Chinese (and other) Food

Yep, they have food here. Yeay!

So -- think San Francisco when you think Beijing food. Don't think Chinatown. It's not all crappy Chinese eateries and street food. It's a huge array of food types -- Japanese, Indian, Pizza, Italian -- and a vast range of prices and quality.

Being the "rich" white people that we are, we have definitely gone high class on this vacation and stuck with the fancy restaurants. Which are not reserved just for white people by any means -- they're totally full of Chinese people for the most part -- but they are pricey, fancy, and, yes, delicious.

Since I can't post pics yet (I'll have to do it from home, sorry), I will just do a brief run through of the highlights thus far.

-Thursday Dinner: Japanese. Good sushi, not cheap. Nice decor, large restaurant (think Elephant Bar sized). Very similar to an American restaurant in pretty much all respects. Except that the servers don't speak much English.

-Friday Dinner: Pizza. Jon said this place had amazing pizza. And I always love pizza, so we tried it. It was delicious. The pizzas are immense (maybe 30" diameter) and we got half cheese half veggie/white sauce. It was really good. Also: deep fried Oreos. Don't judge us.

-Saturday: Saturday was the first day we actually had Chinese food. We ate at a crappy little place in a strip mall for lunch and a big fancy place in the expensive shopping district for dinner. Both were amazing. Some dishes: Wood ear mushrooms -- fabulous; eggplant in a bread bowl with cheese -- can't go wrong; homemade sake that tasted nothing like normal sake (and hence was awesome); yak's milk yogurt with some sort of honey for dessert -- my surprise favorite.

-Sunday: We really outdid ourselves Sunday. It was Mother's Day. We wanted to eat at this hotel that overlooked the Olympic Park. Jon warned us that all hotels will be catering to Mother's Day for foreigners. We did not listen. We splurged for a $70 per person Mother's Day buffet. Highlights: sashimi bar, half-lobsters, beer bar, dumplings, cooked meat bar (you tell them what meat you want and what table to deliver it to), ice cream, and, ahem, a chocolate fountain.

Later that night we somehow managed to also fit in (as in, into our bodies, not time-wise) dumplings at a really good dumpling restaurant. Tofu skin salad as an appetizer was ridiculously good. Fab-u-lous.

-Monday: Lunch at a former school house made into a restaurant. Beautiful stone patio, umbrelled tables, beautiful day. "American" food. EJ and I had trout melts and fries, Carissa had mushroom soup and salad, Jon had a burger. Milkshakes and brownies for dessert. All very good.

Dinner Monday was the famed DaDong Duck restaurant, known for their roast duck. I didn't partake (except a small taste -- I thought it tasted like chicken), but the rest of the food (Chinese) was really good, including some incredible stir fried bamboo shoots. US$200 for the five of us. 

-Tuesday was Car and EJ's last day and we did a market tour and cooking class during the day and had dinner at a Russian nightclub in the evening. Cooking class was fun; we made a traditional stir fry dish of carrots, cucumbers, egg, wood ear mushrooms and lily flower. The Russian place was cheap and delicious: cabbage schnitzel was the highlight for me. 

-And tonight (Wednesday), Jon and I had dinner at a Mediterranean place in our hotel compound in Xi'an (where the terracotta warriors are -- we see them tomorrow). Not bad for Mediterranean, but not the best I've ever had.

In summary: delicious food, American prices, no food poisoning (so far). Also, Jon knows enough Chinese to get by at the places where they barely speak English, which is nearly everywhere. Pictures will come next week!