Howard's Gourmet (Beijing)

Should You Book Howard's Gourmet?

Howard's Gourmet is one of a small number of restaurants in Beijing where you can eat serious Chiuchow cooking — the cuisine of Chaoshan, the coastal region straddling eastern Guangdong and western Fujian. That specificity is the reason to book. Chiuchow is a distinct culinary tradition from Cantonese, and Beijing has very few kitchens treating it with this level of care. The Opinionated About Dining (OAD) Asia rankings placed Howard's Gourmet at #107 in 2023 and #133 in 2024, a ranking set compiled from votes by experienced diners and chefs across the region — so the audience here knows what they're eating. If you're building a serious Beijing dining itinerary and want to go beyond the city's dominant Sichuan and Cantonese options, this is one of the most justified detours you can make.

The Room and the Experience

Exact seat counts and layout details are not published, but Howard's Gourmet operates at a scale consistent with focused, deliberate dining rather than a high-volume banquet house. Chiuchow restaurants at this level typically divide space into a main dining room and private rooms, allowing the kitchen to operate with consistency across both intimate meals and small group occasions. The cuisine itself shapes the spatial rhythm: Chiuchow cooking is known for cold dishes, braises, and precise knife work rather than wok-heavy theatrics, which tends to produce a quieter, more considered dining atmosphere than, say, a Sichuan hotpot hall. Google reviewers rate it 4.3 across 371 reviews, which is a solid signal that the experience holds up across different types of visits.

How to Approach Howard's Gourmet Across Multiple Visits

Chiuchow cuisine rewards repeat visits more than almost any other Chinese regional tradition. The range of the kitchen , cold marinated meats, braised goose, seafood preparations, rice congee, and intricate dim sum-adjacent snacks , means a single meal only covers one corner of what the cuisine offers. A productive multi-visit strategy would be to use a first visit to anchor around the cold and braised dishes that define classic Chiuchow cooking: these are the benchmark preparations that show you whether the kitchen is technically sound. A second visit is the right time to explore seafood, where Chiuchow cooking distinguishes itself from other southern Chinese traditions, and lighter courses that require more seasonal or ingredient-driven decision-making. If you are travelling with a group of four or more on a third visit, a private room allows for a broader spread across the menu , Chiuchow banquet-style eating, with dishes arriving in a structured sequence, is how the cuisine is designed to be experienced at its fullest. For comparable Chiuchow and Chao Zhou cooking in Beijing, Chao Shang Chao (Chaoyang) offers an alternative reference point at a similar price level. Beyond Beijing, Pak Loh Chiu Chow in Hong Kong is the obvious benchmark if you want to understand where Howard's Gourmet sits in the broader Chiuchow dining context across Asia.

Booking and Logistics

Booking is rated easy, which is consistent with Howard's Gourmet not operating on the tight reservation windows of a Michelin-starred tasting menu. No phone or website details are currently listed in Pearl's database, so the most reliable approach is to contact the restaurant directly through search or a local concierge. Price range is not published, but an OAD Top 133 Asia restaurant in Beijing with this cuisine profile will typically sit in the mid-to-upper range for Beijing dining , expect to spend meaningfully, though not at the level of a formal tasting menu venue. For broader context on what to book around it, see our full Beijing restaurants guide, as well as our Beijing hotels guide and our Beijing bars guide.

Context: Chiuchow in China

Chiuchow cooking is one of the more specialised regional cuisines in China, with a strong diaspora tradition across Southeast Asia and a smaller but dedicated following in mainland Chinese cities. For comparison, serious Taizhou cooking in Beijing is represented by Xin Rong Ji (Xinyuan South Road), which operates at ¥¥¥¥ and draws a similarly informed dining audience. Outside Beijing, the Chiuchow and fine Chinese regional tradition extends to venues like Chef Tam's Seasons in Macau, Imperial Treasure Fine Chinese Cuisine in Guangzhou, and Dai Yuet Heen in Nanjing , useful reference points if you're building a broader understanding of serious Chinese regional cooking across the country. For a different register of Chinese fine dining in Shanghai, 102 House in Shanghai is worth noting, and Ru Yuan in Hangzhou offers another regional counterpoint.

How It Compares