Beijing, a sprawling city of 15 million voracious consumers, is facing a culinary culture shock of sorts.

Suddenly, chic restaurants, home-style eateries, theme pubs, coffee clubs and foreign fast-food franchises are mushrooming all over town.

Urban gourmets are checking out Brazilian churrascaria, French bistros, Russian buffet lines, Italian pasta chains and California-style booster juice bars.

They are also rediscovering green food from the plains of Inner Mongolia, surviving a Cantonese dim sum invasion and accepting beancurd franchises from Taiwan.

The city has become a gourmet melting pot fired by the affluence of China's capital city and the enthusiasm of newly settled Asian and Western expatriates. All these in fewer years than you can count on one hand.

In the business hub of Chaoyang alone, you can expect to see a Starbucks cafe at every other street corner, while the remaining prime spaces are taken up by local pretenders after the new caffeine addict's hard-earned yuan.

Just a few years ago, Chinese tea, preferably jasmine-scented, was still the preferred tipple for office and home. Now, it's cool to cafe.

Chaoyang occupies a land area about the size of Singapore. Most of Beijing's financial movers and shakers are headquartered there, as are major media such as China Central Television and the quasi-party People's Daily, which has a huge campus of newsrooms, offices and staff housing occupying a prime lot in the heart of Chaoyang.

Being the centre of commerce creates a demand for places to eat out on the corporate account - hence the crop of indecently expensive, if chic, eateries that are quietly appearing within the posh office and mall complexes within the district.

At some of these restaurants, serving mostly highly priced, self-styled Asian fusion, the price of just an appetiser alone could be as high as 300 yuan (S$59), which is what a neighbourhood eatery may charge for a family meal.

Singapore-based restaurateurs Tung Lok Group and Crystal Jade Culinary Concepts are both in the arena with upmarket eateries.

Perhaps that sets the stage for understanding the quality and ambience that these upper-strata restaurants are aiming at, and what they hope the business community will be prepared to pay for the right setting for that power lunch or dinner.

However, this conundrum of extremely cheap versus extremely chic is a phenomenon that still leaves the average citizen in the Forbidden City mildly bewildered. It is a little hard to reconcile, especially when the upmarket invasion is set against the backdrop of traditional eating habits.

My husband and I once paid 4,000 yuan for a table to celebrate a reunion with my mother-in-law and relatives. We had opted for a bit of posh-nosh Cantonese at a restaurant in Oriental Square, a frighteningly modern glass-and-steel development next to Tiananmen Square.

Our meal worked out to about $80 per person, which is about average by Singaporean standards.

A year later, our relatives are still talking about the 'exorbitant' cost and are now convinced that the Cantonese daughter-in-law eats like this in Singapore every day. Although it is definitely not true that we feast like princes all the time, it is a fact that we are used to paying that sort of price for good food in Singapore.

Our Beijing relatives, however, are used to a different cost of eating. I have had many memorable meals with them, and the happiness has always been sealed by the fact that the occasions were always so affordable.

The ubiquitous mutton hotpot is a great example. Wafer-thin marbled slices of lamb, carved and curled from a block of the best cut, are piled high on plates and offered with assorted tofu, tripe, meatballs and vegetables, along with a brass steamboat fired by live coals.

Four people stuffing their faces continuously for two or three hours would leave satisfied after paying about 150 to 300 yuan, depending on which part of town they are in.

Go figure: At Quanjude, you get to take home a certificate to tell you more about the Peking duck you have eaten.

Dong Lai Shun, Beijing's legendary mutton hotpot eatery, charges 10 to 30 yuan a plate, depending on the cut. Polish off a few plates, and you still walk away with change from paying 200 yuan.

For 50 yuan, spicy braised lamb shank is another option for the carnivorous. Piles of shanks are braised in a metal casserole and set upon a burner which keeps the pot bubbling while you slowly deplete the meat. Side plates of pumpkin cakes or mantou satisfy the carbo fix and help mop up the gravy.

These days, many local restaurants list their staples as rice, noodles... and roti prata. They don't call it roti prata of course. Instead, it is called pao bing (tossed pancakes) - a reference to the cooking method.

Unfortunately, we cannot claim to have introduced this to the Chinese, since the country has its own Xinjiang Chinese Muslims.

Xinjiang restaurants are known for their whole roast lamb banquets, which come with bawdy entertainment.

You dine in veil-draped, tent-like compartments and sit on satin and silk cushions on the floor. Belly dancers, acrobats and singers of folk songs provide distraction while a stream of waiters weave between the swirling chiffon to serve cumin-flavoured kebabs, roasted pumpkin quarters, eggplant caviar, baked corn cakes and an entire lamb on the spit.

The cost? An extravagant 1,000 yuan for 10 people.

Lamb aside, the Beijing gourmets' love of meat is manifested in their most famous export - Peking duck.

River crab remains a seasonal favourite

Even then, the price of such a meal may vary from 250 yuan at the famous Quanjude to a mere 45 yuan at an average restaurant in the neighbourhood. Of course, when you eat at Quanjude, you get to take home a certificate to show you ate duck number 10 million, five hundred thousand and three.

Seafood is another great love, and the most expensive, as all of it is imported. Beijing is landlocked and most of its seafood comes from Tianjin, the nearest port.

A lot of it comes air-freighted from southern cities such as Guangzhou while crabs and prawns are sometimes sourced from riverine towns nearby.

Most prawns are farmed now and sea prawns are a rare delicacy.

In winter and early spring, little river crabs are steamed and eaten with sweetened vinegar and ginger juliennes, much like the Shanghai hairy crabs that we know and love.

Except, of course, that no self-respecting Beijing gourmet will pay $50 a crab, male or female. For that price, you can buy a bushel of 30 or more river crabs, male and female.

In the last year or two, the green-food movement has also gradually taken root. Large and small markets across town display aisles of organic vegetables alongside traditional produce.

Coarse grains such as buckwheat, millet, sorghum and naked wheat are finding their way back into the city-dweller's diet, after a temporary exile as 'poor man's food'.

From the farm: A spicy hot plate of braised freshwater fish (left) goes well with wo-wo, naked wheat rolls steamed in a bamboo tray (right).

This new consciousness has spawned a new breed of fast food - buckwheat and naked wheat noodles and dumpling shops that have sprung up mostly where the lunch crowds congregate.

Buckwheat and naked wheat (a huskless durum variety) are grown mainly in the steppes of Inner Mongolia where the harsh conditions and short growing season limit the variety of grain grown.

During the Cultural Revolution, many young Beijing students were shipped off to Inner Mongolia to learn from farmers, soldiers and factory workers. Many of them, in their 50s now, have grown nostalgic for the taste of the rough food of their youth.

My husband, an ex-student farmer himself, took me to eat at one such restaurant. We enjoyed steamed buckwheat dumplings filled with scrambled eggs and chives, naked wheat noodles tossed in a vinegar and garlic dressing, and a nest of naked wheat rolls steamed in a bamboo tray.

The last dish was called wo-wo and is traditional farm food. It went extremely well with a spicy hot plate of braised freshwater fish.

Fresh changes: You can sample homestyle cooking which includes the pumpkin stir-fry dish

In our visits to Beijing, we have enjoyed a vast variety of dining experiences that we would never have imagined just a few years ago. We now have choices that were never there before.

The eager visitor to Beijing is no longer confined to eating Peking duck at Quanjude or forced to endure faux imperial cuisine by the palace gates.

If you enjoy down-home traditional Chinese, delve deep into the mazes of hutong and enjoy private dining on family cuisine, opt for authentic Sichuan cuisine with its tongue-searing peppercorns and red chilli oil, indulge in Cantonese roast suckling pig and dim sum, or pause for a bowl of Taiwanese savoury beancurd accompanied by a gigantic youtiao (dough fritter).

Deeper into the heartlands, the adventurous can try donkey stew or even horse meat.

And now, the gourmet traveller in Beijing can also have French croissants and coffee in Chaoyang for breakfast, Russian blinis in Xicheng for lunch, binge out on meat at a Brazilian churrascaria at Wangfujing in the evening, before wrapping up the day with a night cap daiquiri, Indian samosas and Bombay mix at a pub in Sanlitun.

In the markets, there are aisles of organic produce

As Anthony Bourdain says: 'If the future lies with China, we will be eating a lot better.'

That's for sure.

5 Things to do

1 History buffs must spend a day at the Forbidden City Palace museums. The palace is a time capsule of China's past glory and was home to more than 20 emperors from the 13th to 20th centuries.

2 Avid gardeners must not miss the Beijing Botanic Gardens, at the foot of the West Hills, near Xiangshan. It showcases China's amazing flora, with vast varieties of peonies, peaches, bonsai, roses and cherries taking turns to bloom throughout the year. You can also see where Cao Xueqin, author of Dream Of The Red Chamber, spent his last years as a destitute scholar who had to plant his own vegetables.

3 Visit Beijing's old hutong which are disappearing fast. To catch a glimpse of how Old Beijing looked like, take a pedicab tour of the picturesque Shishahai Lake, where traditional courtyards and alleys housed the common folk of Beijing for hundreds of years. End the tour at the Lotus Garden Market where upmarket pubs and eateries light up in the evenings.

Beijing's old hutong

4 Sample traditional snacks. These include bingtang hulu (candied hawthorn fruits), lu dagun (a sweet glutinous roll with red bean filling) and matuan (crisp sesame pastry). These and more exotic offerings can be found at Little Snack Street in Wangfujing, which starts business in the evenings.

5 Imperial private dining is quite an experience. Book a table at the Bai Family Big Courtyard Restaurant. This is the former residence of a Manchurian prince, and the opulent courtyard has now become a posh restaurant where you can dine like royalty. Order the Imperial Saffron Chicken Broth, and savour slivers of angel-hair tofu floating in a rich, golden broth. (15 Suzhou Street, Haidian District, Beijing, tel: 010-62658851.)

2 don'ts

1 Don't try to look for public toilets in Beijing. Head for the nearest McDonald's outlet instead. Most public restrooms are not up to international standards and may not have cubicle doors, a flush system or toilet seats.

2 Don't expect correct road directions from the locals. Beijing is undergoing rapid changes and is a vast, sprawling city of 18,000 sq km. It is safest to do your homework first and show the taxi driver the address in Chinese. Otherwise, buy the most recently published city map you can.