Capital Gains

Shanghai is lauded as China’s most sophisticated destination. Beijing is painted with a less glamorous brush. One is a booming metropolis where fashionistas sip mint juleps while overlooking the Bund.404 Not Found

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nginx/1.14.0 (Ubuntu) The other is a gritty city where malcontent punks swig beer in spit-and-sawdust dives. Or so we’re led to believe.

But with the 2008 Olympic Games less than two years away, Beijing is undergoing a maniacal makeover — nowhere more brazen than in the city’s wining-and-dining scene. With its army of foreign Mandarin students, Beijing has traditionally been the city of the cut-price tequila shot, but the coming sporting extravaganza is attracting accomplished restaurateurs who formerly kept the cheapskate capital at arm’s length. That means everything from tapas joints to decadent martini lounges is finally on the menu.

Face Bar, tel: (86-10) 6551 6788, swung open its doors in July, and is a good example of the new kind of venue to be found — blending northern-Chinese substance with an international style more commonly found in China’s worldlier south. Housed in a crumbling former state schoolhouse near the Workers’ Stadium, the striking, design-driven watering hole and accompanying restaurants (Lan Na Thai and the Indian Hazara) cost $1.9 million to develop. As in Face Shanghai (there are also Face bars in Jakarta and Bangkok), eclectic pan-Asian chic is the order of the decorative day, incorporating a controlled mishmash of antiques and artworks from across the region. “Beijing is one of the world’s oldest and greatest imperial cities,” says Face’s London-based design director, Frank Drake. “We aimed to match its grandeur.”

The new Face team can expect tough competition from the capital’s established operators, however. As the former owner of Frank’s Place — a no-nonsense pub on the edge of the grubby Sanlitun bar area — Briton Russell Probert has already paid his dues in the city. He decided to go upmarket when Frank’s came under a city planner’s wrecking ball in 2005. His new operation, the decidedly grown-up Pavillion, tel: (86-10) 6507 2617, features luxurious fittings, fine wines and what might be described as discriminating prices. It’s aimed, says Probert, at “locals who have become more affluent and discerning.”

It’s not just foreign investors who are targeting the city’s moneyed class. Prominent Beijing nightlife entrepreneur Henry Lee has just opened Rui Fu, tel: (86-10) 6404 2711. With a tastefully understated interior and a range of expensive tipples, Rui Fu is being heralded as yet another antidote to the tawdry dance clubs that have been a mainstay of the capital’s youth-oriented nightlife in recent years.

But how will Beijing’s new, sophisticated hostelries perform in a frugal city where it’s still possible to knock back a stiff gin-and-tonic for a buck? Though Drake concedes that Face is “certainly a high-risk project,” the initial response from the glitterati has been positive, and plans are afoot to add a Middle Eastern restaurant, as well as to convert the building’s upper floors into a spa and boutique hotel. The new venues are also eyeing the tantalizing possibility of recouping their substantial investment from just a handful of well-heeled customers, given that Nike, Reebok and other sporting-goods manufacturers are rumored to be scouting Beijing for corporate-hospitality venues during the Games — and apparently have millions to spend. The race is on.