Mansion Feast Restaurant

Beijing-based interior design practice LDH Design has completed Mansion Feast – a 1,230-square-meter restaurant that specializes in Chinese aristocratic cuisine.

Tucked away near a temple in Beijing’s old town, in a hutong in Dongcheng District, the restaurant is set within a renovated, thirty-year-old, traditional, Beijing style, quadrangular, courtyard compound residence known as a siheyuan. Formerly a cultural venue called the Jinyang Hanlin Academy, the compound was transformed into an elegant dining destination that evokes the ceremonial splendor of Chinese imperial residences.

The establishment’s private, indoor dining rooms are available for private gatherings, while its central courtyard is open to the public for afternoon tea and dinner. If a guest books the entire Mansion, they can use the courtyards for musical performances, cocktail parties, exhibitions, press conferences or other events.

As is typical of siheyuans, the compound has three conjoined courtyards surrounded by a series of chambers with traditional, grey, pitch-tiled roofs. These chambers are connected by a corridor running through the middle of the compound.

From the entrance, one passes through an archway then a corridor into the first courtyard where marble paving stones set amidst landscaped waterways lead to an open kitchen that’s semi-concealed by a bamboo “forest”. From behind the bamboo trees, guests can see scrumptious roast duck hanging in the display case of the open kitchen.

On one side of this banquet hall is a leisure area where guests can relax and chat before or after meals, and on the other side are wine cellars and cigar lounges.

Flanking the principal yard on the east and west are wings that contain private dining rooms – each with their own small garden that looks out to the bamboo “forest”.

Maintaining the architectural integrity of the siheyuan was LDH’s priority, so they removed the dilapidated walls and floors or the original building, but retained the compound’s original structure and layout, along with its existing wells, courtyards, and structural beams.

Mansion Feast prides itself in using seasonal ingredients for its changing menus, so LDH kept the existing trees – spring magnolia, summer crape myrtle, begonia, and holly pine – in the four corners of the central courtyard as an homage to the four seasons.

Design: LDH Architectural Design
Design Team: Cheng Qianyuan, Qu Tianyou, Wang Yanjuan, Yang Ping, Ren Yiqiong
Photography: Wang Ting