Festival of Sichuan food and international cuisine

　　By Annie Wei

　　With a dozen new international hotels along East Chang’an Avenue, the historical area’s choices for business lunches, dinners and late-night inks have improved.

　　The Voyage of International Cuisines (VIC), on the sixth floor of Sofitel Wanda, is one of the hotel restaurants working hard to offer quality food. Its cozy and bright atmosphere is punctuated by a collection of decorative pieces from metropolises such as Paris, Tokyo, Mumbai, Rome and New York.

　　Its Cantonese chicken soup and India chicken wings are highly recommended. The soup, which is ideal at the end of a hard day’s work, is light but with a satisfying flavor. The India chicken is tender and comes with a sweet and sour mango sauce. The restaurant also serves seafood and pasta.VIC’s desserts are one-of-a-knd and carry the mark of France’s renowned Lenotre Culinary Institute. Sofitel Wanda is the only place in Beijing allowed to use the Lenotre name. Next week, the restaurant will hold a week-long Sichuan Cuisine Festival starting October 26. Chef Paul Zhang will fly in from the hotel’s Chengdu branch to whip up dinner in an open kitchen. Customers will see the elements that go into creating authentic Sichuan cuisine: the various coking techniques, ingredients and types of spiciness (dry hot, oily hot, flushed hot, pungent hot, sweet hot and fragrant hot). People who cannot tolerate spicy food need not worry; Zhang will have something for you.

　　The chef’s specialties include sauteed goose intestines with pepper, sauteed poached pork with leek, black bean paste and peppers, and boiled fish in spicy sauce.