Jingji

A French chef at the imperial pass

The fish maw takes its crispness before the crab arrives. Chef Shushuang Ye leads the kitchen at Jingji in Chaoyang, Beijing, a house built around royal Beijing cuisine where restraint matters as much as richness. Ye’s menu runs seasonally and leans on seafood and vegetables, honouring royal technique through double-boiled soups and a careful balance of umami against contrasting textures. His training and mentors stay out of view, so the reading stays with the cooking. At Jingji that means a formal dining room under the Xin Rong Ji group, translating imperial and official cuisine through seasonal menus, seafood, vegetables, bird’s nest, abalone, and the patient sequencing of a banquet table. The discipline is freshness and exact seasoning rather than display.

Fish maw, bird’s nest, and the set table

Jingji’s kitchen works through tasting menu and set menu formats, with a seasonal approach that keeps the program close to fresh seafood and vegetables. The house encourages preferred seafood to be arranged in advance, so the pass can build around the catch rather than force a fixed idea onto it. Crabmeat and crab roe on crispy fish maw is the dish that carries the restaurant’s clearest textural signature: marine sweetness set against a brittle base, with the richness held in check. Bird’s nest and abalone sit in the same register, ingredients associated with banquet craft, but the cooking avoids weight for its own sake. Double-boiled soups, restrained sauces, and meat and vegetable pairings point toward official cuisine rather than regional heat or blunt seasoning. The room holds two Michelin stars, first gained with the Beijing guide’s 2021 edition and retained through the 2026 guide. Those stars belong to Jingji at this address, not to a traveling résumé.

The room keeps the ceremony close

The dining room is small in feeling, formal in service, and quiet enough for the sequence of dishes to set the pace. Jingji sits within The Ritz-Carlton Beijing in Chaoyang, but the room draws its cues from Beijing’s cultural heritage rather than hotel polish alone: embroidery in the arrival spaces, private rooms, a refined table, and a sense that the meal has been composed for conversation as much as inspection. The counter is not the point here. The pass is. Dishes arrive as part of a longer progression, from cold preparations and hot dishes toward soup, sweets, and staples, with seafood and vegetables doing much of the structural work. The beverage side is wine-led and curated, a quiet support for a cuisine that can move from clear broth to abalone without asking the glass to dominate.

A royal cuisine kept in motion

Jingji matters because it treats imperial Beijing cooking as a living discipline, not a costume. The Xin Rong Ji connection gives the restaurant a larger house style, but the Beijing identity narrows the focus toward official cuisine, seasonal adjustment, and a lighter hand with luxury ingredients. Frequent menu changes keep the kitchen tied to availability, while the signatures remain anchored in texture, broth, and the order of the table. If there is a final measure here, it is not spectacle; it is whether the room can keep returning to the same craft with fresh materials. At Jingji, that measure still comes back to fish maw, bird’s nest, and abalone.