Dinner at Hangzhou 杭州

Finally, it was my favorite part of the day – dinner! We certainly went through a lot that day and we were quite tired from being pestered by touts wherever we go. Strangely enough the shopping street of Hangzhou Hefang Street doesn’t have a lot of these touts. Maybe it is just that there were a lot of people at that time and they were simply overwhelmed. It did make for a more pleasant experience at night though. Anyway, it was time to eat.

On the street parallel to Hefang Street, was a long row of restaurants selling food from all over China. Whenever I am in a different country, I always try to have the local food. There were a lot of Sichuan restaurants, but this was Hangzhou, which was known for its fresh and non-spicy food. We ended up at this restaurant which was also called Old Hangzhou 老杭州 the name sounded strangely familiar and I was trying to remember if this was where I had my dinner the last time. It seems like it was a different place, as I gave a sigh of relief. My friend can be quite a fussy eater so I wondered what we will be eating for dinner tonight.

My friend is quite conscious of the places she tends to eat, if it seemed dirty in the slightest bit then we won’t be ending up eating there or she would hardly touch her food. Anyway, this didn’t seem to happen as we gamely ordered food. Our other companion was a foodie and was willing to try anything. We had some fish in vinegar, this was quite troublesome to eat as the fish was very bony. The roasted duck was nice but I thought it was a bit small. The token order of vegetables, not my order, was nice, as it was old reliable dry fried four season beans. My favorite of the lot was the deep fried bean curd skin which I had the last time. There were no incidents this time and my friend seemed to be satisfied with the meal. Although she did comment that there was too much meat.

I would have to say that the choice of dishes could have been better. The fish wasn’t that nice to me as picking all the bones took out much of the pleasure of eating. The sour sauce wasn’t really to my liking either. My last dinner at Hangzhou was much tastier than this one since I ordered the heart stoppingly good Dongpo Rou – braised pork belly and the Hangzhou signature dish, Longjing Xia Ren – which was shrimp cooked in Longjing Tea. If I had my way, I would probably order the same set. Oh well, the best thing in travelling in groups is that I get to eat a lot more since there will be more variety. And more often than not, my companions won’t be as greedy as I.

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