Work through the list in order. Hide the notes when you know what to do.
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Eat Peking duck
A duck inflated with air, scalded, dried for a day, roasted in a wood-fired oven and carved at your table into more than a hundred slices. The skin should crackle separately from the meat.
The first piece of pure skin is traditionally eaten with sugar rather than in a pancake. The carcass goes into a soup that arrives at the end, and it is not refused.
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Try zhajiangmian
Thick wheat noodles under a heavy sauce of pork and fermented soybean paste, with a mound of raw julienned vegetables. A Beijing home dish, mixed in the bowl by you.
The sauce is salty and concentrated, so add it gradually rather than all at once. The vegetables change with the season: cucumber, radish, bean sprouts, green beans.
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Try lamb hotpot
Paper-thin lamb dipped for a few seconds into clear boiling broth in a copper pot with a chimney. The Beijing hotpot: no chilli oil, and a sesame dipping sauce instead.
You mix your own sauce from sesame paste, fermented tofu, coriander and spring onion. Hold the meat in the broth only until it changes colour, or it turns tough.
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Get a jianbing for breakfast
A thin grain-flour crepe cooked on a round griddle, topped with a cracked egg, brushed with sauces and folded around a crisp fried cracker. Made in about a minute.
The crisp sheet inside is called bao cui, and without it the crepe loses its texture. Say bu yao la for the version without chilli sauce.
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Eat steamed baozi
Fluffy steamed buns with meat or vegetable filling, sold by the basket from early morning. Plain, very cheap food available across the whole city.
The smaller soup-filled relatives, shengjian and xiaolongbao, are southern. They are eaten with vinegar rather than soy sauce.
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Try jiaozi
Dumplings, boiled or pan-fried, filled with pork and cabbage, lamb and squash, or egg and chives. Northern food by definition, folded in every neighbourhood in Beijing.
You mix your own dip: vinegar, a little soy, garlic and chilli if you want. The vinegar here is dark and slightly sweet rather than sharp.
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Get lamb skewers
Cubes of lamb on thin skewers grilled over coals and dusted with cumin and chilli. They came from Xinjiang and became the whole city's late-night street food.
The cumin is essential and is how you find the grills at night by smell. They are ordered by the ten rather than singly, with beer alongside.
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Try douzhi
A sour fermented mung bean drink that Beijingers take at breakfast with fried dough rings. The taste is challenging, and it works as a local shibboleth.
It is served warm with pickles and jiaoquan dough rings. If it does not work on the first sip, that is normal; not even all locals take to it.
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Try cold noodles and liangfen
Cold starch or wheat noodles in a sour-spicy dressing with vinegar, garlic and sesame paste. Summer food, sold from stalls and noodle shops.
They are served properly cold from the fridge; this is not a dish that went cold. The heat is adjusted with chilli oil, added separately.
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Try jing jiang rousi
Pork strips stir-fried in a sweetish fermented wheat paste sauce, served with pancakes and spring onion in the manner of duck. A Beijing home classic.
It is rolled in a pancake or a sheet of tofu skin. The sauce is the same one served with duck, so the flavour is immediately familiar.
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Eat tanghulu Desserts and pastries
Hawthorn berries on a stick in set caramel — a sour-sweet street snack that appears in the cold months. The caramel should shatter rather than stretch.
The classic is hawthorn rather than strawberry or grape: it is sour and balances the sugar. Sold on evening streets from autumn to spring.
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Try Beijing sweets Desserts and pastries
Aiwowo are glutinous rice balls with a nut filling rolled in white powder; ludagun is a bean paste roll dusted in toasted soy flour. Old Beijing sweets, and not very sweet.
Sold by the piece or by weight in old-town confectioners. There is less sugar in them than you expect; they are built for tea.
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Drink jasmine tea Non-alcoholic drinks
Green tea scented with live jasmine blossom over several rounds — the traditional Beijing choice, unlike the oolong of the south. Served in a glass with the leaves floating loose.
The leaves stay in: hot water is topped up three or four times and the flavour changes. Free hot water is available almost everywhere, stations and trains included.
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Drink suanmeitang Non-alcoholic drinks
A dark sweet-sour infusion of smoked plum with hawthorn and osmanthus, drunk ice cold in summer. The traditional Beijing answer to heat, older than any fizzy drink.
The sourness comes from plum rather than lemon, and the aftertaste is smoky. Sold bottled and on draught in older establishments.
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Get yoghurt in a clay jar Non-alcoholic drinks
Thick tart yoghurt in a small ceramic jar, drunk through a straw and returned to the seller. A street staple in the hutongs and by metro exits.
There is a deposit on the jar, refunded when you hand it back. The yoghurt is dense and lightly sweetened, quite unlike the supermarket drinking kind.
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Try baijiu Local alcohol
A strong grain spirit with a pronounced fermented aroma, drunk in small glasses with food and toasts. Usually over fifty per cent alcohol.
It is drunk on the call of ganbei and in one go, though sipping or declining is acceptable. A gentler start is huangjiu rice wine, weaker and warmer in flavour.
