In a new upscale bar, high-quality cuisine, rare wines and a dress code are on the menu
Hipsters who frequent the bustling Gongti area for food and wine have a new place to visit, the recently opened Mojo, which claims to be the first international gastrolounge in Beijing.
With a comfortable and convivial atmosphere, Mojo provides a wide range of international wines, authentic Italian cuisine and cocktails to satisfy the need of good food and wine.
Gastrolounges, which originated in the 1980s in Britain, refer to bars offering high-quality cuisine, and have become more popular in the West in the past few years.
“Here, guests can have fun — eating, drinking and dancing. Our target customers are fashionable people who want a good quality of life and like the culture of food and wine. I hope Mojo will be a place for them,” says Xiang Wei, the owner of Mojo.
He adds that Mojo will have a dress code that requires guests to dress as charmingly as possible.
Besides the wine collection, he believes that food is equally important in a gastrolounge, to create a great experience for guests.
“In a regular bar, you can have simple dishes such as pizza and fish and chips. At Mojo, we have three Italian chefs and a professional sommelier team to pair the food and wine,” he says.
Mojo is located about 150 meters inside the east gate of Gongti.
When you walk out of the building elevator, you see a staircase on the left that leads to a rooftop of more than 600 square meters, which will open in May, so that guests can enjoy a view of the Gongti area, including a nearby artificial lake.
Facing the elevator is Mojo’s wine cellar that boasts more than 1,500 wines from all over the world, with the prices ranging between 300 and 50,000 yuan ($7,246) a bottle. The wines are listed on the menu according to where they are produced, ranging from the famous areas to emerging regions.
Mojo has various vintages of the same wine and wines from the same vintage that are from different wineries, making it possible for guests to have a vertical or horizontal wine tasting.
The gastrolounge also has a good collection of rare wines of different vintages.
For example, they have three vintages of Chateau d’Yquem, and more than six bottles of each.
The wine is a well-known and expensive Sauterne from southern Bordeaux, and its one of the wines that can age the longest — a bottle will keep for about a century with proper care.
Speaking about the choices on offer, Chen Yalin, formerly with Tem-
Opening hours: every day Address: 150 Meters south of Gongti East Gate, Chaoyang District Tel: 151-0158-3880
ple Restaurant Beijing, who is in charge of the sommelier team, says: “I make sure that I don’t just have overpriced things from the most famous regions. I also have options from Australia, Spain and Chile.”
Mojo currently has just one Chinese wine, Jia Bei Lan from the Helan Qingxue winery, in the Ningxia Hui autonomous region, but plans to have three or four Chinese