CCTV invades the restaurant
On Sunday 18 December a complete crew of CCTV (Kids) invaded Morel’s Restaurant in Gongti Bei Lu for a CCTV shooting with 6renyou to introduce Belgian food. The restaurant is by far the most authentic Belgian restaurant in Beijing, not to say in China. It is frequented not only by expats but also by a number of top Chinese officials.
The website www.6renyou.com is in Chinese only and targets Chinese to travel abroad; they also showed cuisine from Israel in the restaurant Biteapitta (Tongli Studio, Sanlitun). See http://www.cityweekend.com.cn/beijing/directory/biteapitta
The idea behind it all is to show on CCTV several types of foreign cuisine, also to prepare Chinese tourists who are to travel and visit Belgium, and other countries.
It took more than a half day as CCTV takes it very seriously, preparing all in detail, installing the proper lighting and sound system.
The stars were obviously Renaat and his wife Susan who explained in great detail the history of the typical Belgian dishes.
I also came on for a short while to give some comments.
The dishes at Morel’s Restaurant
See some of the dishes: fish soup (with croutons, garlic, chees,…): tomato filled with grey shrimp from the North Sea; steak tartare (raw prepared beef); Belgian beef stew (prepared with beer); Brussels pepper steak; endive with ham gratinated; mussels; blood sausage; waffle with whipped cream and ice cream.
Renaat also received a big birthday cake from CCTV.
My favorite dish? Well, all of the above but in my opinion the signature dish of Morel’s is the endive dish (chicon as we call it). There is no restaurant in Belgium that makes the dish as good as Renaat. Except of course for my late mother!
