The Alchemist is a molecular gastronomy (e.g. cooking with liquid nitrogen) gastro-pub in Sinan Mansions. Cocktails run 75 RMB and up, food is at a similar level. We had about 6 "bar snacks," along with 6 drinks and a cup of coffee for about 960 RMB.

The individual dishes are generally done quite well, the lone exception being the egg'wich, which was overcooked until the egg yolks were quite solid, depriving us of the joy of runny egg yolks. We also had the foie gras-oxtail sliders, the pork brain, the curry french fries, the burrata, and the eggplant caviar. If you detect a trend here, it's our catastrophically bad menu decisions. Each item, individually, would have been fine. Taken together, we needed a Lipitor break to make it through dinner.

In our defense, the menu is basically built around three themes: 1) deep fried items, such as french fries 2) really fatty things, such as the egg yolk sandwiches, and 3) deep fried fatty things, such as the pork brain. There is nothing resembling a salad - or anything lighter than, say, deep fried pork brain - to be found. The closest the menu comes to a vegetable dish is the above-mentioned "eggplant caviar," which is, in reality, a hopped-up babaganoush. It's good. But it's not anywhere near "light."

The cocktails are generally good. El Jakito tastes basically like drinking Tabasco or Sriracha sauce, which went over great with me. I like hot things. The Emerald Tablet's flavors were unfortunately muted by the addition of milk. On a previous trip, I had a spicy Bloody Mary, and it was the best Bloody Mary I've ever had in my life, and possibly one of the best drinks ever. Fantastically spicy and flavorful.