$400 per Person

Sindy sent me a photo of a banquet menu. She is scoping out restaurants for a work dinner with some important clients. This "restaurant" is actually a boat in Beihai Park in Beijing. At night, they stop renting out small boats so the large dinner boat "sails" around the lake and serve dinner.


Banquet Boat


One of the table in the boat. Sindy mentioned RMB15k so maybe you have to order that much to reserve the table (not too difficult since it seats 12 people).


The dishes on the right side costs RMB2880 per person:

Chinese Tea
Imperial Cuisine Carving
Appetizing Cold Plate
Mashed Peas Pudding and Rolls of Kidney Bean Flour
Four Kinds of Dried Fruits and Four kinds of Fresh Fruits
Pipa-shaped Bird's Nest Soup
Braised Shark's Fin with Brown Sauce
Sweet and Sour Prawns
Braised Deer Pizzle with Hot Sauce (pizzle = penis)
Frog-Shaped Abalone and Braised Sea Cucumber
Deep-fried Minced Port in Omelet
Deep-fried Duck Meat with Walnut
Roast Lamb Leg
Steamed Fish Maw (fish air bladder)
Braised camel's Paw with Scallion
Roast Flatfish
Steamed Bamboo Shoots
Stir-fried Diced Pork and Filbert (filbert = type of hazelnut)
Steamed Tofu Stuffed with Vegetables
Sesame Cakes with Minced Meat
Assorted Palace Dim Sum
Pitaya with Yogurt
Eight-treasure Gruel

Most of the stuff looks okay but there are definitely some weird dishes. Overall, I can't imagine why it would cost so much, even for bird's nest, shark fin, abalone, and sea cucumber. Maybe it's really really really good Chinese tea.

BTW, you need seven people or more (~US$3000) to get all the dishes. For six or less, they start removing dishes.