Australian beef filet aromatized with fired herbs.[Photo provided to China Daily]

"Most of the tables were bare. In fine dining the trend is for fewer formalities and frills but more novelties and innovations."

Li is striving to have a role in redefining fine dining with the group's newly established restaurant that has been having a soft opening in COFCO Plaza in Jianguomen.

In Beijing, restaurants are still trying to produce so-called authentic Western food, but in the West more and more fine dining establishments have evolved into an eclectic blend of cuisines with an oriental twist, be it Chinese, Japanese or Vietnamese, Li says.

For her new restaurant, Combal by Tiago, Li says she wants to incorporate oriental cultural elements that are "decorous, mysterious and elegant" into fine dining.

At Combal, what you eat is European, yet what you feel is a Zen-style dining environment, with a decor that exudes oriental charm.

Tea is "a good representation of Chinese culture", Li says, and that is manifested in a decorative wall of shelves filled with various kinds of tea barrels, in the tea-infused cocktails on the menu - each name being a single Chinese character taken from archaic Chinese drinking terminology - and in the tableware with sauces presented in beautiful teacups and desserts coming in antique-furniture drawers.