The Mid-Autumn Festival on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month is one of the most important festivals for the people. How can the festival symbolizing reunion be short of delicious food? Although the mooncake is small, it conveys the people’s best wishes for thousands of years. As a poem goes, “The time to enjoy the moon is praised as the Mid-Autumn Festival; the shape similar to the moon multiplies the value of mooncakes. Every family prepares a variety of fruits; sacrifices to the moon are more than red ribbons.” Today, people not only pursue good taste but also seek the meaning behind the food. That is to say, food must carry culture. While inheriting the old flavor and sticking to the good quality, century-old brands are also making breakthroughs and innovations, responding to people's yearning and pursuit for a better life. In this Mid-Autumn Festival, we might as well try old tastes from time-honored brands.

Daoxiangcun

The Mid-Autumn Festival is around the corner. We will celebrate the full moon and the moment of reunion when mooncakes are necessities.

As one of the first batch of enterprises titled "China Time-honored Brand", Daoxiangcun Foodstuff (Daoxiangcun) was founded in 1773 (the thirty-eighth year of Emperor Qianlong's reign, Qing Dynasty). Its Suzhou-style mooncakes are enjoyed by people from all over China and the making process has been incorporated in Jiangsu Provincial Intangible Cultural Heritage List. Daoxiangcun exports its products to more than 30 countries and regions, making it a representative brand of Chinese pastry.

In 2020, Daoxiangcun launched more than 100 kinds of mooncake gift boxes, including four series—noble elegance, rich inheritance, party customization, and group order customization. New products and modified products account for the majority, providing customers with more choices. To meet the needs of personalized customization, Daoxiangcun has launched a number of cost-effective products for group orders as well as featured services such as sending greeting cards offline and online.

Moreover, it keeps innovating mooncake flavors, covering the Suzhou-style, Cantonese-style, Beijing-style, Yunnan-style and other styles, and launched new flavors such as black truffle lava custard and black gold rice. There are more than a hundred new delicious, healthy and nutritious mooncakes available.

In terms of the design of this year's mooncake gift boxes, Daoxiangcun introduces the design concept of international designers. Combining Chinese and Western culture perfectly, the packaging is simple and elegant with rich connotations, exuding a sense of affordable luxury. With the establishment of a specialized printing plant and the adoption of domestic professional printing equipment, the quality of packaging materials and printing technology are greatly improved, making the products more delicate.

At present, the new kinds of mooncake gift boxes have been officially introduced to the market and are available in 700 Daoxiangcun franchised stores covering the main areas of China, and online flagship stores on Tmall and JD.com.

Stores: Available in all stores.

Dongxinglou Restaurant

Founded in the 28th year of Emperor Guangxu's reign (1902), Dongxinglou Restaurant (Dongxinglou) was the head of Badalou (eight famous restaurants in Beijing), serving traditional Shandong (Lu) cuisine. This year, Dongxinglou launched a moon cake gift box full of new ideas and sincerity, expressing the century-old restaurant's gratitude to consumers.

To be honest, it's hard to classify Dongxing lou's mooncakes in a specific style such as the Beijing-style, Suzhou-style, Cantonese-style or Chaoshan-style. The Dongxinglou mooncake gift box is more of an integrated and inclusive set.

For those who prefer the soft and delicate Cantonese-style mooncakes, Dongxinglou provides classic flavors—red lotus seed paste with yolk and five-kernel. For those who like sweet and tasty Beijing-style mooncakes, Dongxinglou prepares traditional black sesame mooncakes. For those who pursue novelty and uniqueness, Dongxinglou offers foreign-style tiramisu mooncakes and lava custard flavor that is popular online. For those in pursuit of health and fashion, Dongxinglou also serves mixed-grain mooncakes... This mooncake gift box contains six flavors and styles. There must be one that will impress you!

In line with Dongxinglou's positioning of serving authentic Shandong cuisine, the six mooncake flavors include classic ones and innovative ones, taking care of customers' picky tastes. The red lotus seed paste mooncakes with yolk and five-kernel mooncakes strictly followed the traditional recipe of Cantonese-style mooncakes to pursue the original flavor. In order to imitate lava, carefully selected salted egg yolk, whole milk powder, butter and other ingredients are used in the lava custard mooncakes, enabling the filling to burst out with a bite and giving the mooncakes an appropriate salty and sweet taste.

Regular customers who are familiar with Dongxinglou know that it has a motto that has been passed down since its founding: "If you want your restaurant to be good, cook the dishes well. To cook good dishes, prepare good ingredients first. Nothing can be done carelessly in cooking." Today, some catering enterprises have to give up the quality of food materials in order to reduce the cost, but Dongxinglou still sticks to the traditional motto. Despite being auxiliary products of the restaurant, the mooncakes are still meticulously made with healthy ingredients carefully selected. Take the mixed-grain mooncake for example. The filling contains nine carefully-selected ingredients including white kidney bean, lotus seed, buckwheat, oats, white sesame, black sesame, chestnut, sunflower seed and corn, making the mooncake delicious and healthy with a fragrant, glutinous, and granular taste.

Dongxinglou mooncake gift boxes are only available at four stores of the restaurant in Beijing and are now open for pre-order. Consumers can call to inquire and order.

Fangshan Restaurant

Fangshan Restaurant is a time-honored Chinese restaurant that serves palace-style dishes. It is located in Beihai Park's Yilan Hall and Daoning Hall and other ancient buildings built during Emperor Qianlong's reign. It was founded in 1925 by several chefs from the former Qing Dynasty Imperial Kitchen. "Fangshan" means dishes and snacks specially made in the style of the imperial kitchen.

Fangshan Restaurant researches, inherits, innovates, manages, and protects the imperial cuisine of the Qing Dynasty. It has always maintained the imperial flavor over the years. In order to discover and develop famous imperial dishes, Fangshan Restaurant dispatched its staff to the Palace Museum multiple times, discovering hundreds of dishes developed during Emperor Qianlong's and Emperor Guangxu's reign from a sea of records about imperial food. Among them, dishes such as shark's fin with phoenix tail, golden toad and jade abalone, first-class edible bird's nest, braised prawns, palace gate fish and braised chicken breast are the most distinctive, and famous snacks include mashed pea cakes, kidney bean rolls, steamed cornflour cakes and sesame cakes with minced pork. In 1979, Fang Shan Restaurant became the first restaurant in China to introduce Qing Dynasty imperial cuisine after research and investigation, coming into the spotlight of the international cuisine community. The "eight precious mountain, sea, bird, and grass delicacies" as well as Manchu barbecuing and Han braising techniques are used for in imperial cuisine, which brings together northern and southern flavors and presents them in a fantastic way.

This year, you might as well spend the Mid-Autumn Festival at Fangshan Restaurant, and have a taste of the imperial cuisine!

Store: Fangshan Restaurant

Tel.: 010-64011889

Address: inside the north gate of Beihai Park, Beijing (near Jiulongbi)

Tianfuhao

Tianfuhao Spiced Pork Shop was founded in the 3rd year of Emperor Qianlong's reign (1738 AD) in the Qing Dynasty. At that time, Shandong was affected by a severe drought and not a single grain was reaped. Liu Fengxiang, a native of Ye County in Shandong, and his grandson Liu Diming fled to Beijing in the hope of securing a better life. He opened a spiced pork shop in the northeast corner of Xidan Memorial Archway. The shop was named "Tianfu " to suggest the hope for heaven's blessings. The pork elbow with soy sauce made by Tianfuhao is crisp and delicious, attracting both high-ranking officials and ordinary people. Empress Dowager Cixi praised it after a taste and granted a "Tianfuhao Waist Tag," ordering Tianfuhao to deliver a fixed amount of spiced pork elbows to the palace on a daily basis. Since then, "Tianfuhao pork elbow with soy sauce" has become a well-known tribute to the palace. In 1993, "Tianfuhao" was rated as a "China Time-honored Brand." Up to now, "Tianfuhao" has been passed down for eight generations. During its more than 270 years of history, its pork elbow with soy sauce has always been of superior quality.

Tianfuhao's techniques for making pork elbow with soy sauce were developed by Liu Fengxiang and his grandson after unceasing experiments. The saucing method is unique. Tianfuhao uses high-quality raw materials. Its spiced pork elbow with soy sauce is fat but not greasy, lean but not chewy, smooth and mellow.

In addition to eating mooncakes, you can also bring your family to dine at Tianfuhao. Tianfuhao's Mid-Autumn cooked food package is also good!

Store: Tianfuhao (Qianmen Store)

Tel.: 010-63035726

Address: No.19 Qianmen Street, Dongcheng District, Beijing

Donglaishun Restaurant

Autumn has come, and it is a perfect time to put on some fat for winter. The best way is to eat hotpot with instant-boiled beef and mutton!

Donglaishun Restaurant is representative of the Muslim cuisine in Beijing. It was founded by Ding Deshan at the north gate of Dong'an Market on Wangfujing Street in Beijing in the 29th year of Emperor Guangxu's reign (1903) in the Qing Dynasty more than 100 years ago. Donglaishun mutton hotpot is an icon of northern-style hotpot, known as the "No. 1 Hotpot in China."

Donglaishun's mutton hotpot-making technique combines the preparation and cutting of mutton in batches and the making of the hotpot, sugared garlic and seasoning. It has eight major characteristics: carefully-selected main ingredients, sophisticated cutting techniques, fragrant seasoning, fierce fire, fresh base soup, crisp sugared garlic, fine ingredients, and complete auxiliary ingredients, creating a unique food culture through the harmonious unity of color, aroma, taste, shape, and utensils. Donglaishun has always been loved by people from all walks of life. Government leaders, celebrities, and ordinary people all flock to taste Donglaishun's authentic mutton hotpot.

In the Mid-Autumn Festival, the whole family can get together and eat hotpot!

Store: Donglaishun Restaurant (Wangfujing Store)

010-65139661

Address: No. 198 Wangfujing Street, Dongcheng District, Beijing

Yitiaolong Restaurant

Yitiaolong Restaurant, located in Qianmen Street, is one of the earliest Muslim instant-boiled mutton restaurants in Beijing. It cooks all grades of dishes meticulously and has inherited its tradition as a century-old restaurant.

Yitiaolong Restaurant was founded in the 50th year of Emperor Qianlong's reign in the Qing Dynasty (1785). It is a time-honored restaurant serving Chinese Islamic cuisine in the capital. It mainly serves the traditional instant-boiled mutton and concurrently engages in traditional Halal fried dishes. At the beginning of its establishment, the restaurant was only a small mutton shop that also sells baked cakes and mutton noodles on behalf of others. It was called "Nanhengshun Mutton Restaurant". In the twenty-third year of Emperor Guangxu's reign (1897), the emperor dined here when he was traveling incognito. After that, the news spread and people called the restaurant "Yitiaolong" (One Dragon). In 1921, this restaurant hanged a sign read "Yitiaolong Mutton Restaurant". After switching to joint state-private ownership in 1956, its name was formally changed into "Yitiaolong Restaurant". In 2006, it was one of the first to be listed as a “China Time-honored Brand" by the Ministry of Commerce of China.

Yitiaolong Restaurant has been engaged in the instant-boiled mutton hotpot business for more than 220 years. It is regarded as the "authentic" instant-boiled mutton hotpot in Beijing because of its usage of traditional copper hotpot. Up to now, this restaurant is still practicing its four characteristics of instant-boiled mutton, including carefully-selected mutton, fine processing, complete seasoning, and delicious staple food. Yitiaolong's halal instant-boiled mutton hotpot using charcoal fire was recognized as a "famous hotpot in Beijing". In 2007, the making process of Yitiaolong's halal instant-boiled mutton was incorporated in Beijing Municipal Intangible Cultural Heritage List.

Store: Qianmen Store

Tel.: 010-63044638

Address: No. 27 Qianmen Street, Xicheng District, Beijing