tourist hotels, though they are not cheap. One is the Fang Shan, which is in Beihei park, next to the lake in the park and is on the west side of the Forbidden City. Fang Shan offers recipes used by cooks of the Imperial Court. If they are serving the Pipa Prawns, get them, they are fantastic (the pipa is a Chinese musical string instrument and the prawns are decorated to look like a pipa). Lotus prawn and lake fish are excellent. Said to be Jiang Qing's (Mao's wife, Gang of 4) favorite. Sichuan Fandian serves some the best Sichuan food in the city. Sichuan cuisine is highly regarded in China and is known as being hot and spicy, though not all of it is. This is a little hard to find: 51 Xirongxian Hutong (in an alley south of the Xidan District main intersection, a hutong is a series of alley ways and a disappearing way of life in Beijing). Another is Ritan Park Restaurant. Though the food is not at the level of the first two, you may enjoy the ambience. Having said that, the last time I was there the service was awful, even for Beijing, though it was close to closing time. The building was originally part of the Temple of the Sun. Spicy Sichuan dishes and plainer northern Chinese cuisine may be segregated in different dining areas, so you might need to decide which one you want before you're seated. In Ritan (Sun Altar) Park, near the southwest gate, Chaoyang District.
China