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A taste of Harbin

Huamei Western Restaurant

华梅西餐厅

Harbin's most famous Russian restaurant, trading on Central Avenue since 1925, when a Russian owner opened it as the Mars tearoom on a side street in Daoli. It passed through Russian, German, Polish, Czech and Chinese hands before becoming a state enterprise in 1959 and moving to its present address at Central Avenue 112. It is unashamedly a tourist institution now and service can be brusque, but the first floor's European garden-bar room and the second floor's Kremlin-pastiche private rooms are the best surviving picture of what Harbin's Russian decades actually tasted like.

¥100–150 per person≈ US$15Chinese time-honoured brand (中华老字号)Daoli District, Central Avenue (中央大街) 112, in the pedestrianised cobbled section
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Why come here

A place worth making time for

Designated a Chinese time-honoured brand (中华老字号) and conventionally counted with Beijing's Maxim's, Shanghai's Red House and Tianjin's Kiessling as one of China's four historic Western restaurants; no Michelin or Black Pearl listing exists for Harbin.

The house favourites

What to order

Point at the Chinese. Staff will understand it even where the menu has no English at all.

  • Clay-pot braised beef (罐焖牛肉)
  • Moscow salad with red sausage (莫斯科沙拉)
  • Borscht, the Harbin-Russian version (苏波汤)
  • Butterflied grilled chicken (铁扒鸡)

What it actually tastes like

This is Russian food as reinterpreted by Chinese kitchens over a century, so it is sweeter, softer and more heavily thickened than anything in Moscow. Expect a lot of dairy and bread, and a dill-and-sour-cream register that surprises people who came expecting northern Chinese food.

Allergens in this kitchen

dairygluten/wheategg

This is the kitchen, not one dish. Woks, fryers, blanching water and utensils are shared in almost every Chinese restaurant, so for a serious allergy treat the whole premises as the unit rather than ordering around it.