Susu Beijing

The Restaurant

Susu opened in 2014 in a restored Beijing siheyuan courtyard at the end of a narrow alley off Beixinqiao — a short walk from the Beixinqiao subway station and squarely inside one of the capital's most historically protected hutong networks. The setting is the room's defining argument. A single weathered red gate from the alley opens into a square stone courtyard with a working koi pond, two ginkgo trees, a vine-covered timber pergola, and four linked dining rooms occupying the original four wings of the courtyard — north, south, east, and west — each preserved with traditional dougong joinery, painted ceiling beams, and lattice windows. About sixty covers across the four rooms and a small additional terrace that opens for the warmer months.

The cooking is unambiguously Vietnamese, executed at a level that competes with the senior kitchens of Hanoi and Saigon. The kitchen — led by a Vietnamese-trained team — runs a long à-la-carte menu plus a six-course chef's tasting at ¥580 that walks the table through northern, central, and southern Vietnamese regional traditions. Signature plates include the pho bo with twenty-four-hour bone broth and a separate plate of fresh herbs that the table assembles; the cha ca Hanoi, the turmeric-marinated catfish with dill grilled tableside; the bo la lot, beef wrapped in piper sarmentosum leaves and grilled over charcoal; the goi cuon fresh spring rolls with shrimp and pork belly; and a Hue-style imperial-rice cake that the Beijing food press has championed since the room opened. The bread programme — a daily-baked Vietnamese baguette for the banh mi service — runs from the kitchen's own brick oven.

The drinks programme is a careful Southeast-Asian-pairing format: French Loire and Alsace whites that work with the herbs and the heat, a small but serious German Riesling section, a Champagne grower-producer selection, and a Vietnamese-coffee programme that uses single-origin Da Lat beans for the cà phê đá and a sui sui custard-egg version that the room is famous for. Service is bilingual and paced for a long evening; the courtyard at dusk in spring and autumn is one of the most photogenic dining settings in the city. The room has weathered the changes of the Beijing hutong-protection programme and now operates as one of the very few kitchens of this caliber inside a fully preserved siheyuan.