Xin Rong Ji (Financial District)

Coastal Zhejiang in the Capital's Financial Core

Beijing's premium restaurant belt has long tilted toward Cantonese, Sichuan, and the imperial registers of northern Chinese cooking. Taizhou cuisine, the seafood-forward tradition from the coastal city of Taizhou in Zhejiang province, occupies a different position: quieter in profile, technically precise, and built around ingredients that don't always survive the journey inland without compromising quality. That the Xin Rong Ji group has made it work in Beijing, and at a level that placed this Financial District location at #71 on the Opinionated About Dining Leading Restaurants in Asia list in 2025, says something meaningful about both the ambition of the operation and the appetite of the city's dining public for regional Chinese cooking beyond the obvious categories.

The Qihao Beijing East Tower address in Chaoyang puts the restaurant inside a commercial development designed for corporate entertaining and private dining at the upper end of the market. The physical environment signals that before you've looked at a menu: the tower's glass-and-steel presence, the lobby approach, the controlled pace of service that characterises this tier of Chinese fine dining. In a city where the leading regional Chinese restaurants now compete directly with international fine dining for the same client, that spatial grammar matters as much as the kitchen's output.

What Taizhou Cuisine Actually Means at This Level

Taizhou cooking is not widely understood outside Zhejiang, which makes it worth locating precisely. It belongs to the broader Zhejiang culinary family alongside Hangzhou and Ningbo traditions, but its specific character comes from the coast: river fish, sea bream, yellow croaker, crab, and shellfish prepared with a lightness that preserves the natural salinity of the ingredient rather than masking it. Steaming, slow braising, and minimal sauce intervention are the dominant techniques. The contrast with Sichuan's heat-forward complexity or the slow-cooked richness of Shanghai cuisine is sharp. This is cooking that asks the diner to pay attention, which is also the condition under which a thoughtful wine list starts to matter.

The Xin Rong Ji group has built its Beijing presence around that precision.

The Wine Program as a Signal of Dining Seriousness

Chinese fine dining's relationship with wine has matured considerably over the past decade, and nowhere is that more visible than in restaurants like this one, where the clientele expects a list that can hold its own against the better hotel dining rooms in the city. Taizhou cuisine, with its emphasis on delicate seafood and clean savoury flavours, is actually well-suited to European white wine in ways that heavier Chinese regional cooking is not. Aged white Burgundy, Alsatian Riesling, and mineral-driven Chablis-style bottles all function as genuine matches rather than diplomatic gestures toward international guests.

Framing Xin Rong Ji against its Beijing peers helps calibrate expectations. Chao Shang Chao in Chaoyang operates at the same ¥¥¥¥ bracket with a Cantonese-leaning Chaozhou focus; Lamdre and King's Joy address the vegetarian fine dining niche at a comparable price point; Jingji works the northern Chinese tradition. Each represents a distinct regional or stylistic lane. Xin Rong Ji's lane, Zhejiang coastal, technically restrained, seafood-focused, has fewer direct competitors in Beijing, which is both its advantage and the reason first-time guests benefit from arriving with some understanding of what the kitchen is trying to do.

Situating the Restaurant in a Wider Regional Frame

The Xin Rong Ji group's cross-city expansion has created a useful network for tracing how Taizhou cooking performs in different markets. The Chengdu and Hong Kong outposts operate in cities with different baseline dining cultures: Chengdu's palate is calibrated for intensity, Hong Kong's for Cantonese precision. That the group's OAD rankings persist across those contexts suggests the cooking is genuinely strong rather than reliant on a single-city clientele's preferences. For comparison, other serious Chinese regional restaurants operating across the country at this level, such as Ru Yuan in Hangzhou or 102 House in Shanghai, each hold their strongest recognition in the cities where their cuisine is most native. Xin Rong Ji performing well in Beijing, where Taizhou cooking has no particular hometown advantage, is the more demanding test.

Internationally recognised Chinese fine dining has also started to draw comparisons with precision-driven Western seafood restaurants. The structural discipline of a Taizhou tasting menu, built around a sequence of fish preparations that build in intensity, has more in common with the approach at Le Bernardin in New York City than with the banquet-style service of traditional Chinese restaurant formats. That framing isn't a stretch: it's a reflection of where serious Chinese regional cooking has positioned itself globally.

Planning Your Visit

The restaurant is located in the Qihao Beijing East Tower on Xinyuan South Road in Chaoyang. Advance reservations are essential.