"Yellow River four big jars (si da gang)" served at Ya Xuan. Ye Jun / ChinaDaily

Some Beijing restaurants are following the healthy eating trail by offering dishes featuring coarse grain foods. Ye Jun delves deeper.

Coarse grains are becoming more popular in Beijing, as can be seen in the new menus of some old and more recent restaurants. Xi Bei Youmian Village is known for its cuisine from the Northwest Chinese countryside. It's named after oat flour, which is steamed, rolled and sliced and served with lamb or mushroom soup. The food originates from parts of Hebei and Shanxi provinces and Inner Mongolia autonomous region.

Xi Bei now has 10 outlets in Beijing, and a total of 35 restaurants throughout China. It has established itself as a healthy choice of eating, especially when it comes to coarse grain foods.

"Ninety percent of the ingredients at Xi Bei come from the fields of Northwest China, where produce is relatively safe and healthy," says restaurant owner Jia Guolong, a 23-year veteran in the business.

At a recent new dish tasting, Jia Guolong admits that healthy ingredients are the "core competitive capacity" of the restaurant chain.

Apart from oat flour, the restaurant offers black bean steamed buns, lamb soup with potato vermicelli, and a high plateau free-range chicken. Moreover, the restaurant uses mainly traditional cooking methods such as roasting, brewing, braising, and stewing. The restaurant has designed more than 100 new dishes, which will be available in its outlets from July 1.

"At first we investigated and chose new dishes from the dining tables (of other restaurants). But now I take chefs to local markets to find new ingredients, and invent new dishes," he says.

Jia recalls Chinese hot pot restaurants used to put in large quantities of MSG for seasoning. MSG has been used in China for 30 years. Now, people complain they have a dry mouth and feeling of nausea after eating it and Xi Bei has responded by banning MSG or "chicken essence" and promoting healthy, natural eating.

Coarse grain generally refers to cereal grains other than wheat and rice. Examples are corn, millet, purple rice, broomcorn, oat, buckwheat, soybean and red beans. These cereals were consumed, when people lacked refined rice and wheat. But nowadays, to counter indigestion and high blood sugar issues, they are considered healthy foods.

Chinese cuisine has a tradition of consuming coarse grain. Millet congee, for example, has long been regarded as a nutritious food, even as a hangover cure. Ba bao zhou, eight-treasure congee, is traditionally consumed on Dec 8 of the lunar calendar, to mark the day when Buddha is thought to have attained enlightenment. With glutinous rice, millet, sorghum, and chestnut, it is a regular Chinese dish.

Chinese traditionally relate coarse grains to health functions. Millet is considered to be good for the stomach and spleen. Black beans boost energy in the kidneys and can boost the teeth and hair. Green beans are boiled into congee in summer to dispel extra heat in the body.

"Coarse grains are widely considered healthy by Chinese," says Chen Jingjun, product development director with Xiang E Qing, a mid- to high-level eatery. "They contain insoluble fiber, and help the digestive system operate properly. They prolong the time foods stay in the stomach, delay absorption, and therefore is helpful to people who are overweight and have high blood pressure."

Chen reveals that in Beijing alone, dishes at his restaurant made with coarse grains sell nearly 1,000 helpings daily. The restaurant offers Hunan, Hubei, and Cantonese foods prepared from such pricey ingredients as sea cucumber, fish gelatin, with oats, as well as other coarse grains such as seed of Job's tears, and red beans.

Newly opened vegetarian restaurant San Xiu Tang, or Healthy Garden, is another example of how a Chinese restaurant is endeavoring to offer healthy cuisine. It provides a "farmer's basket" with boiled corn-on-the-cob, Chinese yam, and water chestnut. Apart from that it offers organic vegetables, and only uses olive oil to prepare foods. Plenty of dishes are made of bean curd, pumpkin, taro, and mushrooms, which look and taste good.

San Xiu Tang offers middle- to high-end vegetarian cuisine in a beautiful environment. Besides food there are two tearooms offering classic Chinese teas and traditional decoration. Visitors can relax, before or after a meal, with the help of professional masseuses on comfortable, adjustable sofas.

Ya Xuan, another newly opened restaurant, offers Shandong regional cuisine, and has its own classic coarse grain specialty. "Yellow River four big jars (si da gang)" has four small jars with sauces made of seaweed and aubergine. One can put the sauces on a piece of corn pancake, or inside a millet bun, and roll it all up, along with dry fish, and spring shallots.

The restaurant has its own version of Chinese assorted salad: cucumber, turnip slices, arugula, shallot, young garlic and tree tomato from Shandong.

Ya Xuan is a high-market Shandong restaurant in Beijing. There are only private luxury rooms. The waitresses are tall beauties from Shandong. While the prices are a bit steep, you can order cheaper fresh specialties from Shandong, instead of the expensive seafood.

On the other hand, if you want to be really frugal, you can find plenty of these coarse grains at supermarkets and grocery stores. Many also offer pre-prepared eight-treasure recipes, and other healthy mixtures.