Where to eat CHINA 🇨🇳 Bern: Qin Restaurant

Qin Restaurant

Speichergasse 29, Bern

What we ordered: For two people, one order of meat dumplings and one garlic cucumber salad as appetizers. For entrées, one order of homemade fried noodles with beans and duck and an order of fried noodles with tomatoes and radishes with chicken. To drink, four Tsingtao beers.

Cost: 98.80 CHF / €101 / $108

Qin Restaurant is a delightful establishment near the Bern main rail station and across from a club and live music venue. Tucked away on a back street, the restaurant, which specializes in Uighur-style homemade pulled noodles, oozes a certain kind of charm that while slightly Orientalist, given there is a terra cotta warrior that greets you on entry, it is also at once totally authentic.

For starters, Qin Restaurant makes a point of noting that its specialty comes from Urumqi, the capital of what is known as the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. This is despite the fact that the region does not have much autonomy in recent years after the Beijing government initiated a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing. Forced internment, reeducation and labor are all par for the course when it comes to the Chinese Communist Party’s understanding of what “autonomous” means for the region. Many Uighurs have vanished while others have fled the region they prefer to call East Turkestan.

One of the finer points of Qin Restaurant is the efforts it makes to share a culture that is under serious threat. Food is a wonderful way to the heart as the best route is through the stomach. By making a spectacle of the noodle making in an open kitchen behind glass, guests can see how these homemade noodles, known as lagman, are made.

A discerning patron will notice not just the effort to call attention to Urumqi but also the absence of something ubiquitous on Chinese restaurant menus just about everywhere else in the world, namely pork. The vast majority of Uighurs are Muslims, though the Islam practiced in China, especially under pressure from the state, does not necessarily resemble practices elsewhere. Female head coverings for Uighur Muslim women in China, for instance, more generally resemble pillbox hats than headscarves proper.

But back to the food, as space is not given on the menu or the décor for politics beyond the statement in itself that this too is China. Quite simply, it is rather exquisite and totally tasty, whether you order the basic garlic cucumber salad or more delicate fare like dumplings and duck noodles. Everything is at entirely reasonable prices that, especially for Switzerland given the freshness and quality, and washed down with some Chinese beers, it is possible to imagine you are elsewhere. We cleaned our plates so nicely that we could have polished them.

As someone who has had Uighur food before in New York and in China, it is really possible to call this place truly authentic. Given the pressure the community faces in China and abroad, to have such a restaurant in a capital city of any country alone is a statement that more need not be said. But if you have a heart for persecuted peoples around the globe, as many engaged in today’s performative politics claim, let the Uighur-style noodle specialties of Qin Restaurant speak both to your heart and your stomach. You will not be disappointed.

While this was not my first rodeo with Uighur cuisine, it is perhaps the finest. At Qin Restaurant, the subtleties of the sauces and savory combinations do the talking, as do the maps in the menu. As a necessary stop on any culinary tour of Chinese cuisines, Uighur food is not just a must for the mouth but for the moment.

How to get to China from Switzerland:

Aviation is really the only sane and possible way to get to China from Switzerland.

Flights from Zürich to Beijing require at least one stop and about 12 hours in the air. Swiss Air does not offer direct flights but there are loads of options transiting through European or Middle Eastern airports with Air China, Air France, British Airways, Lufthansa, KLM, Qatar Airways, Turkish Airlines and Xiamen Air.

Swiss Air does however fly nonstop to Shanghai, with flight time just over 12 hours. In addition to the aforementioned airlines, China Eastern and Shanghai Airlines also offer flights routed through London and Budapest.

How many Chinese people are in Switzerland: More than 21,000

Distance between Bern and Beijing: 8,070 km

Distance from Qin Restaurant to Beijing: 8,070 km

Learn how to make China's national dish, Peking duck, and about its origins.

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