About time, then, that they’ve finally unfurled a second Rug in a more central location – and the ‘wow’ factor is high. They should have kept the previous name for Chaoyang and called this one The Red Carpet. Black-and-white tiled floors bounce light from dangly filament bulbs over exposed concrete walls and an eclectic array of designer chairs and tables.
Best of all, on a sunny day its windows suck in an wonderful amount of natural light. We think The Rug will be absolutely full of diners come summer. But it's got its work cut out if it’s going to be ready for them. The original set the standard high, and on the several visits we’ve made to the Sanlitun branch, they’ve yet to fully acclimatise to the upgrade. We waited a long time for our food, which came cold and staggered over agonisingly long intervals, along with the odd forgotten item (which seems to be the standard in Beijing). But it’s technically still in the soft-launch period (translation: teething- problems period) and already at weekends there are queues.
The food that does come is fully organic, and the vast menu has all sorts of egg centric brunch bites, salads, pastas, pizzas, curries and cakes. The owners say they’ve traveled the world in search of dishes, and the range tops pretty much any other competitor in the area. Corn fritters with honey ham (RMB138, above) are accompanied by large, juicy grilled vine tomatoes, the chunky, tangy avocado dip teeming with flavor, while the shakshuka (RMB98), a Tunisian fried vegetables and eggs in a skillet is vegetarian-friendly.
Some other options still need a bit of fine-tuning. The pesto on the chicken pasta is probably healthier than a branded jar you’d find in Jenny Lou’s but wasn’t nearly as tasty. And the Margherita pizza was laden with so much stringy cheese that we couldn’t discern any of the promised home-made tomato sauce.
The organic food comes at a price, with serious fluctuation depending on ingredients. We wonder whether some will be put off the prosciutto pizza at RMB148, when the Margherita is RMB58. But who cares about money? Their menu espouses “food that touches your heart” (with one hand, maybe, while the other silently caresses the renminbi out of your wallet.)
The Rug might look like Western food at a glance but it’s still got a long way to go to stake a claim for torch-bearer of healthy, Western-style brunching in the capital. Maybe choosing items based on menu photos (the menu is more like a portfolio) programmed our brains into Chinese dining mode. If that didn’t, the Chinglish-laden slogans (how did that happen?) and cutesy rabbit latte art certainly did. Not that a restaurant shouldn’t be allowed to put any animal it wants on its coffee – we just wonder how the same people who designed such an attractive interior could be responsible for such crimes against style.
So that’s the crux of The Rug, Sanlitun. It looks absolutely fantastic, but there’s still a bit of work to be done with the menu. The original set the bar high; we hope it’s not long before the Sanlitun edition follows suit.
// Daily 10:30am-10:30pm, Inside Electrical Research Institute, 4 Gongti Bei Lu, Chaoyang District 朝阳区工体北路4号机电研究院内 (6507 2342)
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