Life and Times in the Southern Capital
Restaurant
Western Restuarants.. to do or not to do
Dec 29th
One problem that I’ve run into before (and more so lately) is that certain local friends approach me and want to partner up and do a Western restaurant.
Sure I’ve had a good amount of experience in restaurants back home prior to my professional career, even on up to the management level despite being a college student at the time. I have no doubt that I could create a decent menu at non-gouge prices (hell I have even gotten pretty efficient at doing it in a home kitchen now, even without economies of scale). The problem I see is that there just isn’t a large enough market in Nanjing to make it worth while. You could probably get past the break even point and even make a little (very little) cash as well as having a place of your own to entertain friends while feeling like a big shot, but I’ve been there and done that, and it’s not as great as it seems, as nearly every night, some “friend” wants to hang out, etc. Plus, calling it a real smart use of capital would be a stretch IMHO, not to mention the HUGE amount of work it takes to make a restaurant function on a daily basis (in addition to your “real job”).
I’ve tried most halfway decent “Western” restaurants in Nanjing at least once or twice, and with a few exceptions, I’ve never been enticed to return to an establishment based on their offerings alone (it’s usually a lack of alternative choices, or just happening to be in the area). But knowing that not everyone shares my tastes, this isn’t a huge factor in deciding not to enter the fray, what is a huge factor is that I never see these restaurants too busy. Add to that that even when we are one of the few tables in the place, it seems somewhat unorganized, which leads me to believe that they have never been that busy on a regular basis, or they would have worked out the kinks so that when I am there on what would then appear to be one of their slower nights, it would be a breeze for them. There also seems to be little correlation between what I think is a somewhat decent restaurant and their level of business, meaning that often what I think is a horrible restaurant will have more customers than a decent restaurant. Case in point, why does Tacos regularly have more customers than someplace like Les 5 Sens or My Place? Sure, their locations may be better, and they have a bit more name recognition, being in Nanjing for 6-7 years, with multiple locations. But seriously, can anyone honestly say that Tacos is better, realistically it is more likely that they are more accessible to locals. The menu is packed with some old “favorites” of Chinese Western restaurants, Spaghetti Bolognese, Pizza, Fries etc
It is the same as the US, in more gentrified areas, generic “Western” Chinese food is more popular that the authentic stuff. It would be pretty difficult to directly transfer a popular Nanjing Chinese restaurants to a mid-tier US city and expect to be successful. It’s just not what the clientele want. Fortunately they do want Sweet & Sour Chicken, Egg Rolls, etc. I just don’t think that there is a equivalent “Chinese” style of Western food that Chinese will like to that extent (And in a city with as few foreigners as Nanjing, the local clientele would be crucial to long term sustainability). Even though a place like Tacos has more business, I wouldn’t say it’s packing them in like the moderately successful Chinese food restaurants (Or even local Korean, Thai and Japanese restaurants for that matter).
Anybody have an opinion? Is it a lost cause for decent Western food in Nanjing, or am I just a pessimist (No wait, I am definitely a pessimist, but is it justified in this situation?)?
Note: If any of the above is unclear, blame my coauthor, Jack Daniels.
Chinese Whiskey….
Nov 13th
As I was preparing for what I had assumed would be another multi-bottle baijiu evening with the fellas last week, I was pleasantly surprised (and apprehensive) that we were going to veer into the unknown area of a liquor that was new to me. It was referred to as jing jiu and the bottle said Zhong Guo Jiu (i.e. China Liquor), so wasn’t sure what to expect. I was told it was helpful to male virility, but that claim often comes just before I sample something especially horrid.
So, I manned up and toasted the guy across from me, bracing myself for the worst. First impression.. not as bad as baijiu (though nothing else I have drank in my life is worse than baijiu either). Starts off smooth and finished really musky… like Old Spice aftershave musky… though after a few toasts it wasn’t so bad.
Didn’t know it was called Chinese Whiskey until I looked it up online, so maybe that’s not even true. Not sure if the virility claims are true either. Afterward I didn’t go out and hump a bunch of lamp posts or anything, well not any more lamp posts than usual.
Final Verdict: Better than baijiu, drink it if you ever wondered what aftershave tastes like
Ajisan Ramen
Feb 24th
Had Ajisan Ramen for the first time. Odd choice, as I really am not a huge noodle fan. Had the bacon chili fried rice. Was really pretty good, and not overly greasy. Also had the Thai spring rolls, kind of a sweet and sour flavor, also very good. Curry potato croquetes were pretty good as well, though more flavor and seasoning would have been nice. Throw in a big bottle of Asahi and a frosted glass and you have a surprisingly good lunch for Nanjing.
A number of outlets are around town, the one I went to was diagonal from the long distance bus station, next to a KFC. Another is on Hunan Lu, across from the entrance to the pedestrian street.
For some reason my phone decided to add its own artistic touch to the photo with a nice puzzle look. Hopefully it’s not just trying to get me back for all those times I dropped it 
It’s Donut Time!
Oct 7th
So I was in Golden Wheel mall the other day, and while I didn’t check out the new Subway restaurant there (in case it’s not apparent, I love me some Spicy Italian with all the fixins), I did check out Donut Time.
It’s on the ground floor of the mall, near the Papa Johns. It is pretty nicely done inside, about on par with a Starbucks type place. You order at the front counter and seat yourself. As I wasn’t really wanting to eat doughnuts at 9pm, I grabbed some to go. Prices were 5RMB per doughnut, and they have a couple promotions running now (when I was there it was buy a half dozen and get a half dozen plain or glazed free).
They also have various coffees, lattes, teas, etc. I didn’t try any of those, but may swing through in the future, as it is a pretty comfy atmosphere and they advertise having free wifi.
The doughnuts came in a wide number of varieties, I’d estimate around 20. Though some may be strange to American doughnut consumers (and likely anyone else who has any idea what a doughnut is.) For example, the doughnut topped with pork meat floss, or the dougnut topped with shredded cheese. Rest assured they have more traditional toppings, like icing, as well.
I just tried the chocolate topped one with a sort of mint creme in the center (I like sweets as much as the next guy, but I wasnt scarfing down the whole box myself, sharing is caring!). The cake part of the doughnut was pretty much the same as you’d expect if you have had a dougnut anywhere before. The filling was good and just the right creamy consistency. The icing was more of a dry hardened shell than an wet icing consistency, but the chocolate tasted decent and that’s what matters most.
I hope this place works, even if its as a coffee shop first and a donut shop second, as it’s nice to have an alternative to Starbucks, Costa or a local chain for a coffee, unfortuantely I didn’t notice pricing on coffee, but given the affordability of the doughnuts, I cant believe it would be anything except a small fraction of Starbucks’ prices.
If you don’t know where Golden Wheel is, it’s in XinJieKou, just North of the GE (Golden Eagle) building on the other side of Han Zhong Lu.
Donut Time (多纳时光)
Golden Wheel (金轮新天地)
Shop C-109
8 Han Zhong Lu
Xin Jie Kou CBD Area
Hours:
Mon-Thu: 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.
Fri-Sun: 10 a.m. to 10.30 p.m.
Phone: 025-84770319
Himalaya Nepalese & Indian Restaurant
Sep 25th
This was the final stop on my months long visit to all the Indian/Pakistani/Nepalese restaurants in Nanjing (forgive me if here on out I refer to them collectively as Indian). I previously hit Punjabi, Kohindor and Taj Mahal (twice).
Punjabi was good and an early favorite. Kohinoor was good as well, with nice service, but the atmosphere couldnt shake the fact that it was in the second floor of the Ramada lobby, though I think someone told me that they remodeled, so I will check it out again to see how the atmosphere has changed. Taj Mahal was also good, but the restaurant shows its age, and it lacks the polish of the newer restaurants. All three would be great choices for Indian, it seems odd in a city with so many bad foreign restaurants that you can’t really go wrong with choosing an Indian restaurant to dine at. In the end though, it seems I saved the best for last as Himalaya is now my favorite Indian food spot and vying for my favorite restaurant in Nanjing.
Himalaya’s food is just as good as the other 3, but they stand above the others in a few key areas. The first and most obvious upon entering is the atmosphere. The 2 story restaurant has seating upstairs and down, the walls hold pictures of travels to the subcontinent with walls behind a warm red, with dark wood work rounding out the look. There are tables where you can sit on cushions on the floor, as well as tables with chairs for taller and less limber.
The other area they excel in is drink selection, with nearly 20 beers (and only 2 types of Chinese beer, Tsingtao and Tsingtao Dark, so there are some quality imports in there). They also have a lengthy selection of wines and coctails if thats your thing.
The Food is good, as it is almost uniformly among Nanjing’s Indian restaurants. Though I pretty much just go with samosas, chicken curries and tandoories ( all with Naan of course), I have never been too disappointed in Nanjing with any of these. No need to really go too indepth on menu and prices, as you can get from their website here: http://www.njhimalaya.com/
One note, the place was a bit tough to find, as it is off of the street. Basically, if you are on Shi Gu Lu, staring at Ciao Italia, there will be an alley on the left side of Ciao Italia, go down that alley and you will be in a kind of enclosed square containg restaurants, KTVs, etc. Just keep going straight, a parking lot will be on your right and a hotel on your left, by the time you pass the hotel, Himalaya will be on your left, pretty easy to spot thanks to bright ligths, sign, etc.
Himalaya Nepalese & Indian Restaurant
No.193 Shi Gu Road,Nanjing
喜马拉雅尼泊尔印度餐厅
南京市石鼓路193号石鼓湾美食休闲街区
http://www.njhimalaya.com
025-86661828
Oh and yes, I did rip the pictures off of their website, when I was there the place wasn’t empty as it appears in the picture
Aladdin Xinjiang Reataurant
Sep 23rd
Aladdin is a Xinjiang restaurant located behind the Sheraton Hotel in XinJieKou (Same street as Nail Bar, just a bit west, i.e. closer to the Sheraton).
I had heard generally good things about the place and thought the commercial that runs regularly on Nanjing 十八 tv station made the place look pretty tasty.
So went to check it out, place is pretty easy to find and wasn’t too crowded. They have xinjiang mainstays like kebabs and lamb, as well as more traditional Chinese inspired dishes.
I went with a variety of kebabs, some sweet sesame eggplant balls, a beef with steamed buns dish and a stir fried veggie to round things out.
For the most part everything was below average to average. The lamb kebabs alone were especially good, the Sesame eggplant balls were pretty much sugar and breading, not sure if any eggplants even had to give their lives up to make that dish. The beef with steamed buns was alright, though not especially good. The other kebabs (beef and chicken wings) weren’t very good, you could probably get better at any night vendor’s cart. They also have Sinkiang black beer, which if you’ve never had it is an experience in itself, it is probably the lightest, plainest dark beer I’ve ever had, really an odd feeling to look at such a dark beer, but then drink it and taste nothing.
But I’m trying to turn over a new leaf and not be so negative in life (at least that’s what I pay my therapist to tell me), so maybe I will give it another shot, the reviewers over at the Nanjing section of dianping.com seem to like the place enough, and I really wanted to like it as it seemed about 100 times cleaner than traditional Xinjiang places. Maybe it was just an off night, and I’ve definitely had worse, but looks like I’m likely gonna have to keep to the dirty authentic places when I need my Xinjiang fix.
阿拉丁风味餐厅(汉中路店)
白下区汉中路罗廊巷43号
Nanjing Ikea and Ikea Bistro
Sep 8th
Feeling like my apartment was seriously devoid of crappy particle board furniture, I headed out to do some shopping at Ikea today. I’ve never felt the need to visit an Ikea before, but as I was out of ideas for new work procrastination techniques, I decided to lose my Dutch owned Swedish home furnishing virginity.
The place opened weekend before last, but parts of the exterior seem to still be under construction (ex: the area designated for taxi drop offs and pick ups. So, if you get something large/heavy and don’t have a car, I’d opt for delivery or be prepared to drag it all around the area looking for a taxi).
Inside everything appears to have gotten finished on time. The top floor has display rooms and already constructed furniture that you can sit on and test out. The display rooms are set up to look like already finished kitchens, bedrooms, offices, etc. Some of them were pretty sweet, but it just made me realize how crappy my apartment is (and really, it isn’t even that crappy compared to other Nanjing apartments). Especially the cherry wood kitchen with breakfast bar, automatic dishwasher, stainless steel refrigerator, matching built in oven and microwave, etc. If my kitchen looked like that I’d get a sleeping bag and never leave it.
Besides my dream Nanjing kitchen, there is also a restaurant on the top floor that serves Swedish meatballs, salmon, spaghetti and the like, but there seemed to be about 48% of Nanjing’s population fighting to the counter, and another 48% staking out tables (the remaining 4% of the population presumably had jobs and were working this fine Monday). So I made a quick mental note to come back for cafeteria style Swedish grub at a later date.
Downstairs is where it gets serious; this is set up more like a traditional store with all the goods that made up the showrooms upstairs. I particularly liked the kitchen accessories. If you own an oven, this is the best place to get ovenware I’ve found in Nanjing. Also decent sauté pans can be found here, nice and thick bottomed to distribute heat evenly; all the more important if cooking on a Chinese flamethrower, err gas range, where the only flame settings are “High” and “Ridiculously High”.
After jamming your cart full with the 1 or 2 items you needed and the 98 things you didn’t, you head to the checkout. No free bags here, but paper bags can be had for 1.5 RMB, and cloth ones for 4 RMB or so. Checkout is followed by Ikea Food and Ikea Bistro. Ikea Food is a pretty disappointingly small selection of Swedish food. Lots of candies, some salmon and a few other odds and ends. Got some coffee, but nothing else enticed me that much. Ikea Bistro is a sort of snack bar. They have Hot dogs (sausages, weiner schnitzel, disgusting collection of leftover animal byproducts, whatever you want to call them), assorted drinks and ice cream. Having skipped the Swedish meatballs, I went for a hot dog and a Pepsi, crazy affordable at 5 RMB total. 3 RMB for the Pepsi (with free refills, though no ice) and 2 RMB for the hot dog. The hot dog was pretty good, and didn’t have that sweet taste of Chinese “Taiwan Style” Hot Dogs. Didn’t try the ice cream but looked pretty good, and also affordable at 1 RMB.
I could go and tell you more of what they sell and some pricing, along with location etc. but Ikea has made something rarely seen in China retail and restaurants, they call it a “website” and on this “website” they put information about their store and what they sell, including *gasp* prices! Maybe one day someone will figure out how you can buy stuff on one of these “websites” and have it delivered to your home or office. That would be amazing, as long as they bring the hotdogs too.
http://www.ikea.com/cn/en/store/nanjing
Subway invades Nanjing!!!
Aug 7th
Well, not quite an invasion, but 2 stores to get started. For the uninitiated, Subway is an American chain of sandwich shops that has recently begun a more aggressive expansion in China (They’ve been in major cities awhile, but have more recently been increasing store counts in the those cities as well as adding a few stores to the smaller cities.)
Stores will open this weekend. Both are in Carrefours, one in the XinJiekou store and the other in Daqiao. Free delivery within 3KM, so start searching for a new apartment now.
Hope they have a foot long Spicy Italian ready for me! Now all Nanjing needs is decent Mexican food and we’re in business.
Columbus South American BBQ: 哥伦布南美烤肉
May 5th
I love Brazilian BBQ, how could you go wrong with all you can eat portions of any meat imaginable and a continuous flow of cold beer? Columbus South American BBQ was apparently up to the challenge of figuring out how to do just that. Taking a perfectly beautiful idea and making it go horribly, horribly wrong.
Columbus South American BBQ is located in XinJieKou on ZhongShan Nan Lu, just a bit South of HanZhong Lu on the 3rd floor of WenHua DaSha with the entrance at the North corner of the building. I was in the area and decided to give it a try for lunch one day. Upon entering you are asked if you want the BBQ or the Hot Pot. That should be the first indicator that something is amiss, as this was the first BBQ place I’ve seen that also offers Hot Pot. The second indication that this isn’t your everyday South American BBQ joint are the numerous pictures of someones Oktoberfest trip to Germany all over the place and the overall European flavor to the decoration. Though I did think having Christmas decorations up in early Summer was a nice touch. None the less, I was game to give it a try, I mean really how bad could it be?
Plenty bad actually. I first headed to the buffet where there were some cold dishes as well as some hot ones (ok, mildly warm would be more accurate). These all appeared to be traditional Chinese type dishes, no hint of South American influences here.
OK, all is not lost, I head over to the drink station, as no matter how bad the buffet is, I am here for the meat, and there is still the free flow of beer. So I grab a glass, the largest I can find, which looks as though it is either a child’s cup or an over sized shot glass, it’s also chipped with a crack running down the side, but whatever, this is China, just get me the brew. As I return to my table with my cracked shot glass of beer and plate of cold and not as cold random Chinese food. The servers start to bring around the large skewers of meat, the first to arrive is…. mini-hot dogs. Yea, that’s right hot dogs, not even fullsize ones, but miniature ones….. The taste is something like, well, any Chinese mini hot dog you’ve ever tasted, not good. So I take a swig of my beer… warm and flat, perfect…..
The rest of the meat continues along the same lines, dry as a bone rabbit, heart of some animal I can’t rember, just barely edible lamb.
To be fair there were 2 things I was able to eat. The chicken wings, while far from good were edible, though definitely not as good as those you get from street food vendors. As after asking the waiter to confirm my suspicions, the food at Columbus South American BBQ is not actually bar-b-qued, but instead cooked in an oven. So the wings, like any that are oven cooked, lack the texture of BBQ wings, they weren’t great, but I was able to stomach them, which was more than I can say for the rest.
The second dish that will not cause you to vomit was the tradional mainstay of Brazillian BBQ places, Picanha, or Beef Rump Cover. While baked and not really seasoned at all, this was still decent, I guess even these guys can’t ruin a decent cut of meat. Though it is hard to tell with the minute slivers they give you, but I guess how much beef can you expect for 30RMB (answer: not much).
To summarize, if you’re not very hungry and don’t want to drink beer, and have 30RMB or so burning a hole in your pocket, then head to Columbus South American BBQ for free flow of soft drinks until they kick you out. Otherwise I would steer clear of this place for as long as you live.
A look around some Chinese websites seems to confirm that they also do not like to eat this bile:
http://yingwang1020.blog.sohu.com/70441360.html
Little Lulu’s post on her experience there, and I’m not just posting this because I stole her picture
http://nanjing.koubei.com/huangye/detail-433370.html
Has an average user review of 1.5 Stars out of 5, and appears it should even be much lower as there are a few 5 star reviews from what I can only guess is the owner, or the person with the worst taste in the world (quite possibly they are one and the same).
Name:
Columbus South American BBQ
哥伦布南美烤肉
gē lún bù nán měi kǎo ròu
Address: 中山南路89号(文化大厦3楼,靠近羊皮巷)
zhōng shān nán lù 89 hào (wén huà dà shà 3 lóu, kào jìn yáng pí xiàng)
ZhongShan Nan Lu #89 (3rd Floor WenHua DaSha, Nearby YangPi Xiang)
Baidu Map: http://map.baidu.com/#word=%B8%E7%C2%D7%B2%BC&ct=40&bs=025_0&sid=MAPNYMCBHAHESNZNXIYMH&
Phone: 025-84699688