The Chez Panisse of China: Dragon Well Manor Makes Good on a Commitment to Local, Organic Ingredients

After reading Fuchsia Dunlop’s New Yorker article on Dragon Well Manor (龙井草堂), we took the opportunity during the Chinese New Year holiday to experience the restaurant ourselves. Located in Hangzhou, Dragon Well Manor is run by Dai Jianjun, whose goal is to create a Chinese culinary experience founded on the use of fresh, locally sourced ingredients. The first thing to strike you at Dragon Well Manor is the beautiful setting of the restaurant, situated in the famous green tea hills of Hangzhou. When the weather is warm, patrons are encouraged to walk the grounds, drink tea outside and listen to traditional Chinese musicians in the garden.

In the kitchen, cooks are committed to using natural ingredients free of pesticides and often picked or gathered the morning before your meal. In order to keep the more than 200 suppliers honest, Dragon Well Manor requires each supplier to take a picture of them gathering the ingredients that they supply to the restaurant. Customers are even shown the book of supplier’s pictures with the time, signature and origins of the ingredients that will go into their meal. The quality of food is superb, capturing the essence of each ingredient with no heavy sauces to cover up what the local area has to offer during each season.

Our first course was a deliciously rich soymilk soup prepared with sweet sugar or savory dried shrimp and chopped onion seasonings, depending on your preference. Cold dish appetizers included fresh jellyfish, smoked fish and a finely diced green vegetable that you could tell was picked earlier that day. To drink, we chose a combination of freshly squeezed orange juice, locally grown “Dragon Well” green tea and a rice wine that is brewed on site and acts as a fantastic digestif. Highlights of the main courses included a trio of soups—chicken, duck and fish—which had clearly been given ample attention and patience to produce such rich flavors without the help of MSG. The batter for the fish balls was hand churned for over an hour, giving them a light and airy consistency – a stark contrast to the rubbery fish balls that Chinese convenience stores sell. The waitress explained that the delicate shrimp we ate were caught and frozen in October, when they are at their most plump. Because it was Chinese New Year, we also ate a traditional dish of river fish, which was cooked in a light vinegar and soy sauce.

The service was unparalleled at Dragon Well Manor with attentive waitresses in traditional qipao dresses waiting on each table and describing how many of the dishes were made. After mentioning that the lajiao (hot chili sauce) was particularly good, the restaurant sent us home with a whole bottle. And as we munched on freshly made black sesame seed sweets after the meal, the waitresses packed up an entire container to take home. Dragon Well Manor’s owner, Mr. Dai, has never heard of Chez Panisse and does not engage in any advertising for a restaurant that he says he will never recoup his investment on. However, the restaurant has already garnered a following of culinary enthusiasts who seek refuge in Mr. Dai’s commitment to genuine, fresh food.