Mom, Sun Ge, went from selling TV shows on the international market to script-writing for them, from the comfort of home in Dongsi. Joel Shuchat is a busy man, constantly working on The Orchid hotel, Toast restaurant, Furongji restaurant, The Bakeshop, and Baojian bar, keeping things tightly fit with never more than a 30cm of wall to separate things. Little Yuanbao (3) loves to eat… a lot!
Favorite way to transport the family around the city:
Bikes, of course. We have an old Japanese pedal-assist that all the mom’s use over there for kid transportation.
Favorite Spot to Relax:
For us two, at home – we never get to do it that much.
Favorite Weekend Activity:
Vics, otherwise pools, and airports – to other nice places
Favorite Chinese Restaurant:
ZhazhaBistro, or Eyu to Longfu for new, fun flavors; Furongji if you are counting based on the fact that my last 60 meals were there.
Favorite Non Chinese Restaurant:
Saveurs de Coree
Best Daytrip:
Sanlitun
Family Rituals:
Elevators. Yuanbao adores them and makes us ride each one we happen to pass.
Favorite shop for groceries:
Taobao. Each shipment of fruits provides 10x more than necessary for us, so the rest goes in our dehydrator and becomes awesome for snacking.
Favorite place to play indoors:
Legoland in Changying. Yuanbao doesn’t really know how to play with Lego but for some reason he can spend half a day there.
Favorite place to play outdoors:
Yuanbao gets to bike around Ditan a lot. They don’t let us adults do that anymore but as long as one of us is having fun it’s worth it.
Favorite neighborhood:
Having just moved to Dongsi, we are finally straddling both Gulou and Sanlitun equally. So getting a bit of both has been nice.
This article appeared in the beijingkids September 2019 Family Foodies issue
Photo credit: Kipp Whittaker
