Windy City Ballroom is set in the grounds of a quiet courtyard, beside a beautiful lotus pond fringed with willows. Located in the north of Beijing near the Olympic Park, the name, décor, and cuisine are all inspired by Chicago, a city famous for its warm and welcoming nature. Opened in 2012, the restaurant offers a unique waterside setting where you can escape the summer heat and enjoy a relaxed dining experience.

With roots stemming from mid-western America, the restaurant takes pride in using quality and fresh ingredients. Head Chef Dustin Merrett, formerly of Home Plate, took over the kitchen last year and brought with him an authentic soul-food repertoire. Families can enjoy Chicago comfort food classics like deep-dish pizzas, grills, signature burgers, and some tasty fish dishes.

The six or four person BBQ board (RMB 598/328) is a great way to try a range of their foods. It includes wings, kebabs, sausages, ribs, steaks and chops, skewers, corn, and plenty of traditional sides. The popular brunch menu is available every weekend, from 11am to 3pm, with advance booking essential. Brunch dishes include house made cinnamon buns, French toast, breakfast wraps, eggs benedict, and a Hearty American full breakfast.

Our two hungry diners are WAB students Alice (age 8) and Jamie Mutter (age 5). The Mutters spent three years in Nanjing, before moving to Beijing in 2014, and are relocating back to the UK this summer. Alice’s favorite foods are chicken soup and hotdogs, whilst Jamie loves fried rice and pork dumplings. They tried a few dishes from the kids’ menu – the Meat Ball Mountain served with pasta, chicken pizza, breaded chicken and fries, and corn dog with fries. Prices range from RMB 20-42. They both agreed the chicken in a basket was great, and the meat balls were a big hit too. By far their favorites were the “delicious” blueberry, raspberry, and apple smoothie and the pineapple, mango and banana smoothie (both RMB 45). Prices are very reasonable across the menu, offering great value cuisine for all the family.

Facilities:
Windy City Ballroom is a big restaurant, with seating for 150 inside and over 60 on the terrace patio. There are three private rooms, with another one underway. Highchairs and kid’s utensils are available. The toilets are very clean, with both Chinese and western-style stalls, with paper and soap provided. The main restaurant is no smoking, but smoking is allowed in the outside area.

Windy City Ballroom 风渡嘉荷
Daily 11am-10pm. 9 Yongtaizhuang Bei Lu, Qinghe, Haidian District (6299 3777, WindyCityBallroom@mail.com) www.comfortfoodbeijing.com 北京市海淀区永泰庄北路9号

This article originally appeared on page 28 – 29 of the beijingkids July 2015 issue. Click here (http://issuu.com/beijingkids/docs/2015.07_beijingkids) to read the issue for free on Issuu.com. To find out how you can get your own copy, email distribution@truerun.com.

The Olympic Green Park is this year’s venue for the 4th Beijing Science Festival taking place from September 18-22. The festival is organized by the Beijing Association for Science and Technology (BAST) and kicked off the festival last night with a gala. This year’s theme, "innovation and development, and popular participation," will feature over 10 countries taking part and hundreds of organizations having interactive booths for children to partake in various "explosive" experiments.

The festival was started in 2011 brings together organizations from astronomy, natural science, green energy, life science, ICT, and space technology. The target of the festival is to get as many children interested in science and science-related fields.

Photo: Xinhua.net

The original China Science and Technology Museum located on the north Third Ring Road (and not to be confused with the newer facility, which opened last year at the Olympic Forest Park) is set for a radical makeover, courtesy of award-winning architects KSP Jürgen Engel Architekten International.

Dating back to 1988, the museum was the first of its kind in China and featured an iconic geodesic dome that houses an "Astro-Vision Theater," among other attractions. Based on the artistic renderings, the new design looks far more grandiose, and, according to evolo.us, features a "floating structure measuring 133.5m x 133.5m, which rises above the pedestal building at a height of around 20m."

This roof is supported by numerous, extremely slender columns, which, based on the image of a bamboo grove, form a concentrated forest of columns. They create a spatial transition from the public road to the scientific exhibition area

No word yet on what attractions will be housed within, but from the looks of it, you can expect some truly-state of the art exhibitions.

Meanwhile, we recently took a trip back to the new China Science and Technology Museum, located a ten minutes’ walk east of the south gate of the Olympic Forest Park. The museum is easily accessible by metro line 1 and the attractions include four theaters, a cafeteria, and an area especially for kids’ exhibits.

The whole building is nicely air-conditioned, making it a great daylong activity for these hot summer days. Tickets for the main exhibition area are RMB 30 for adults, RMB 20 for students with ID, and include four floors’ worth of attractions, over which the obligatory dinosaur skeleton looms.

The attractions themselves are split into are themed areas ranging from "healthy living and nutrition" to "physics." Familiar tricks, such as pendulums and Rube-Goldberg devices, scatter the floor along with block puzzles and ocean life exhibits. All posters and information are written in both English and Chinese, though the scientific details may escape younger visitors.

Once your kids start to tire of wandering the floors, head back to the ground floor and check out the theaters. The Beijing Science and Technology Museum boasts an impressive array of four cinemas: the Dome Screen, 4D Cinema, IMAX Cinema and 3D Motion Cinema. The Dome Screen is reminiscent of a planetarium, with shows such as “Cosmic Voyage” and “Journey to the Stars.” Meanwhile, the 4D Cinema has cute animated films such as “Turtle Vision,” which should appeal especially to younger kids, while the IMAX theater has international films such as “The Ultimate Wave,” a film about Tahiti’s surf scene dubbed smoothly over into Chinese.

Finally, the 3D Motion Cinema should be a good choice for elementary to middle-schoolers, incorporating movement and special effects into selections such as the “Extreme Log Ride 3D.”

The museum has a number of dining options featuring both basic Western options – i.e. hamburgers and hot dogs – and Chinese selections consisting of the standard set meals (tao can, 套餐）with servings of rice, veggies and meat, and a variety of drinks. Prices for these tend to fall in the RMB 20 range for a meal. More options are available in the cafeteria area downstairs, which has both a greater variety of cheaper set meals and a Pizza Company buffet for RMB 49.

China Science and Technology Museum. 中国科技馆
2 Beichen Donglu (ten minutes east of the south gate of the Olympic Forest Park). Chaoyang District. (5904 1000) 朝阳区北辰东路5号