One of the pleasures of living in Beijing is the wide and varied choice of restaurants both Chinese and non-Chinese. Eating out, particularly at local restaurants, is very affordable and convenient as there are plenty of dining choices in any part of the city.

When dining in a Chinese restaurant, note that the custom is to order a number of dishes which are to be shared amongst everyone at the table, and be prepared to eat with chopsticks. Chinese cuisine is diverse, and in Beijing you can sample food from different regions in China, from spicy Sichuan food to Cantonese dim sum to imperial cuisine. Beijing itself has to own signature dish, Peking Duck. Da Dong Roast Duck Restaurant and Quanjude Roast Duck Restaurant are two popular places to go for Peking Duck and good choices to take new visitors to.

If you’re craving non-Chinese food such as steaks, hamburgers or pizza and pasta, there are plenty of options, as Beijing has many foreign restaurants including European (think Italian, French, German, Greek, Belgian), American, Indian, Japanese, Thai, Mediterranean, and African, to name just a few. As is to be expected, foreign restaurants are usually more expensive than local restaurants. There are a number of good pizza places in Beijing, for example The Tree and Kro's Nest.

Fast food outlets such as McDonald's and Kentucky Fried Chicken are plentiful in Beijing, offering much the same fare as in the West and at the same reasonable prices. Sandwich bars like Subway, and coffee chains such as Starbucks, are now dotted throughout the city.

Beijing is also a vegetarian-friendly city with a number of good vegetarian fare on offer. Pure Lotus Vegetarian Restaurants, run by monks, is a beautiful restaurant that offers great tasting vegetarian dishes.

The range of restaurants is truly diverse in Beijing – you can eat at next to nothing from a local ‘hole in the wall’, or you can dine at very high-end fusion restaurants such as the Philippe Starcke-designed LAN restaurant or the Green T House.

Typically, Chinese people do not like desserts however, a number of great bakeries have opened in Beijing in the past few years, catering mainly to expatriates with a sweet tooth. Comptoirs de France is a popular French bakery and has several outlets in the inner city areas.

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