全球法餐名厨在北京遭遇滑铁卢

choi

Jane Perlez, 全球法餐名厨在北京遭遇滑铁卢. 纽约时报中文网, Dec 11, 2013
cn.tmagazine.com/lifestyle/20131211/t11boulud/

, which is translated from

Jane Perlez, A Global Dining Empire Loses an Outpost; Finding Western ingredients proves tough in China. New York Times, Dec 9, 2013.

Note:
(a)
(i) Daniel Boulud
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Boulud(1955-)
(ii) "Maison Boulud * * * The restaurant, run by the New York chef Daniel Boulud"

maison (French; noun feminine; from Latin mansion of the same meaning): "house"
(b) “'Shanghai is pragmatic, moves faster and is more business focused,' said Michelle Garnaut, chief executive of the M Restaurant Group, which runs M on the Bund in Shanghai, and Capital M, one of the surviving Western-style restaurants in Beijing."

M Restaurants
www.m-restaurantgroup.com/
runs three outfits: Capital M (Beijing); M on the Bund (Shanghai) and Glamour Bar 魅力酒吧 (Shanghai).
(c) "But a few items, including some herbs, were impossible to find. Thyme, rosemary and basil could be grown fresh in the kitchen. Chervil and tarragon plants proved too delicate to flourish. Dried tarragon was the only solution."

thyme:  obviously 百里香 in China but in Taiwan 麝香草 (though nobody in Taiwan saw it--or any other herbs mentioned here, for that matter--before 1984 when I left)
(d) "Maison Boulud had a certain cachet because of its home in the two-story structure that served as the American Embassy; it was one of the first buildings in the capital to use imported steel and lumber from the United States. Newspaper accounts from the period note that Sidney H Nealy, an architect for the State Department, designed the chancery, separate residences, servants’ quarters and an ice factory. * * * When the Communists took power in 1949, the embassy, set on a square known as the Legation Quarter 东交民巷, became the property of the government. Before the 2008 Olympics, developers leased the chancery and the accompanying buildings and renovated them for commercial use in what was planned as a plaza of restaurants and galleries. The interior of the chancery, where the Maison Boulud dining room is on the first floor, retains much of its original look."

chancery (n): "the office of an embassy"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/chancery