Backlog I: eating
星期四, 二月 02, 2006
Pizza Hut, an immensely popular dining institution in Beijing.
This post is the first of a series which I'm calling "Backlogs" because they refer to incidents which were never written about, due to a mixture of exams and illness, seasoned with a good dose of laziness.
But now that I'm home with all this lovely free empty time, I can finally recall things that happened between the Christmas and now.
This first refers to one of my, and Chris's for that matter, favourite pastimes: eating. Now if I could only eat one cuisine for the rest of my life, Chinese food would be it. But by the end of the semester, all of us were 馕-ed, 担担面-ed, and 肉串-ed out and craved non-Chinese food, specifically "American food" (I use this term loosely in the culinary sense).
So we finally caved in and resorted to trying out a couple of American chain restaurants in Beijing. Hey, to our credit, we didn't go to KFC.
The crowd waiting to be seated at Pizza Hut. Note the santa claus hat on the staff.
1) Pizza Hut. Did you know Pizza Hut is an It place to eat for Beijing's middle-class, complete with really nice, spiffy decor? Every Pizza Hut I've seen is packed with people - especially on weekends and holidays. We went to one Hut in Wudaokou on Christmas Day; there were so many people the staff would take roll every 10 minutes or so to see who had abandoned the wait and who remained in line. We switched gears to takeout after waiting 20 minutes with still no chance of being seated soon... at which point we did our good deed of the day and gave our seating ticket to a couple who just entered the restaurant.
2) McDonalds. I have a secret: I really enjoy visiting McDonalds in other countries. Not for the burgers but to see the regional variations of the American menu. And the Beijing McDonald's did not disappoint. You can get hot taro pie in addition to apple pie! While the chocolate fudge sundae is sadly absent (strawberry remains available) you can substitute a pineapple sundae or red bean sundae instead. French fries taste as good as they do back home. Small sizes are actually small and the concept of super-sizing doesn't exist.
Chris, meet Bloomin' Onion. Bloomin' Onion, meet Chris.
3) Outback. Ahhh globalization. It's the reason why we could consume steak and Wallaby Darneds in the middle of China. Between the wood panelling decor and the country music playing in the background, we could nearly imagine we were back in the USA. Except for the Chinese waitstaff. And the view out the window of a neon sign advertising "foot massages". I bet Chris didn't think he'd eat his very first Bloomin' Onion in Beijing.
Also off the top of my head, here's a list of random foods I missed while in Beijing (they were either, unavailable, very hard to find, and/or relatively expensive): chocolate pudding, bagels, cream cheese, donuts, tim hortons coffee, Mexican food, Pepperidge Farm cookies: goldfish, Milanos, chocolate chunk cookies, whole grain bread, non-sweetened cereal.
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