The newly launched Brunch Weekend, an event running June 18-19 and 25-26 in Shanghai and Beijing, offers a good opportunity for those who love to dine out. (Photo provided to China Daily)
With no chef, no kitchen－not even a knife and fork in their inventory, Onno Schreurs and Toine Rooijmans' may sound incredibly brash with their culinary ambition: building a better dining experience in China－and all of Asia.
But less than six years after the goal was set, and painted in red against the black sketches of Shanghai's skyline at their office entrance, the two co-founders of Dining City Asia seem well on their way.
As the brains and energy behind China Restaurant Week, a popular culinary event for foodies in cities like Shanghai, Beijing and Hong Kong, they have connected 400 restaurants across the country with 100,000 diners. In the process, they say they provide some outside policing for the food and beverage industry, publicizing reviews of "the most demanding and valuable diners" locally and helping the restaurants to improve in an increasingly competitive industry.
"Back in 2006 or '07, waiters here often just threw the menus on the table, and what's more surprising is that people actually found it OK. But now, we actually have reviews saying that the menu is too dirty," says Rooijmans, director of Dining City Asia, which introduced Restaurant Week to China in 2010, first in Shanghai.
A concept launched in New York City in 1992, Restaurant Week is an annual or semi-annual promotion in which eateries across a city offer multi-course dishes in specially priced set menus. Tim Zagat, who initiated the first Restaurant Week, once described the event as a "goodwill gesture to the 15,000 reporters coming to cover that year's Democratic National Convention" when it started.
