A Barbecue with friends is always a great idea in spring. The smell of fresh beef and mutton mixed with the spring grass brings your senses back to life after the cold, harsh winter.

Dongbei Tankao, or Northeast China Barbecue, offers special cuisine found in the forest, grassland and rivers of Northeast China just as the restaurant's name suggests. Diners can enjoy mushrooms, brake tender leaves, preserved Chinese cabbage, beef and goubao (the root of a plant), all indigenous to the Northeast.

The beef is the best, not only for its good quality, but for its freshness.

The restaurant flies in all its beef from the grasslands to Shanghai to be served on the same day.

We ordered spicy goubao and cucumber as cold dishes. The tasty and refreshing goubao is a popular dish.

There is a variety of items to throw on the grill, including beef, mutton, shrimps, fish, seafood and vegetables. Fortunately, everything was delicious: the beef was tasty, the mutton was not burnt and the smoke remained under control due to the high-quality charcoal.

To help digest so much meat, we tried an appetizing soup called "preserved Chinese cabbage stewed with noodles made of potato starch".

We ended the meal with an amazing dessert, "Chinese dates based with boiled sugar", which has the special fragrance of dates but not too sweet.

( Shanghai Star March 7, 2002)