Photo Friday #30
Yi River Panorama from Ruins Pub
Where else to be on a warm, sunny and low pollution day in Linyi, China? I can’t think of a better place. This is the rooftop patio of Ruins Pub, a relaxed café/bar on the west bank of the Yi river. The DH and I like to sit up here and admire the views. Spring is the best time to enjoy the patio, before the heat, humidity and pesky flying bugs (gnats and mosquitoes) take over the place.
Details: To get to Ruins Pub and its sister café/bar, Water’s Edge, head east down Jie Fang Lu towards the river. Just before the bridge, hang a left onto Bin He Lu and you will see them almost immediately on your left. Ruins Pub has coffee, tea drinks and, sometimes, cold beer. If the beer is not cold when you arrive, ask them to stick it in the freezer. They’re used to laowai asking for cold beer. They also offer snacks and free wi-fi.
The entrance is very green
Friendly police officer in front of Ruins Pub
I previously wrote about Water’s Edge here. This post is part of Photo Friday, featuring travel photos. For more, visit Delicious Baby.
小龙虾 Xiao Long Xia / crayfish / crawfish / crawdads / mudbugs
No matter what you call them, these little prehistoric crustaceans have made their annual appearance at the sidewalk restaurants of China and the DH and I could not be happier. Not everyone loves crawfish – they’re messy, hard to peel and the payoff is small. I’ve spent just under half of my life in South Texas, however, just close enough to Louisiana to appreciate the joy of crawfish season. The words “crawfish boil” and “crawfish etouffee” literally make me drool.
Here in Linyi, crawfish are found in restaurants of all caliber, but we especially like to eat them at so-called sidewalk restaurants. The crawfish are boiled in a rich tomato and chili based broth loaded with Sichuan peppercorns, an unusual spice that numbs your tongue and lips if you bite into it. After eating just a few, your mouth will be on fire. Thank goodness for the cold beer. The DH and I have a nice arrangement for eating crawfish – he gets all the heads and I get my tails plus about half of his.
Last night we ate at one of our favorite sidewalk barbecue restaurants. Most of these restaurants function year round with a large indoor dining room and a barbecue pit outside for cooking kebabs. In the spring and summer, the action moves outside. Short wooden tables fill the parking lot/sidewalk and by 6PM they are full of hungry customers, drinking cold draft beer, eating various kinds of kebabs and enjoying hot pot. Linyi has a hot and humid summer and in the early evenings the best place to be is at one of these outdoor places, enjoying the cooler evening air.
Tables waiting for customers
Hot Pot with tripe – I’ll later add mushrooms and cabbage
Every table is full as the evening progresses
The “Pit Masters” – they barbecue it all here: chicken wings, sparrow wings, lamb, beef, tendon, fish, steamed bread…
Happy Customers
This post is part of WanderFood Wednesday, a weekly blogging event featuring food from around the world. See more food posts and learn more at host Wanderlust and Lipstick’s WanderFood page.
Huasheng Jiang Quan Hotel
After four and a half years in China’s hinterland, surrounded by factories and cornfields, it is still shocking to come across what are for me apparent mismatches, like the surprising numbers of Porsche Cayenne SUVs and high-end BMWs rolling down the street next to pony carts. One forgets that those very factories in these small cities like Linyi are producing new millionaires left and right and flashy cars are but one side effect of the new materialism. Last Friday the DH and I experienced another apparent mismatch: an enormous, marble covered five-star hotel twenty minutes out of Linyi, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, but in fact in the middle of a newly built district.
While enjoying some refreshing beverages on the roof of Ruins Pub, Linyi’s best waterfront spot, a friend suggested we try out a new Italian restaurant for dinner. My ears perked right up. A new Italian place? Linyi’s best western food is served at McDonald’s, so I was a little bewildered. When did a new Italian place open up? And better yet, how did I not know about it? I consider myself to be a connoisseur of Linyi cuisine, but I was clearly out of the loop on this place. The new Italian place is inside of a new five-star hotel and since I’d never even heard of the hotel, I knew my days as Linyi expert were over.
We piled into a taxi and drove and drove and drove… Most everything in Linyi is within a five minute drive, but when we kept going right on out into the outer districts, I was confused. Then I saw it. A 35-story beacon of light surrounded by faux Roman gods perched on white columns. Did I mention that the new millionaires love things just a wee bit gaudy?
Huasheng Jiang Quan Hotel & Town, (yes, that’s right “& Town”), has an identity problem. It stands tall in rural Shandong Province when it should really be in Macau. How else do you explain wall-to-wall marble? The grand staircases? The Chihuly inspired chandelier? Strangest of all, it seems to have been properly constructed with everything holding together. It is overwhelming.
Hotel Lobby
We found the Italian restaurant on the second floor, at the end of a long hallway. While the lobby was bright and open and marble, the hallway was calm salmon with soft and bouncy carpets. I was seriously tempted to perform a snazzy gymnastic floor exercise on one of these babies:
Bouncy carpets on second floor
The Italian restaurant was full of surprises, too. We had close to zero expectations, something you can’t help but develop when you’ve been repeatedly served “spaghetti” that tastes of watery tomatoes and sugar. These low expectations were exceeded in every possible way. First, the staff spoke to us in perfect English, and filled our water glasses with cold water almost as soon as we’d sat down. Then, a chef appeared at our table to share the specials with us. He spoke in American English without any trace of an accent. I wanted to jump up and hug him right then because I knew the food was going to be good. I ordered minestrone soup and spaghetti carbonara. The DH went for a set menu with lobster salad, pumpkin soup, veal cutlets and chocolate mousse dessert. Our friends ordered lamb chops and penne pesto.
It wasn’t until the waiter set the bread basket on the table that the debauchery began. Bread, glorious bread. Small, warm sourdough breads, studded with herbs and melt-in-your-mouth wonderful. I ate so many of them I could feel a carb coma coming on. Then the garlic bread appeared. Good Lord. You have no idea how bread-deprived we are here in Linyi. I wanted to cry.
Bread Goodness
Unbelievably Good Garlic Bread
These pictures are far from great and they do absolutely no justice to the bread, but since I could barely stop stuffing my mouth to take a picture… I should admit here that the bread might not have been nearly as good as I am making it out to be. But when you never get good bread, well, you’ll swoon over anything remotely tasty.
Now I should probably also admit at this point that in addition to bread-lovin’, the tsingtaos were freely flowing. Freely flowing to the count of 21 bottles. Yup. We were on a serious bread and beer high. With all that beer on board, I needed to make a trip to the ladies’, something that is often fraught with trepidation when in a Chinese restaurant. What I discovered, however, was a place I’d gladly move into. That bathroom was a zillion times more beautiful (and cleaner!) than my own home. Seriously.
My minestrone soup and spaghetti were perfect. The DH’s food was also delicious and he was kind enough to share it all with me and our friends. The whole dinner was so unexpected. I’m still kind of in awe. We had impeccable service, good food, efficient payment process and not too expensive either… things you can’t take for granted here. All of this in a completely over the top locale. Just another one of those surreal, Fellini-esque moments we experience from time to time in China.
KFC Mexican Wrap
Happy Cinco de Mayo! You know that holiday, right? Yes, the one celebrated by all the Texans, strangely, and barely noticed by the Mexicans.
I celebrated by dragging the DH to KFC to eat a Mexican wrap sandwich, the only thing on the KFC menu I will eat (other than their mashed potato side.) The Mexican wrap is composed of a tortilla (where have you been all my life!?), lettuce, tomato and three spicy, boneless chicken pieces. Oh and a squirt of taco sauce. How sad is it that the most authentic Mexican food in Linyi is at KFC? They also offer a Peking Duck wrap that is horrifically sweet.
This is only the second time in the last year that I’ve eaten at KFC. Quite honestly, I don’t think I’ll be back. I have no problem at all with McDonald’s, especially for their sundaes and coffee, but KFC feels uncomfortable somehow… Anyway, hope you have a happy Cinco de Mayo, whatever the holiday might mean to you.
And to my SIL – Happy, Happy Birthday!
The DH and R enjoy beer from a duck
The DH tells me I posted my “BIG” news banner a little early. I guess I did. We’ve still got BIG news coming, but I can’t spill the beans publicly, yet. I’ll give you a hint, though. Whatever it is, it will require boxes. And I’m really happy about it. Can you sense that yet? 
It’s Monday but today we are celebrating Labor Day, so no work. Americans celebrate their Labor Day in September, to distinguish it from the “People’s” Labor Day, I presume. Last week our company told us to stay home on Wednesday and Thursday, so we’ve actually had quite a few Labor Days recently. Not that I am complaining. The only downside to being at home is our Internet connection. It is so unbelievably slow that I actually want to throw things. Not my laptop, but you know, things. With my VPN connection active, I’ve been attempting to load one page for over an hour. Over an hour! And this is the norm. I’ve given up and will wait to read the page until I can go to work tomorrow. Without the VPN things move slowly, but at least they move. Unfortunately, everything I want to look at requires the VPN. Damn you Great Fire Wall.
In other news, the DH and I are well on our way to becoming lambtarians. Now that the thermometer has skipped straight over Spring into Summer, the weather is perfect for sitting on the sidewalk patios in front of restaurants for lamb kebabs. At one restaurant, we discovered the meat was particularly fresh. The baaa-baaa of terrified lambs in the alley beside the place only gave us the slightest pause. Fresh is good, after all. Until you see the pictures. Then it is just horrible. Moving on…
Baa-Baa Don't Eat Us!
Sidewalk patios also mean cold beer, which is a very difficult substance to find in Linyi normally. Cold drinks = the devil in local culture, so beer is often consumed lukewarm. Gag! Can you imagine how awful a cheap, light beer is warm? It’s barely drinkable ice cold. Luckily, for some awesome reason, sidewalk patio restaurants serve their beer cold. Sometimes the beer comes from small kegs, sometimes from small thermos. The restaurant we ate at on Saturday was selling beer from duck thermos. Slightly strange, but hey, the beer was cold.
This afternoon we are going to go out for coffee and then for dinner with some friends. Maybe Korean barbecue? Maaaaaybe more laaaamb? Would that be too much?
Have a great week!
Image by Juergen Kurlvink
Sometime early this morning, Spring arrived. Finally, the air is warm, the trees are blossoming, the birds are chirping. Welcome Spring! Where have you been?
With the arrival of warmer weather over the last few weeks, we started to experience the great household temperature inversion – that period of time when the Chinese apartment suddenly feels like a meat locker in comparison with the outside temperatures (damn those thick concrete walls.) This leads to serious dressing blunders on early Spring mornings. I often find myself bundled up in a sweater, jacket and scarf only to find it is sunny and warm outside. Which is, of course, what happened this morning.
As we walked through our apartment complex to a waiting gypsy cab, the DH and I saw the definitive sign of the change of seasons – a few light cotton balls floating through the air. Not real cotton balls, but puffs of tree fluff, as this Global Times article calls them. The fluff comes from willow and poplar trees and will soon coat the ground. The tree fluff is only getting started, so I didn’t bother to take pictures. Next week, the sidewalks and gutters will be full of the fluff. It will look like snow. Thank god I don’t have allergies or asthma.
Another thing we noticed on our walk – our apartment courtyard is ground zero for toddlers and grandmas on a sunny 10AM weekday morning. I feel a little bit bad that one toddler, who was apparently taking his first steps, fell flat on his face when he spotted us laowai.
You may have noticed my BIG announcement banner (above). I’m very excited about the BIG news. I will be sharing that news when everything is official, signed and stamped, hopefully later this week. The BIG news is all I’ve been thinking about this past week, really, so I don’t have too much more to share.
So I lied, I have been thinking about another wee thing, this here blog. I’ve been tweaking a new theme so you will see some changes here. And one thing I can’t quite figure out is an addition I am trying to make to the sidebar. So PLEASE ignore that strange orangish box to the left. It’s just there as an experiment and should be either going away or looking better soon.
That’s it for me – thinking about my future an fiddling with the blog. (Don’t expect too much real posting here this week, I’m just too experimental.) Exciting times. Have a great week!
