“Harry, you have to go to Apothecary while you’re in Beijing” My sister, Eugenia, writes on g-chat.  Euge understood what I liked in food and knows my taste in food.  We didn’t eat the same, since I could count out the food items that she ate on my two hands, but we liked the same style of restaurants.

Walking into Apothecary I knew, this was going to be the shit.  Both Bruce and I were amazed at the attention to detail that the bar had to offer.  We knew we were in for a treat, and we found the “NOPA” of Beijing.  NOPA was my neighborhood bar/restaurant with organic food and beautiful cocktails.  On any given night throughout the week I would make an appearance there because I loved their cocktails and they made the best burger in SF.

Bruce and I wanted to stuff our faces with organic food, but hadn’t found much.  Feeling the pain of bad cooking oil and food grown from who knows where, we were dying for clean food and a good cocktail.  Looking onto Apothecary’s menu, I read “Apothecary-Cocktails & Dining serves contemporary American Creole food made with hand-made ingredients…”  I was immediately impressed.  This really was the “Farm to table” restaurant that we were looking for.

My favorite part about sitting at a bar is that you get to watch your cocktail getting made. I ordered my first cocktail, a spicy margarita, and watched eagerly as my drink was hand crafted.  The most impressive thing about this bar wasn’t the infused alcohol or the awesome mixologists behind the bar.  It was a design element.  The edge of the bar counter actually had small lights built into it and shined upward that illuminated the drink while it was being made.  This small but thoughtful detail left me in awe.

Bacon is something that I love as a twist or by itself.  Hands down the best dish at Apothecary is their bacon wrapped pickled quail eggs.  Tip for Foodies: Bacon when farmed correctly and cooked correctly has a lot of great nutrients, but if farmed poorly can be toxic.  When finding bacon and cooking bacon always use organic bacon.  In this case this pig was farmed properly and prepared from scratch by the restaurant.  Yum.  And pickled quail eggs! Who thinks of that? I was already in awe to have that on the menu.

Tip for Traveling Foodies: If you’re in Beijing eat at Apothecary.  It’s worth the price and if you truly love food, this is the place to eat.