Friday nights hail the weekend, and most of us are eager to welcome the break. So having to cook and clean up on a Friday night doesn’t sound all too appetizing. While Beijing has plenty of waimai and delicious options for dining in, if you’re looking for something that’s special every week and lets you in stay in, we’ve got the solution for you – the Foodie Gastronomic Community WeChat group.
Focusing on Asian cuisine, the group was founded by Grace, a Malaysian cooking enthusiast, and Sean, from the restaurant a.wang. Issac, an administrator of the WeChat group, shared their origin story: “Almost a year ago, we started out as a tiny group of ten that sought to bring the taste of home to Southeast Asians stuck in Beijing because of the Covid pandemic. Now, our reputation has spread because of our good food and we’re going strong at 500 people. We’ve slowly grown since then.”
You’ll be able to search for a.wang on Meituan if you want to sample their waimai menu, but the weekly offerings shared in this foodie group can’t be found on the menu and are completely unique. Issac says, “We want our Friday meals to be extra special dishes that aren’t easily available at restaurants in Beijing – less common cravings that are harder to fulfill. All our Friday meals are thoroughly planned and researched ahead of time – we experiment and iterate on recipes to get the exact taste we want. Because we want our food to be as authentic as possible, we need a longer time to prepare the dishes, so we collect orders early.”
Every week the Foodie Gastronomic Community WeChat group releases a special menu for Friday with either a lunch or dinner delivery option. They also have little Southeast Asian snacks and treats such as kaya spread (which is made from oh-so-aromatic pandan leaves), ondeh-ondeh cakes (a small kueh like a cake, made with shredded coconut) and curry puffs (think of it like a calzone pie stuffed with chicken curry). Last week, the main dish was Hainanese pork chops, fried nonya seafood mee siam (noodles) with an option for garlic chili sauce, and pulut hitam (black glutinous) chiffon cake for dessert.
The group’s menu for this week is out – lor mee, ngoh hsiang, Thai prawn cakes, Singapore sambal chili, and barley water. Ordering is done through the QR code in the poster and will close by Tuesday night, so get to booking your Friday night special now!
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Images: Courtesy of Foodie Gastronomic Community
