One fish, two fish, roast fish, toast fish!

I threw myself a curveball with Saturday night's dinner. Instead of relying on my new book for a place to go, I would use a just received recommendation from a strange place. It turns out two of the political bloggers I read the most are also foodies and had just completed a trip to China. Their dual recommendation of best meal: roast fish at Roast Fish Legend north of a couple of lakes in central Beijing. Ezra Klein speaks its praises here: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/06/what_do_you_call_chinese_food.html; Matt Yglesias does the same here: http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2010/06/in-china-they-just-call-it-food.php. I rode my bicycle over to check it out.

Upon entering, I asked for a menu. I wanted to check the prices (how much should a whole roast fish cost, anyway?) and also wanted to see if and how I'd be able to navigate ordering. Then it got fun. The hostess had an idea. I followed her up the stairs. We reached the top, where some rooftop dining was taking place. Then, to my horror, she interrupted a party of at least eight and pulled a bilingual speaker over to help me understand and order. Luckily, he was very gracious about the whole thing, even offering his recommendation. I put in for my fish and scurried back downstairs.

Turns out I had ordered the Chinese Qingjiang fish roasted in black bean sauce. It was superb. The temperature was just right, and remained so throughout due to the charcoal logs under the fish platter. The sauce was delicious, with some heat from red chillies and lots of flavor from the mix of black beans, celery, and peppers. The fish, all of it, demanded to be eaten. It was perfectly cooked, with juicy flesh. There was fillet meat, cheek meat, tail meat, neck meat, even collarbone meat. Even the act of picking it over with my chopsticks was a delight. Then, I found a hidden treasure trove of vegetables in the middle of the fish. There were big oyster mushrooms, large strands of hot celery whimsically sliced, and lotus root. It wasn't even a hard effort to eat the whole thing, even though, in retrospect, it was a massive amount of fish.