Restaurants of Xi'an

I'm going to begin with the Western style restaurants and then move onto the hole in the wall restaurants and then push on into the all you can eat for 10,000kwai restaurants.

The Anna Hotel is situated just outside the South Gate. It has an all you can eat Western style buffet which includes steaks cooked to your preference. It costs 70RMB and if you take a few clean snap-lock bags with you it's well worth the money in rye bread,cheese, olives and smoked salmon. A free (alcholic) drink is available with the meal.

However the rugrats run rampant and a foreigner here is as much a novelty on the menu as roast duck's dick so you will not be able to enjoy your meal in peace. If you speak some Pu tonghua, the fuwuyuans will disolve into a puddle on the floor and you will have to shout in Shaanxi hua to get your coffee.

The Shangri la has expanded their network to include their jewel in the crown in the New High Tech zone in the South West and is about a three-quarters of an hours drive from the city during peak hour. The older Shangri la is situated in the East about a twenty minute taxi drive from the city. Both Hotels have an excellent smorgasboard for the seventy kwai mark and the lack of children running through the dining area threatening to impale themselves on their handheld chopsticks while screeching 'Laowei!!" at the top of their lungs is a blessing if you prefer to mix with the living-on-credit gentlemen who have a mandatory mistress, a divorce in the proceedings and a future possible job opening as a mistress in the very near future. Again. One can enjoy the breads and cheeses at one's discretion and they make an excellent creme caramel. Unfortunately, their largesse does not include clotted cream.

Great idea Aj. Xi'an is supposed to be the epitome of good food in China and has some fabulous restaurants - from the fanciest western/Chinese to the scruffiest looking hole-in-the-walls. I have western mates who come back to Xi'an and refuse to eat western while they are here,  because the Chinese food here is better than Shanghai or Beijing!

The 'old' Shangrila has a weekend brunch buffet for 160Y (148Y if you have a VIP card ) which features a HUGE range of yummy foods - including steak cooked to your specifications, sushi and unlimited free real champagne. I haven't tried the new Shangrila yet - but plan to in the next week or so. Japanese mate says they have good sushi.

The Tan (Wei Er Jie - near the Big Goose Pagoda)is good (I have translated the menu into English for them, so you can ask for the English version!!) and every evening has traditional (and not so traditional) Tan dancing, singing and music.  Check out the yak meat skewers and the whole leg of mutton.

The Ana Hotel is the Japanese one that has branches all over the world. There are several Japanese restaurants that make even my Japanese friends happy (Cnr Er Huan Lu and Chang'an Lu - opposite the Shaanxi Library)- pretty authentic.  Same with the Korean (Chang'an Lu in the library square.  The Portuguese (Keji Lu)has good curries, and yummy African chicken - and will do take aways. 

The Thai restaurant (one of the Banana Leaf chain) has an Indian chef who makes fantastic green curry and prawn dishes to die for - WuXing (5 Star) Lu, inside the city wall. A Philippino dance troupe works there each night and they are a ball to play with! (They come to my parties as well!) Two Indian restaurants also in Wei Er Jie - the paneer in the Delhi is really good, CaCaJa (part of a chain - another one in Chengdu)is also owned by the High-Fly Pizza company!  Very nice samosas and if you make friends with the boss, they will deliver for parties and join in! Sadly the Nepalese has closed down.

Lao Sun Jia in the Electronics Market Square (Taibai Nan Lu) does GOOD Yang Rou Pao Mo - but the best YRPM is in the Muslim Quarter - few steps up from a hole-in-the-wall, but very traditional - closes at 2:00pm. The Xinjiang Restaurant in the same Square does really good Xinjiang dishes and has good Xinjiang tea, plus at night has a traditional dancer.

The Dancing Satyr (opposite the South gate in the new black HSBC building is a good Italian restaurant - very good pizzas, lasagne's and wonderful homemade ice-cream and pesto.

Manchurian food can be had at the Da Qing Hua near the end of bar Street - every taxi driver knows it.  There is also another one next door to the Sheraton I think. 

Best kao rou and spicy naan bread is in Guang Hua Lu, especially now that the night markets at Ming de men are gone ().  The night markets outside 1+1 are good for 'Xi'an burgers" - jia mo at 3-4:00am.

The Small World Cafe near Heping Men (outside the wall) has good cakes (chocolate, coffee etc) and European stuff.

But this is all just the beginning!

I think this thread should go in the 'location specific' space - not much use otherwise to anyone who doesn't live here. But useful if you are visiting or planning on working here.

Good call. And a good thread idea. I've moved it as you read this.

Continuing on with the Western-style restaurants of Xi'an.

The Xi'an Bing guan

Located outside the South Gate on Chang'an lu, this hotel is popular with tour groups. The Western restaurant serves a wide range of meals. A three course meal will set you back about 300RMB for two.  The hotel is not as flash as the Shangri la or the Sheraton but the chefs are Western trained to make the busloads of tourists happy. Unfortunatley the wine list consists mostly of Great Wall wines and unless you know your Great Walls you're better off sticking to beer. Especially as they sell for about three times it costs at the neighbourhood store.

The Howard Johnson Ginwa Plaza Hotel

A five minute walk from the South Gate the Western-style restaurant has a buffet around the  70RMB mark. The day I went, the smoked salmon was a little tired but they cook a great steak. The vegetables are cooked Chinese style but it's possible to get a salad that doesn't consist of apples and mayo. They also have an international wine list. The breakfast menu here is superb if you like a decent plate of eggs, bacon, sausages and tomatoes followed by toast and marmalade and a well made coffee topped up as many times as you like.

The Sheraton Xi'an Hotel (Xi lai deng da jiu dian)
The Western buffet here is exactely the same as the Howard Johnson. The only difference is the price. The 5 stars are worth an additional 70-80 RMB.

Western fast food in Xi'an is still underepresented. We have a Pizza Hut at Xiao zhai which the Chinese treat as a faily upmarket restaurant. A pizza can cost 60kwai or more and they're NOT that good. Not by a long shot.

McDonalds isn't all that popular here. There's two in the city and another at Xiao zhai.

KFC on the other hand is everywhere. It's hard to not be in walking distance from the colonel. There's three at Xiao zhai alone; three in the city centre, another a bit further along Da bei jie and at least one in all the various zones.

The Chinese have replicated or rather attempted to replcate KFC with two dranchised chains, Discos and Best Food. The former is so bad that even the Chinese don't like it while Best Food gets my junk food cash every time.

There is another Pizza Hut situated beside the Gaoxing Ginwa and they do take aways, but not deliveries.

Dicos has done one thing OK though - the toilets are cleaned almost as often as Maccas and KFC (and isn't that the only reason we go to either of those places??).

There is a publication out that is really useful for those wanting to come to Xi'an - China Grooves.  Gives all sorts of info about what, where, when how etc. (Including teh newest and fanciest restaurants!

And the October edition features my favourite bar!

The Magazine is a first for Xi'an. A friend showed me a copy during the week but I haven't picked up a copy, yet. October's publication was the first edition and the editor's are unsure if it will run to a second. Their profits come through advertising which I suspect might bias the reviews. But my friend who owns a restaurant here with a Chinese partner is going to find out more.

I've been asked to write for publication.  Don't know how it will go - but it is certainly interesting to read all sorts of places that even as a 'native' I didn't know!

This week many of the hole in the wall restaurants suddenly disappeared. Those that remained opened, including chain restaurants and indeed supermarkets displayed a frenzy of cleaning that brought an unnatural sparkle to the windows and counter tops.
Local fruit vendors disappeared in the mist and the stalls and shops renting space inside the big supermarkets, dismantled.

This unusual activity spread into the schools where rubbish bins and dump sites were emptied and washed and beautified with pots of blooming dhalias. Has a new form of civic pride swept through the city? No. The Beijing Inspectors are in town.

Chinese cuisine in the Xi’an region shares hundreds of similar dishes with other provinces. However, they vary from street to street, region to region and village to village, and even from kitchen to kitchen. Even our own Xi’an specialities.

In the hole in the wall restaurants, the most Xi’an-specific offering is rou jia mo, warm, flat bread filled with an unbelievably tasty filling of tender shredded pork, spiced with la jiao. These earthy, robust snacks are known locally as Shaanxi hamburgers.

My wickedly favourite local hamburger is made with the bread fried until golden and slightly crispy rather than warmed with chopped sunflower seeds added to the meat. If you get an adrenalin rush from hot and spicy you might prefer chopped fresh green chilies but be warned: the heat generated by these nuclear works of nature would have a Martian running from radioactive exposure.

Our other local delicacy is a bowl of Mutton broth known as Yang rou po mo. A greatly over rated dish which consists of a few slivers of fatty mutton floating in bread soaked broth. However the pickled garlic cloves are a redeeming side dish and the Mutton broth can be doused with vinegar and la jiao to disperse the fatty after taste.

Be careful if you are travelling to Xi’an as a tourist. You’ll be led by your bleeding wallet into the Muslim quarters where you’ll be expected to crumble the bread into your broth as though you truly enjoy preparing your own supper. And paying three to four times the cost we locals pay in the local restaurants. It's an interesting treatment – one some laoban dreamed up to both entertain and extract maximum yuan from the tourists. Whenever you visit Muslim restaurants in the Muslim quarters insist on the Chinese menu to check the prices.

Street food in Xi'an is some of the best around.  The night markets are great places to eat and hang out, watching the world go by with a beer in hand, and some will have local singers etc performing for fun.  Open all hours of the night - and either situated in a  special open space - big empty parking lots etc, or on street corners to cater for the 4:00am disco revellers. 

Other street food that has me drooling - the roasted sweet potatos, chestnuts, the 'tang hulu" - especially the toffee coated hawthorne stuffed with walnuts.  All cheap as. Winter creeping up brings out all the sweet sellers - I saw huge chunks of honeycomb the day before yesterday.

Yang rou pao mo I actually love - especially in winter.  I have 4 favourite places for it: a hole-in-the-wall just opposite the uni and the laoban knows how I want my serving as soon as I walk in. The 2nd and 3rd ones are in the Electronics Square and the final one in the Muslim Quarter, but away from the main tourist drag.  This one is very traditional - closes at 2:00pm because yang rou pao mo is actually a breakfast/lunch food and not meant to be eaten after that. There are several ways you can order it - vary the number of mo (1 is enough for me), order it dry or wet (I like dry) and then you also have the choice of special or normal.  Special has extra ingredients.  I love the pickled garlic and some places have better garlic than others.  There is also a traditional way to eat it - eating from a circle around the edge of the bowl is considered to be the polite way to eat.  Doesn't have to be yang rou - can also be niu rou, and they bring the bowls of noodle 'soup' out when you are nearly finished.  None of these places charge more than 6-10Y, so it's also cheap food.

The Muslim Quarter has the best dried fruit - great variety and not too expensive.  The dried whole baby tomatoes are addictive. Street food there has a great variety of sweet stuff - all different types of dessert type foods, from sticky rice to huge slabs of 'cake' with dates and other stuff through it that are good to eat chilled.

And the kao rou (BBQ) all over Xi'an is some of the best in China. The naan bread to eat with it is covered with Xinjiang spices.

I tell the fuwuyuan I am local and I don't get charged tourist prices (speaking enough Chinese with a Shaanxi accent helps with that! ) and I also wander into the 'back streets' of the Muslim Quarter for the real stuff.  No tourists there, normal daily life (apart from Wednesdays and Sundays when they have a market - ostensibly a pet market but everything is there) and normal prices.  Old people sitting out in the sun, little ones playing in the street, a mosque in each road, some with schools attached, girls dressed in the height of fashion hanging around on the street corners waiting for the fellas.
 

I forgot another version of pao mo until I had it again today. Can also be found in the Dianzi Shichang (Electronics Market square)

Huluo tou - is seafood based and has a slightly different bread - more like bing than mo, and you usually order pickled cabbage with it rather than the garlic.  Also very nice!

Found an EXCELLENT Japanese restaurant today close to Jiaoda, on Jin Hua Nan Lu.  Located on the 5th floor of the Horizon Hotel it has gorgeous traditional Japanese decor, including tatami areas. 

For me the test of a good Japanese restaurant is the tempura - and this one had really crisp light tempura. Good place to go.

The lower floors have Chinese restaurants, that I was told were good, but ahven't yet tested.