If you are going to the Olympics (you lucky bastard!) or if you just plan to visit Beijing anytime soon, the ever-helpful BBC has gone and made a guide for stupid tourists so they don’t get too lost. Our British friends have made a list of the best places to buy food, eat out, get plastered, and provide useful advice on riding the subway and how to tell if you’re eating good Peking duck. All of which is vital to having a good time in China.

If the restaurant serves the crispy duck skin with fat still stuck on it, then you’re in the wrong place.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7530847.stm

Now if only they told you where to find the mystical white-eyebrowed guru to teach you kung fu…

Professional-wrestler-turned-restauranter Hiroaki ‘Rocky’ Aoki, founder of the Benihana chain of Japanese restaurants, died two days ago at the age of 70. Cause of death is noted as pneumonia. I’m sure that Benihana was for many an American their first taste of Japanese food, even if the menu doesn’t feature many of the more exotic selections of the Japanese diet.

I remember my brothers and I once went to Benihana to eat one afternoon a few years ago, and my father (who himself is in the restaurant business and seems to know everyone else in the biz for a 100-mile radius) found out that our tableside chef was in fact Filipino. After a spirited conversation in Tagalog, it soon turned out that every Asian employee of the restaurant was likewise Filipino - an irony I was quick to recognize.

That has nothing to do with Mr. Aoki, but its’ my fondest memory of Benihana. It’s also worth noting that Mr. Aoki’s daughter, Devon Aoki, portrayed the silent assassin Miho in Robert Rodriguez’ film adaptation of Frank Miller’s Sin City.