Made in China is on the ground floor of the Grand Hyatt hotel. It is a long, narrow room with an open kitchen at a one end, and assorted bars and alcoves; in theory the dining room can accommodate 126 diners, but this includes several private rooms. This restaurant gets busy, so booking ahead is essential. If you want the Peking duck they ask you to order this in advance.
The duck here is prepared by making a hole in the side of the bird and using this to gut the animal, then the back of the duck is sealed and the internal cavity of the bird is filled with water prior to roasting. This technique allows the skin to be roast to a crispy texture without overcooking the meat, the evaporating water cooling the interior of the duck. Well in advance (some days ahead) of the actual cooking, the skin of the duck is inflated with air and then dried, initially in a fridge, then in a freezer. Finally, the duck is roasted in a wood-fired oven, roasted over peach wood. The result is served in several forms. The skin is remarkable, crisp but very thin, and so tender that it melts on the tongue (you can dip the skin in sugar as is traditional if you wish). The meat itself is superbly tender, a world away from the grey, dried out meat that passes for Peking Duck in so many restaurants. This is served with thin, delicate pancakes, superb plum sauce and the usual strips of spring onion and cucumber, as well as garlic paste. Perfect (20/20).
However, Made in China is not a one trick pony. Noodles are made in front of you, cooked and then mixed with pork at the table. They had superb texture, with no hint of the hardness that so often occurs with Chinese noodles in lesser restaurants. The treatment of vegetables was also impressive, with even simple dishes such as stir-fried leaves cooked lightly with a carefully balanced soy dressing.
Another elaborate dish was beggar's chicken, where a whole chicken is stuffed with mushrooms, coated in oil, wrapped in a lotus leave and then encased in a clay shell before being slow-cooked. The resulting dish has its outer shell cracked with a hammer at the table and then unwrapped. The result was extremely tender chicken flesh, inside which was a delicious layer of mixed mushrooms (and a few chestnuts). This was a superb rendition of the classic dish (18/20 seems a slightly mean score). In legend, the dish was invented by a peasant thief who stole a chicken from a feudal lord and wanted to cook the chicken without cooking smells giving him away; whatever the real origins of the dish, you no longer have to steal a chicken from royalty to try the dish, but you do need to order it in advance, as obviously it requires some work.
I was just as impressed with a vastly simpler dish of stir-fried vegetables with a little pork and shrimp. The cabbage was cooked with precision in a delicious soy-based dressing, and tasted superb. It takes real ability to make such a simple dish taste as good as this (18/20). I also tried some dumplings while here (in case you were wondering, I had three visits here in 2011), both boiled dumplings with seafood and fried dumplings with pork filling. You can watch these being made if you are seated at a counter towards the back of the dining room. These were both very good, but not dazzling in the way that some of the other dishes here are (15/20).
If you expecting western style service you will be disappointed: dishes come when they are ready rather than in any particular sequence, and you may find the service a little curt, even chaotic. However by the standards of Beijing the service here is a shining beacon of courtesy and organisational skill.
Further reviews: 01st May 2006
Hans Guenther
I have been to China every year several times since 2011 and thus dined in this restaurant now so many times I cannot remember. Of course I tried lots of dishes and I found a consistently high quality. I had been invited by my Chinese colleagues to the most renowned restaurants for beijing duck, but I find made in China incomparably better. However I have some other favorite dishes there two: duck liver with onions, goose liver with glass noodles, the lamb dishes, and as regards vegetables: cabbage with chestnut, I can recommend particularly. It's also one of the few restaurants I have been to where birds nest soup is really worth its money. The same is true for the other Chinese restaurant of this hotel: Noble Court (mainly Cantonese cuisine). This restaurant has not the same consistently high quality of Made in China it depends very much on the dish. However, some fish/ seefood dishes are really good; the waiters are normally quite competent, I never regretted taking the advice of the staff. Once I met the manager who was extremely polite and knowledgeable, I told him that I find if the restaurant works a little on greater consistency in the quality of the dishes it has a great potential.