Bang! Fine dining goes underground

While Guanghua 5 Bang Street is located in the Prosper Center's basement, it's far from being just another underground food street.

Many of the 12 eateries are fine-dining establishments, and most offer better-than-average meals and dcor.

For example, Repulse Bay - named after the famous body of water in southern Hong Kong Island - proffers high-end Cantonese dishes and seafood.

Executive chef Jiang Bingshou says he uses the freshest ingredients to ensure their original flavors are retained.

The restaurant's braised superior beefsteak with Asian sauce is soft and flavorful. It also prepares a delightful grouper with bean curd.

Casablanca is a Mediterranean restaurant serving food from the region, including 48 Neapolitan pizza varieties. It also offers four dessert pizzas found nowhere else in Beijing. These sweet treats come with toppings, such as chocolate with hazelnut, apple and cinnamon, and pineapple.

Casablanca also offers Middle Eastern-style mezze and kebabs. Tunisian chef Adel RakRouki cooks up authentic couscous, tasty fattousch salad and falafel (deep-fried chickpea patties) served with yogurt sauce. The dcor features a blue-and-white color scheme and is made complete by scenic photographs of the region.

Bang Street's Japanese locale, Gohonngi, is cordoned off into five sections, all of which are manned by chefs native to the island nation. These include a fine-dining restaurant, a family-style eatery, a sushi bar, a hot pot spot and a teppanyaki establishment. All of these areas feature an authentically Japanese feel.

The Chinese offerings include Shandong eatery Peng Lai Pavilion and Yangzhou Pavilion, which serves Huaiyang cuisine from Jiangsu and Zhejiang. Preeminent Shandong chef Wang Yijun serves as consultant, while his apprentice works as their main chef.

The restaurants share a private dining room area built according to the conventions of Shanghai-style architecture.

Bang Street also features Vietnamese restaurant Mekong Riverside Cuisine and Hong Kong fast food spot Causeway Bay. Visitors can follow their meals with a hot cuppa at Westside Caf & Bar on the ground floor.

B1, Prosper Center. 5 Guanghua Lu, Chaoyang district. 6562-8555