Today was the first full day of conferences, which start every day at 9 and usually end between 6 and 7:30 depending on the day. I had a meeting with some other folks from the conference scheduled over lunch, so we elected to take advantage of the quick lunch that the hotel had made available. It was out in their event center, which is situated in the garden in their courtyard. I’d bet it makes a fantastic wedding/reception location, very picturesque and the event center itself is quite large. It was a buffet of both Western-style food (sandwiches, noodles and red sauce, etc) and eastern, including a noodle station where you chose a meat, vegetables and type of noodles, they combined it, warmed it all in boiling water for a minute or two, and then put it in a bowl and poured broth over it. They also had more of the dumplings and buns to enjoy, plus a selection of desserts. Not bad, but like everything else, it was overpriced compared to other options. Lunch was 100 RMB, which is about $15. On the way back, I found that they had two replicas of the Terra Cotta Warriors in one of the little buildings in the garden, so I got some pictures of those, along with some pictures of the garden itself.
Since I was again left to my own devices for dinner, I made a point to leave the hotel. One of the other attendees had made a recommendation of a noodle place down the road from the hotel called Malan. It’s actually a Chinese fast-food joint, and apparently they have even opened a few of them in the US. While it is technically fast food, they serve hand-pulled noodles, and the food is made fresh, so it’s still really good. I ordered a bowl of beef noodles with chili sauce, and another Yan Jing beer, which was 600 ml this time instead of 500. The cashier didn’t speak English, and was able to determine what I wanted by my pointing to the right thing on the menu, but I had to applaud her creativity in getting the answers to her other questions. She wanted to know if I wanted the beer cold or room temperature (yuck, warm beer!), so she got one of each and handed them to me. As soon as I realized one was cold and the other wasn’t, we were set. Then, when she rung me up, there was no display on my side of the register, so I didn’t know how much it was, and didn’t recognize the number she said in Chinese. Luckily, they had a calculator, and used it as a display to tell me that I owed them 20 RMB.
So put that into perspective – I had a meal that I could eat 5 times for what my one lunch cost, and the food was as good or better. The meat was about the consistency of well-cooked pot roast or stew meat, very tender and flavorful. The noodles were round and thicker than spaghetti, and a bit chewy. The broth was indeed spicy, but not overpoweringly so, and it had a good combination of beef flavor and that unctuous gelatin content that comes from slow cooking bones and connective tissue. The only thing I didn’t exactly love is that it had cilantro or some Chinese equivalent herb, and I’m not a big fan of that soapy taste that it generates. I was pretty proud of myself – I ate the noodles and beef with chopsticks only, and then drank the broth from the bowl – no spoon required. Lots of slurping, but that’s the way that the locals do it.
A few observations beyond the food: This particular Malan had a bit of a sewer gas odor, which was unappetizing, but it went away shortly after we got there, so I didn’t worry about it too much. Second, most of the restaurants that we’ve been to here are basically one big smoking section, so if you’ve grown accustomed to not having to smell cigarette smoke while you eat, it’s a minor annoyance. I think it’s sad, given how bad the pollution is, since it means that even inside the air isn’t particularly clean. Lastly, I think that sometimes the locals are a little confused when all these laowai show up in the non-touristy restaurants, because when we walked in, everyone in the place looked up as we entered, and it went dead silent for a couple of minutes. However, before too long, people were back to talking and carrying on and enjoying their meals.
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