Perhaps emboldened by the long lines of people prepared to wait for a table during the weekend brunch rush, the team behind design-conscious café The Rug have followed the likes of Great Leap and Home Plate with a bigger and bolder second branch in the heart of Sanlitun.

Like the original Chaoyang Park location, the new Rug is beautifully designed: it’s easy to picture loafing about for hours on a lazy morning, seated at rustic wooden tables with friends. Or organizing a dinner party in one of the large glass-fronted private dining rooms, decked out with long tables and contemporary lighting. The design details here are spot on, whether you are downstairs or up - there are three different rooms within this two-floor space. Giant lamps extended across the upstairs tables and there’s a bar area where you can picture yourself having one too many glasses of wine.

We settled with chestnut soup (48 RMB) to start, which came with a sprinkling of crunchy pieces of prosciutto on top. It had a nice, thick and creamy texture, but needed more seasoning to bring out the chestnut a little further. Homemade pesto pasta (68 RMB) was a big miss: undercooked by a few minutes and the balance thrown off by far too much garlic, which itself was burnt.

And then came the white wine mussels (99 RMB). Given that The Rug’s bizarre-looking menu gives a whole page over to these shellfish, you’d expect the kitchen to really be flexing their muscles here. But instead of a pile of juicy bivalves, drunk on a rich, creamy, white-wine sauce, what came out was disappointing: sad-seeming mussels with a small amount of watery sauce that we had to dig deep into the pan to find. On the upside, the gleaming pot was beautifully presented.

The cheesecake (38 RMB) had perfect texture and taste, while the rich chocolate fondant (58RMB) was a real highlight. Given the amazing space, we desperately wanted to embrace this place, and returned for the popular everyday brunch menu: poached eggs and hash browns; yogurts; smoked salmon; curries; stews; that sort of thing.

Open: 10:00 am - 9:30 pm Mon-Fri; 9:30 am - 9:30pm Sat-Sun

Tel: 86 10 6507 2342

Add: 4 Gongti Bei Lu, Chaoyang District

Source: Timeoutbeijing