Han Cang 9 ($$)

Han Cang Restaurant

This Restaurant serves traditional Hakka cuisine. Located along the water front of HouHai Lake this restaurant is the perfect place to rest in the shade and enjoy the view. This restaurant is most well known for their three cup sauce roasted duck, foil wrapped fish and salted shrimp. I have eaten here twice now and their food has been consistently delicious.

I highly recommend the fried pork ribs, the three cups sauce duck and the shrimp. Everything was very flavorful, and very mildly spiced. The beer here is served very cold and on a hot day by the lake it tastes so refreshing.

There was only one dish that I found disappointing, the soft shell turtle. I had never had turtle before and I was feeling adventurous, but I expected it to taste fresher, and less chewy. It actually had a taste similar to chicken heart and cartilage, but a little muddier. I am not familiar with how fresh turtle tastes, but I would guess that it had been frozen too long.

For taste, excluding the turtle I give this Hakka restaurant a 10.

I love the mellow, drinking beer by the river feeling of this restaurant. All the tables and chairs feel like they are at the right height with enough space for your legs between them (rare in China). And due to its location on the eastern side of the lake this restaurant stays cooler during the day. Atmosphere rates an 8.

The cost of two people eating here is a little under $$. And a great deal for the amount and quality of the food.

Overall I give Han Cang Restaurant a 9 out of 10. Eating here is very enjoyable. It is my favorite place for lunch on a hot day. After lunch there are plenty of shops and boutiques in the area to explore as well and the river front to walk along. If you are tired of walking its really easy to get a ricksaw and just enjoy the ride.

Xiao 9($$)

Xiao

This restaurant serves food from Guizhou province. Traditionally food from this area is very similar to Shichuan food, but is usually served in small bite size pieces. This restaurant is located in the popular Gulou area of Beijing surrounded by trendy clothing stores, guitar shops and bars. The restaurant has a most interesting interior architecture. The dinning floor is set on four levels; four tables on each level.

We ordered three dishes and it was more than enough food for two people. Ham and Chicken soup, Pork Spare Ribs and Mint Chicken Wings. Everything was very good, and definitely had a distinguishable flavor different than typical Chinese food.

I was most impressed with the Mint Chicken wings. They were marinated in a spicy sweet sauce and stir fried, fresh mint added last to keep the flavor. The mint gave the spicy chicken a cool almost basil flavor reminding me of some Indian dishes. The pork was breaded with a flour and pepper crust and then fried in little pieces. It was wonderfully spicy, crisp and a perfect balance to the sweeter cool taste of the chicken wings. This restaurant is most famous for their soup, particularly their sour fish soup. But we ordered ham, I thought is was refreshing and the broth was very good, but it wasn’t really all that unusual or special.

For taste I give Xiao a 10, it was an adventure in taste well worth the visit. In fact it may be my favorite restaurant experience so far in Beijing. Everything was hot and so good!

For atmosphere I give it a 7. Xiao has that little family owned restaurant feeling. The tiered dinning levels were definitely a home job and it’s a little weird that the kitchen is located below the floor but every thing was very clean. One major down side though is that there is not a bathroom on location, you have to walk a block to get to the nearest public toilet, not really a problem for locals but a little inconvenient for foreigners.

For price Xiao gets a $ and ½$ for two people; about $30 American dollars in total.

Overall I give Xiao a 9. I loved the flavor and variety that this restaurant has to offer. It was a treat to try something different. But I did not like having to run around the corner to go to the bathroom and the facility was terrible, which has no reflection on the restaurant other than the fact that they didn’t have one, but I would walk the extra block to go to the public bathroom with the doors on the stalls.

My Humble Home 7 ($$$$)

My Humble Home.

My Humble Home, is a very over priced restaurant in the Sky Ave. of the Oriental Plaza. It is known for its Chinese fusion cuisine and modern image. On this occasion Kris and I chose My Humble Home out of convenience, our apartment in Beijing it located directly above the restaurant.

MHH has an extensive menu and wine list. There are three set menus and also an al a carte menu. We ordered beef tri-tip salad, seafood soup cooked inside a coconut, fried rice, and Chinese pork belly. I was not able to take any pictures inside the restaurant because I got in trouble taking this picture of the salad.

The best part of the meal was the soup: a crab broth, with chunks of crab, lobster, clams, sea sponge and vegetables. It came out inside of a peeled coconut piping hot. It was delicious. The broth was very flavorful, and all the sea food was fresh and tender, it had just a hint of coconut flavor but nothing too milky.

The pork belly was very rich. Traditionally Chinese means very fatty to retain the most flavor. It was delicious but way too much for two people, the dish would have been better divided between six people. The fried rice was too oily and the oil and the wok was too hot when the rice was added. It had a distinctive burnt sesame seed oil taste. The only redeeming quality was that it had pine nuts in it.

For taste I give HMM a 7. It was ok, definitely was not worth the cost.

For service I have to give HMM a 4, for some reason it took forever to get the check and we had to ask more than a few times. It seems that more important people who were ordering more came in right when we wanted to leave and for some reason everyone just stopped and stared at the new dinner party.

Overall I give My Humble Home a 7 out of 10. In this instance the soup saved the day.

South Silk Road, Beijing 10 ($$)

What can I say about restaurants in China? The first thing everyone should know is that the restaurants you go to while on a tour are not very good. In fact they may be terrible. And the restaurants that are available if you go out on your own can be excellent. This should be obvious, but isn’t always because many times the restaurants that they take you to on tour are in fact famous, and can be pretty good. But you’re not Chinese and you don’t speak the language so they make you the dishes that Americans usually expect from their limited experience from home and they give you the poorest quality because you won’t notice the difference. There are no greater critics than the Chinese when it comes to food. Restaurants want to please the locals first, who have a much greater chance of becoming loyal customers.

The first restaurant of not is South Silk Road located in Houhai. All the food cooked here is from the Yunnan region or is influenced by the spices of this region. The Yunnan region is in the south of china located along the ocean and largely tropical. Food from this region tends to be very spicy and uses many more herbs not found in other Chinese dishes.

This being our third anniversary Kris and I went all out on dinner and ordered Rice cooked inside a bamboo pole, a roast quail, fried rice cake with roasted sesame seed butter and honey, and a banana wrapped tilapia.

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To say the least, all the food was amazing! This lighting in the restaurant was very poor but even in my badly taken photos of the evening you can see the color and the spice incorporated into everything. The Tilapia was a little spicy and we ended up pushing most of the herbs and pepper to the side, but its juices were so good. It was so moist and had such a cool burn to the spice. The rice cake was such a treat, the interpretation in the menu was very bad so we took and chance when we ordered it. The rice cake was warm and crunchy on the outside and so soft and sweet inside, then you get to the sesame seed butter filling and it just pops with warmth in your mouth. It doesn’t really need the honey that it comes with but even the honey has a floral taste to it. The quail was very gamy and tough, the toughness did not allow the flavor to penetrate very far into the meat so I was rather disappointed in the quail. But it was likely caught wild and I do support free range. The last little fun treat was the bamboo rice. Kris did not like this dish very much due to the very nutty flavor. It almost had a cashew and snap peas flavor to it. It was mixed with some kind of nut or bean and some green onion. This mixture is dry when it is poured into the bamboo pole and then capped with water. To cook it the whole thing is put directly into the fire. When the green bamboo slips the rice is cooked and ready.

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Over all I give South Silk Road a 10

Price $$ for two people

For taste 10

For atmosphere 10

For service a 9. Service in china is very different than in America, bordering on servitude rather than service. In China you do not leave a tip, good service is simply part of the job if you want to keep your job. In a city of 13 million the competition for jobs is huge; and every establishment can hire huge amounts of employees because they can pay their works so little; this mean there is often one employee for every customer sometimes two or three and they all wait upon you hand and foot. This often feels uncomfortable it you are not used to someone hovering over you wail you decide what to order, but you never have to wait for the check or hail someone for a refill. There is always someone there waiting to help you before you ask. In comparison to many places that I have eaten Silk Road surpasses any American restaurants but did not do as well compared to restaurants here.

Oriental Buffet 7 ($$)

Oriental Buffet

There is certainly a time and a place for buffets. For instance, Las Vegas would not be as beloved a vacation destination without its all you can eat buffets. In this instance my husband and I ventured to this restaurant on the recommendation of an acquaintance. This acquaintance of mine is the wife of the local Chinese Restaurant Produce and Meats Supplier. I periodically ask her if there are any new places worth visiting in the area; on one occasion she recommended Oriental Buffet because “they always buy the best”.

The Oriental Buffet, does in fact boast a broad menu, some dim sum, hot and cold rice and noodle dishes, many of the common meat dishes like sweet and sour pork, general chicken, broccoli beef ect. But it also has a sushi bar, and a Mongolian barbeque bar.
The food was as I expected, the more usual fare as far as quality of the cooking, but there were a few more exotic numbers as well.
For instance fried frog legs, thousand year old eggs, and langoustine, which is basically a large shrimp with claws.

Overall I give The Oriental Buffet a 7 out of 10, it neither exceeded my expectations nor did it disappoint me in any way. It was just as I expected.

For taste I give this buffet a 5 for the same reasons as stated above. In general I don’t really believe buffets can ever exceed a rating above a 7 in any category. I mean lets be honest, it’s a buffet, so we are eating there because its a lot of food for a relatively cheap price.

Which does bring me to price. For cost Oriental Buffet receives a $$ for two people. I believe that is very competitive for the buffet market.

Also of note:

this buffet has a very nice banquet room for parties, and large family gatherings, I did not inquire to how many people it would accommodate but I should think a party of 20 or so would be comfortable in there.

They do take out, probably not as good a deal as the all you can eat, call for prices.
located on Broadway, Sacramento