Hsu Li and his team included an events kitchen so clients can cook up a storm themselves.[Photo by Feng Yongbin/China Daily]

Horse wine?

If you're new to Mongolian culture, this is horse milk spiked with some sort of baijiu, the Chinese white spirit that fuels merry-making at banquets but has added practical value on the chilly plains populated by ethnic Mongolians: the potent booze keeps the milk from freezing. (It makes the milk more fun to drink, too, but it's an acquired taste, even for Chinese.)

We nibble a few skewers and move on to Le Fromager de Pekin, where French-trained cheesemaker Liu Yang is making Sicilian-style pies topped with his artisan dairy creations.

Liu has developed a substantial base for his cheeses, from creamy Camembert to hard-cured varieties. While his array of cheeses is sold in expat-oriented supermarkets and weekend food fairs－and embraced by a number of restaurant hotel chefs in Beijing and Shanghai, this is the first retail outpost of his own.

Besides a chance to interact with the people who eat his product, Liu is keen to expand awareness of artisan cheese among Chinese. That's why he's opted to sell pizza.

"This is not a big dairy culture, so many Chinese aren't familiar with the craft of making fine cheese," he says. "But everybody knows pizza－and it's a product that uses a lot of cheese."

On our most recent visit, we discovered what may be the food hall's most colorful offerings: Power bowls at Nooxo.