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We woke up in the hotel and immediately started looking for a hotel with a good concierge. Laura found a place that was very inexpensive, close to the Forbidden Temple, and had good reviews. We booked through Agoda, which is a booking site, but without an email we never got a confirmation email, we left the website open and hoped for the best.
The place was very easy to find, and the staff were immediately very friendly, and spoke pretty good english.
But they couldnt find our confirmation, and while we tried to see which name we used (sometimes we forget Lauras last name has changed recently), we lost the confirmation number. the staff worked with us, to call their corporate management, helped us call the agoda people, but no luck.
Finally we just asked to book right there at reception. they gave us the same rate we found online, which was actually less than what we were paying for the hostel. we also immediately booked a guided tour through the Forbidden Palace, Summer Palace and Temple of Heaven.
We then wandered off for lunch, Laura found a meat pie place that had good reviews, and was very near by.
Reading the menu, we intended to orderthe duck meat pie, the pork meat pie, a plate of crushed garlic and chili cucumbers, and laura wanted the ot and sour soup.
the waiter told us the meat pies are very big, and only get two if we were very hungry. we decided on just the duck, with the pork in reserve.
the cucumber plate was delicious, i think they were pickled very lightly and then tossed with chili oil and minced garlic. It was a great starter, and a great compliment to the soon to arrive meat pie.
meat “pie” isnt accurate, the meat is ground with spices, in this case duck, and the most pronounced flavor was fennel, and the dough part was kinda like a scallion pancake. it was so very tasty, a little difficult to eat with chopsticks, but that just forced me to eat bigger parts. all this food, plus a liter of beer, came out to 12USD.
On the way home we got a little turned around and ent up in the couryard of the Forbidden City, and tried to get out the front. But the front is not an exit, so we had to walk back around to get out. At this point the drizzle picked up (did i mention it was very hazy and drizzling?), and i was getting cold (it was about 40F).
I should have gotten a jacket when laura did in Japan.
When we got back to the new hotel, we found another Uniqlo, and got me a ultra-light down vest thing to wear under my jacket. its basically wearing a woobie, and it is fucking great.
We then wandered around this shopping area to include the stereotypical asian maket. the narrow walkways with people selling cheap crap to tourists, food stalls selling all manner of food, and some things people wouldnt count as food.
this street, I think it was Wangfujin had a pervasive smell of steam pot food, and fryer grease, with the smell changing slightly based on what stall you were walking by; the pork steam buns or the squid-on-a-stick-fryer. here we also saw some of the more esoteric things for sale, whole starfishes, still wriggling scorpions, unidentifiable mammalian viscera. I didnt see many if any locals that werent working there, so i think that weird food stuff is just that; wierd food stuff to wow visitors.
after wandering around, we made our way back to the hotel to research dinner.
we warmed up and identified a very well reviewed restaurant, we ventured out again. actually, it was in the very mall we wrongly stepped into looking for the Uniqlo. The restaurant was on the top floor of the mall, and it took up easily ⅓ of the square footage up there. the place was unbelievably large. They had at least a hundred 4 person tables, and the kitchen to support it. the menu had over 100 items on it. You went through the big menu with pictures, and checked the box on the little paper the staff took. unfortunately the little paper was only in mandarin, so we had to recognize shapes and costs to ensure we were ordering the right thing.
we got soooo much food.
unfortunately the serve it to you as it comes out of the kitchen,
The first thing we got was roasted eggplant with barbecue bread crumbs on top, it was great, and a really good appetizer. Then a plate of mapau tofu appeared, it was good, but nothing to write home about (despite my actually writing home about it here).
Next was our dessert, we got a mango pudding that laura heard was good, and a peanut icecream. holy shit the peanut ice cream was great, the mango pudding was ok, not really my thing, but laura liked it, but that peanut icecream was everything that is great about Reeses “peanut butter” but without the “ “. meaning it was sweet and salty enough to bring out the sweet, but didnt taste like a series of chemicals designed to taste like the best peanut butter ever, it jut WAS the best peanut butter ever...in ice cream form.
but yeah, the desserts showed up relatively early in the meal, and melted a little bit as we ate the rest of the things i am going to list.
then was the ground pork in chili sauce on a bed of sauteed spinach, all tossed into a boat of fermented rice wine. this was ok, the fermented rice wine wsa the big flavor here.
Next was some fantastic chili and green bean stir fry. but it was not oily, like it was tossed very attentively in a dry wok. this was my favorite part of the meal. the chili had a low slow heat, but plenty of flavor, with the minced garlic it quickly rose to the top of my list of favorite vegetable dishes ever.
A dish of chow mein came out next. again not the best food ever, but there was alot of it, and it was noodles, pretty much cant go wrong there.
and the final dish that came out was a baarbecue pork dish that niether of us really liked, it was a little too smokey, and by the timeit came out we were pretty full.
To drink we got a pitcher of peach-pomegranate juice
As we were looking at the menu, particularly the prices and estimating how much food we would get. we were very wrong. each of these plates could have been a main for a single person.
so we ate alot of food, and it came out to all of $35.
Welcome to the Peoples Republic of China.
After this gastronomic adventure, we came home and rubbed our bellies until we fell asleep.
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