Local restaurants

It might be too early to write that post, and I don't have too much pictures to amaze you with (hey! Usually I'm hungry and I don't think about taking out the phone to snap some photos! Yea! It's not that I'm lazy or anything!), but who cares :). I can always add something later :P

Let's begin....


First of all, places to eat are EVERYWHERE (and so many of them are chinese restaurants! ;) ). Second, the dishes are cheap. Very cheap. Right now I see no point in doing my own lunch. Waste of time, waste of resources. Of course, if I wanted something special then yes. But for everyday eat-time, restaurants are the best option.

Next is the taste. Man. For now, I just love chinese food. The flavours are just amazing. No wonder people asked for hobby tells "eating" as one of them. Ok, I'm new, I admit that. Ok, I liked rice and all that stuff before. But still....  Just wow. And so cheap! (did I mention that? ;) ).

Time for the couple of shots I have - and I totally don't have the best ones. Maybe somwehere in the future :). Oh, and one long story. Bear with me, kids :).

That was great

He. He. He. That was my first encounter with local restaurants :). First huge "WTF is going on". Second day (I slept the whole 1st), I'm 100% sure that I'm ready to taste some local food. Smile on face, cash in hand, phone with emergency number (Hi Eva! Yes, I was prepared to call you!) in second. Let's go!

So, door by door to the hotel I was staying is that fancy restaurant. A lot of people is eating here, so it cannot be bad, right? Ok, step inside. Let's check menu - great! They have pictures! I'm on! Ask the waitress about something - ups. She has no idea what I'm talking about. Crap. Well, I still have pictures so let's go! Let's sit down! That's where all the fun begins. After I've picked up the table , I've realized that the pictures were of the raw meat. You know. Strips of raw chicken, raw pork, raw beef etc. What. The. Hell. Am I supposed to eat them raw? So quick look around - apparently the tables have this hot pot in them, meaning you "just" boil the food you want and as much as you want. Cool (seriously cool, I've tried this later and it's fine - as long as you have someone who explains :) ). But not for the first dinner! Luckily for me, waitress noticed my totally confused look and all the signs of panic all over my face and pointed me to the menu with prepared dishes. Thank you!  That saved us a lot of trouble (especially considering that we weren't able to understand each other). Ok, fine, but there's a small problem - drinks don't have related pictures. Oh, well, let's try english. So I'm saying as slowly and as accurately as possible - "Teeeeeaaaaaa". Waitress smiles, says "Ok!", and is off. Great! First order done, not so bad, let's wait for the food. Oh, here comes my waitress. Wait, wtf? Why did she bring me a BEER? Ok, ok, let's try again - "Teeeeaaaaaaaaaaaa". Oh, she smiles, nodes, and is off. Great, she got it this time. Wait, wtf? She's back with the COKE? How does that even remotely sound familiar? Screw it. Tea it was, coke it is. I didn't want to risk that she'll be gone forever. After a couple of minutes starters arrived. Of course at that moment I was sure that this is my main dish and I'm going to bed sooooo hungry. Those were approx. 4 small plates with some vegetables and a couple of unrecognized things. Whatever, food is food :). But, fast forward, here's the main dish. Oh man. It was worth all the trouble. I was god damn delicious. Yay for chinese food! I've paid around 30yuans (pro tip: go to google, type "30rmb to pln", or "30rmb to euro" or any other currency). It was not that cheap, as I learned later, but for the first time definitely worth it.

The best part? Next day I noticed that from all the restaurants, I picked not Chinese, but Korean ;).


Damn, that story took most of the post :O. So let's go quickly through other pics.

No peanuts were harmed
(too much)

That one is for Adrian :). As you requested, Chicken Gong Bao!  And it was soo gooood. Not to mention that picking up all those madafakin peanuts was a great training for operating the chopsticks.  That whole set was 25rmb, which consisted of chicken, rice, coffee, and a pancakes with stuffing (probably spinach). Yea, I ordered too many items :). Btw, "Cool story bro" - Gong Bao, the dish that is known by every foreigner, is not traditional chinese dish. And that's how you, my dear reader, have learned something new today :)

 That one is from tonight :). This time some Traditional restaurant, by capital T. How traditional? "No Gong Bao for you, sir. No, we don't have coffee." (that last hurt badly) Still, food was delicious (I know, as always :) ). That's the dessert, watermelons with melons, already at home, consumed while creating this post :). No pictures of restaurant - phone was dying :/.


Ok, I'm done with pics :). Couple of other things regarding food etc. My most loved one right now is the self-service one. Everything is raw, on those little sticks, you pick what you want (e.g. two sticks with chicken, one with broccoli, one with eggs - there are tons of different stuffs), pay for each stick and they boil it right now for you. Just. Wow. So many different combinations (hey IT guys, your head should now be full of all the possible variants of 20 sticks :D ). My first visit, I've taken some tofu, 2 or 3 chickens, eggs, brocoli, some mushrooms, and something else (I don't remember, I just picked something that looked "safe" ;) ) and paid.... 10 yuans. Taste? Yeah, delicious :D.

Hm, what else I can think of (It's 2:21am here ;)). Oh, sharing plates. That took me by little surprise. We went to lunch with guys and girls from the office, let's say 7 people total. We pick place, start to order. We order 4 plates with meat, 2 vegetables, everyone receives a bowl of rice. And when the food arrives, it's free for all. You pick from any plate. It's cool, you can chat about all the plates etc :). For me it was surprise in the terms that I didn't expect that. So when we ordered I was sure that it'll be only for me and picked Gong Bao (I still need to train :) ) without asking what others think about it. Yeah for being selfish bastard ^^.   Ups :).

I'm done :).  Hope you liked this looong rambling :)