Despite being tucked away on the west side of the Forbidden City in the scenic Zhongshan Park, Laijin Yuxuan Fanzhuang is fittingly known for its cuisine rather than its quaint setting.

By all means take in the two-storey traditional structure set beside a small pond and amid willow and peach trees, but some for the restaurant’s famed Red mansion Banquet, based on dishes from Cao Xueqin’s classic 1760 novel—A Dream of Red Mansions.

Food played an important role in this story about a scholar-gentry family, and there are more than forty honglou caiyao, or Red Mansion dishes based on actual recipes recounted in the novel, considered the greatest of the traditional Chinese novels. Many other dishes were only sparingly described in the novel, allowing a lot of flexibility for the chef to improvise.

Qie xiang (60RMB), a simple aubergine dish, is one of the dishes described in the book with great flourish by Feng Jie, a cunning character in the novel: “Peel the skin from the freshly picked eggplant, and then cut it in small squares; then deep fry it in chicken fat, and add some diced dried bean curd and chopped nuts. Cook slowly with chicken broth, and finish up with a drop of sesame oil, and a bit of grain wine. Seal the dish in an air tight jar; when ready to eat, just take it out and sauté it with chicken claws.…”

Yihong zhushou, a dish made with prawns, is introduced in chapter 63 of Cao’s novel—Bao Yu’s Birthday Celebration. ‘Yi Hong’ is the nickname of Bao Yu, or Precious Jade, the hero of the novel. Red, the color of the prawns, symbolizes happiness and the prawns are served to celebrate Bao Yu’s birthday.

Jisi haozigan (28RMB) is slivers of chicken stir fried with crown daisy chrysanthemum in a relataively thick sauce—shows off the vegetable’s distinct flavour, and is a perfect compliment to the light and tender meat. The stems remain crisp after being cooked, showing off the stir-frying skills of chefs from Yangzhou, in Jiangsu province, where Cao Xueqin’s ancestors worked as officials for several generations.

Feng Qiyong, an expert on The Dream of Red Mansions, once wrote that the dishes in the novel were based on Huaiyang-style cuisine from Yangzhou—an area that attracted well known chefs.

Laijin Yuxuan also serves dishes from Sichuan, Guizhou and Shandong, and normally only two Red Mansion dishes are available--qie xiang and jisi haozigan. If you want to sample some of the more than 40 dishes made famous in this famous novel, you must order three days in advance. The banquet runs from 300RMB to 500RMB per person, with a required minimum of eight people.

Laijin Yuxuan On the west side of Zhongshan Park. (tel: 6605 6676) Open 10:30am-7pm daily. Meal for two 150RMB

来今雨轩 中山公园内西侧