I was craving Baozai rice the other day, so looked online to find the best joints that serve this dish. The traditional Baozai rice is cooked in a stone pot over a scorching fire, and contains meaty goodness such as Hong Kong sausages or pork ribs. The rice absorbs the fragrance and juices from the meat, and the pot sears the rice on the bottom so that when you shovel down, you get huge chunks of crunchy rice seared in meat juices, kind of resembling a savoury rice cookie bowl. The pot of Baozai rice is usually served with specially made soy sauce, which you can pour over the rice when eating to really bring out the flavours in the dish.
When choosing the restaurant to visit for this dish, I picked a place called TangChengXiaoChu because it has overall good reviews and the Baozai rice looks great. However, when I got to the restaurant, I found that the dish was way overpriced at 36RMB per pot. Seeing as the average price for Baozai rice in Beijing is 20RMB, this was a huge ripoff. I couldn’t leave without eating though, so I ordered the Baozai rice with HK sausages. The serving was huge and I could only finish half on my own. The taste was decent, with the sausages being of good quality with only a little amount of fat and the rice having absorbed some flavour from the meat. However, the rice and the sausage were both a little on the dry side, and I couldn’t find as much seared rice on the bottom as I would have preferred. The ratio of the sausage to the rice was also good, but the dish was a bit too oily, with no vegetables to cut through the oils from the meat. For a price of 36RMB, they should have at least included a side of soup or vegetables. I also had to add a lot of soy sauce to the rice before enough flavour came through to satisfy my taste.
SCORE: 7/10
Overall, this visit to TangChengXiaoChu was a disappointment. Therefore, I will definitely be on the lookout for other Baozai rice joints in Beijing.
ADDRESS: Dongcheng District, number 21 JinBao street
The Beijing Foodie 