The Biggest Chinese Restaurant in the World



Sneak Peak of Episode 4: A Bright Future

21 November 2009 | 0:00 - By Phil Lees

According to Chinese tradition, when a baby is 100 days old, a big celebration should be held. In this episode, a 100-day-old baby celebrates his special day at teh West Lake Restaurant and is given a special sword and mirror to fend off any monsters or evil forces in his future life. A strange ritual is also held in which a live carp is made to kiss the baby on his lips to make him articulate and eloquent when he grows up. Then a huge crowd noisily celebrates the symbolically important day in the baby's life while he is fast asleep in his pram. The restaurant is also celebrating a special day. Its third birthday. Owner, Mrs Qin, has invited 1000 guests including her old friends, loyal clients and suppliers, and government and local officials.

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Episode 3: Family Duties

20 November 2009 | 0:00 - By Phil Lees

This week's episode is an unending torrent of filial piety.


West Lake Restaurant's manager Qin Linzi fills us in on her ongoing respect for her parents despite her harsh upbringing. Qin's daughter does the same only with the caveat that her mother throws money at her. A waitress lives seven to a room in the restaurant's company dorm and remits 1000 yuan ($A220) of her 1200 yuan wage to her parents.

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Episode 2: A Good Match

13 November 2009 | 0:00 - By Phil Lees

Money buys you love. Or at least, it buys you romantic love in the view of this episode's central character and bride-to-be, Li Wanzun, preparing for her wedding at the biggest Chinese restaurant in the world. "Marriage has to be based on money," she says, "If you're too poor, you can't be romantic, can you?"


It is a refrain that is repeated throughout the episode. A waitress remarks that "money can solve any problem", another member of the serving staff has not seen their partner in two years as they pursue work in separate cities. It is a recent change in the local attitude towards the importance of conspicuous wealth. The older generation talks of walking on foot to their wedding while their children are driving Audis.

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Episode 1: Enterprise

06 November 2009 | 0:00 - By Phil Lees

If there is a fundamental point behind the first episode of The Biggest Chinese Restaurant in the World, it is that West Lake Restaurant is big. Gargantuan, really.


The restaurant contains five kitchens and a capacity to seat 5,000 guests simultaneously in a variety of themed banquet halls and hundreds of private rooms overlooking the ostentatious, traditionally-styled gardens. A quick run through the kitchens documents the thousands of kilos of pork, tonnes of fish, flocks of duck and greens that are poured into the restaurant's gaping maw, not to mention the metres of live snake.

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About this Blog

This four part documentary series explores the inner workings of the five-thousand-seater West Lake Restaurant in the Chinese city of Changsha.

Phil Lees grew up in rural Victoria, the first generation in his family to not have lived on the farm and thereby not slaughter their own meat.

In 2005 he moved to Cambodia and started the nation’s first food blog, Phnomenon.com, named after the best pun that he has ever made. It turns out that Cambodian food is delicious and unlike the warnings in most guidebooks, is not likely to kill you with any immediacy. Gridskipper called him a “national treasure”. Lonely Planet’s Greater Mekong guide called him “the unofficial pimp of Cambodian cuisine”. The New York Times laughed at a funny hotdog he saw.

Phil makes a mean sausage, a hoppy pale ale, a modest laksa. He owns three barbecues and is in the market for a fourth.

 
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