Walk into Donglaishun Yan, the 123-year-old hotpot brand Donglaishun's new outlet, and light greets you first.
Suspended in the restaurant are 72 calligraphic renderings of shun, the last character of the brand's name, meaning harmony, good fortune and following nature's way.
They are arranged as stars in the Big Dipper, pointing toward the brand's ambition to break free from its old mold and embrace a new market.
The message is clear: this is not your grandparents' hotpot restaurant.
For the uninitiated, Beijing's mutton hotpot is a study in austere elegance. Unlike the fiery, broth-heavy hotpots of Sichuan or Chongqing, the capital's version keeps it simple: a copper pot, clear water, and sometimes just a few slices of ginger and scallions.
The magic is meant to come from the lamb itself — paper-thin slices of fat-tailed sheep from the grasslands of the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, swished briefly in the bubbling water, then dipped into a dense, savory sauce of sesame paste, fermented bean curd and leek flower.
For much of the 20th century, eating hotpot in Beijing meant one of a handful of time-honored names. Donglaishun, founded in 1903 by former street vendor Ding Deshan, stood among them. The franchise helped standardize the cut of the meat and popularize the eight defining features that connoisseurs still recite, from the selection of the meat to the crispness of the house-pickled garlic.
In 2008, Donglaishun's mutton processing technique was inscribed on China's national intangible cultural heritage list.
For decades, Donglaishun's neighborhood outlets thrived on familiarity. The brand has also been served at state banquets and major national events.
However, young consumers today want more than a reliable meal. They want a story and a place fit for photos, notes Zhang Cong, general manager of Donglaishun.
"So the question is: how do we take what we can do and make it available to more people, in a setting that feels right for today?" Zhang says.
The new Donglaishun Yan is part of the brand's efforts to resolve that question.
Located in the bustling Liangma River commercial zone, the restaurant is close to embassies and chic metropolitan activities. It features six private dining rooms, each with a different color palette drawn from traditional Chinese aesthetics.
The menu is updated seasonally, and the food walks a careful line between tradition and experimentation.
The classic hand-cut lamb remains untouched. However, the brand is now sourcing more selectively, distinguishing sheep from different regions of northern China. These include Sonid sheep from Inner Mongolia, which the brand says are known for their tender, subtly sweet meat; Tan sheep from the Ningxia Hui autonomous region, a smaller breed with an exceptionally delicate flavor; and soon, Luobu sheep from the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, prized for their lack of gamey taste.
"We want to give the choice back to consumers, and people who know lamb will appreciate the difference,"Zhang says.
Then there are the fusion dishes. One standout is the hand-beaten lamb soup with litsea — a spice rarely found in traditional halal cuisine. The lamb is tenderized with a mallet until its fibers loosen, creating an almost silky texture. Litsea adds a citrusy brightness.
"We let Western elements assist our craftsmanship," Zhang says, adding that the move was validated by international guests."It's fusion with respect."
In 2024, Donglaishun partnered with Tongrentang, a time-honored traditional Chinese medicine house, to explore how "food as medicine" could inform seasonal menus.
For instance, winter calls for warming ingredients, and summer demands cooling tonics, Zhang says.
Part of the result has been a rotating selection of drinks, including jujube tea, hawthorn and tangerine peel infusions, designed to complement lamb hotpot throughout the year.
"Donglaishun has been selling hotpot for 123 years, but we're actually just entering our adolescence,"Zhang says with a smile.
In winter, the brand plans to offer outdoor hotpot in the snow. "It's about creating a sense of relaxation,"Zhang says.
Donglaishun is not alone in its quest for reinvention.
Just weeks before its Liangma outlet opened, another Beijing icon — Quanjude, the Peking duck brand boasting more than 160 years of history — unveiled a very different strategy at a food and drinks fair in Chengdu, Sichuan province.
Quanjude is pushing "productization". Its new instant duck blood vermicelli soup, developed with state-owned supply chain advantages, allows consumers to enjoy the brand's well-known roast duck broth after just five minutes of steeping — at an office desk, on a train, anywhere.
The brand has experienced its best New Year and Spring Festival sales in eight years, says Zhou Yanlong, Quanjude's general manager.
Zhou emphasizes that it's not enough to just guard the golden signboard and efforts must be made to earn customers every day.
The company has set an ambitious target: for its food products to eventually account for 50 percent of revenue, up from a fraction today. To get there, it is rolling out everything from spicy duck necks to creative snacks such as lucky fortune cookies, designed to capture the attention of younger, on-the-go consumers scrolling through social media.
Whether Donglaishun's youthful confidence translates into sustained success remains to be seen.
But on a soft spring evening by the Liangma River, with the copper pots gleaming and the Shun characters glowing overhead, it is hard not to feel that something significant is being attempted.
