Life and Times in the Southern Capital
Archive for March, 2010
Google Search Finally Blocked in China
Mar 30th
At 5 pm today searches via google.cn (which currently redirects to google.hk) and google.com started to intermittently trigger connection resets after searches were attempted. Within a couple hours any & all searches would trigger a connection reset (i.e. you would get an error message page instead of the expected search results). It seems that occasionally I am able to still get a search result in different ways (via Firefox search tool bar, etc), but looks like a message is being sent loud and clear to Google HQ.
Forbes story: http://www.forbes.com/2010/03/30/china-blocks-google-tech-markets-firewall.html?boxes=Homepagechannels
Les 5 Sens & Cheap Metro Wine
Mar 29th
Been awhile and I’ve actually been to a few decent Western restaurants since I last posted about food in Nanjing. The first surprise was Les 5 Sens, a smallish French restaurant near NanDa off Shanghai lu. While I have heard mutterings that it has gone down hill, it wasn’t too bad the last time I was in, though it has been a bit since I’ve visited.
The dining room isn’t huge so if you have more than 4 people or so, I would definitely call ahead. Our party of 2 had no problem getting a table right away at ~8 on a weekday night. The prices are about average to below average overall for Western run places in Nanjing. The fillet is only ~65RMB or so, for a little extra you can choose a sauce, I opted for the bleu cheese. Steak was decently cooked and seasoned, the sides on the plate and the complimentary bread were nothing to write home about, and the wine was about average prices for Nanjing, which unfortunately translates to a bottle of sub par French table wine for 200RMB. But all in all a pleasant experience for Western food in Nanjing.
On a somewhat unrelated note, the selection of wine at Metro has taken a noticeable swing downwards in price, stocking more and more bottles under and around 100RMB. I recently picked up a bunch of bottles, including a 29RMB bottle of Spanish red table wine. I just had to see what a 29RMB bottle of imported wine would taste like. Not surprisingly the answer was, not very good, but still preferable to Dynasty or Great Wall. There are a bunch of decent options at the ~50RMB price point, much better than most other foreign wine shops around town. (For those unaware, Metro is a warehouse style wholesale grocery store. They sell large quantities of food, restaurant equipment, appliances, just about anything you can think of. They also have lots of imported & foreign type goods like BBQ grills, western holiday decorations, cheese, wine, liquor, etc. You are supposed to have membership, but you can usually just get a “day pass” at the entrance, or just ask the person in front\behind you in line to use their membership card.)
Les 5 Sens:
Hankou Lu Location:
鼓楼区汉口路52-1号(近南京大学)
More info: http://www.dianping.com/shop/2016484
Beijing Dong Lu Location:
鼓楼区北京东路兰家庄3号(近九华山路)
More info: http://www.dianping.com/shop/3367933
Metro （麦德龙）
近郊雨花台区卡子门大街98号
More info： http://www.metro.com.cn/metro/front.do?go=biztool_common_pg_StoreEditWeb&store_id=8103