Life and Times in the Southern Capital
Archive for September, 2008
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