What Chinese food can you expect to eat in Beijing? Well, if you come to the city next summer, you'll find it will bear little resemblance to the Chinese take-out available in a paper box back home.

The restaurant of one of the Olympic-designated hotels in Qinhuangdao, one of the Olympic-host cities. [China Daily]

The organizers of the 2008 Beijing Games have promised a menu that will offer the best Chinese delicacies. Chefs across the country have already recommended about 1,000 time-honored local dishes for BOCOG to choose from.

Chinese and other Asian food could account for 30 percent of the "Olympic cuisine". Caterers have been appointed to serve the 280,000 athletes, officials and journalists from August to September next year.

At Olympic-designated hotels, restaurants have already begun preparing for next summer. One chef at the Grand Hotel Beijing, which will house Olympic VIPs, has spent more than a year designing a side dish based on Fuwa - the Chinese name for the latest Olympic mascots - made of eggs, red and green peppers, carrots, cucumbers and eggplants.

In case you're disgusted at the prospect of eating the five lovely figures, don't be. The hors d'oeuvre is only for guests to admire while cooks whip up their delicious meals.

If you are a non-Olympic guest, you will still be spoilt for choice. Outside the Olympic venues and hotels, tens of thousands of local Chinese restaurants also stand to benefit from the upcoming food bonanza, which is estimated to be worth 20 billion yuan ($2.7 billion). About 5 million overseas tourists and more than 120 million domestic travelers will visit Beijing in 2008.

But customers should stay on their toes. Many of these restaurants may be more concerned with profit levels than delivering nourishing meals or performing culinary art, especially at a time when food and labor costs are going up and profit margins are razor thin.

One major concern for city officials is how to ensure restauranteurs will invest more money to maintain good hygiene standards on their premises.

As part of the city's campaign for cleaner restaurants, the Beijing Health Bureau has developed an online database so diners can check the food hygiene standards of local restaurants that are graded from A (excellent) to D (not qualified).

While having lunch at my favorite restaurant near work recently, I was surprised by two discoveries: my two-course meal now costs 10 percent more than it used to, and a new poster-size certificate featuring a red letter B was displayed at the entrance to show how the food has officially been rated as "good" in terms of hygiene safety. The poster included the names of the restaurant manager and its sanitation administrator, as well as the number of a complaint hotline (12320).

How tough are these inspections? Last weekend, as I checked online to see how the famous Quan Ju De Peking Duck outlets in Chaoyang District, where foreign communities often congregate, I found that two of them had earned an A, two a B, and one a C or "qualified" rating. In comparison, all of the McDonald's branches in the area received a B rating and four were unrated, although the reasons for this are not clear.

The challenge is that not every rated restaurant will want to show off its grade, as the certificate comes with a warning at the bottom: "Customers are advised to dine in restaurants of higher sanitation ratings." Of the more than 21,000 rated restaurants in the city, fewer than 40 percent have earned an A or B, although 96.5 percent have passed their inspections.

Health officials have also resorted to unconventional measures to ensure hygiene standards are maintained or improved, such as requiring restaurants to display window stickers of a "smiling" or "sulking" face to show different hygiene conditions. Video cameras have also been installed in some so patrons can keep tabs on what's going on in the kitchen.

One can only hope that all these measures will help officials meet their target of eliminating all D-rated restaurants before the Olympic Games. It only takes one irresponsible outlet to give rise to a public health emergency.

Email: yuanzhou@chinadaily.com.cn