Restaurant: Let’s go to Chengdu
Location: Outside East Gate
Cost: $
The menu includes: No English and no photos
Order: Everything here is delicious and SPICY! We ordered hotpot, noodles, duck blood, and pig brain
Recommended
Restaurant: Xinjiang Restaurant
Location: Nearby the Traditional Chinese Medicine University
Cost: $$$
The menu includes: Photos
Order: Chunr, eggplant, shrimp with friends, tomato and okra, and veggies
Not recommended; There are better Xinjiang Restaurants.
Restaurant: Vegetarian Ramen Restaurant
Location: Across the street from South Gate
Cost: $$
The menu includes: Poorly translated English menu, no photos
Order: Spicy ramen with thick noodles, eggplant, and rice noodles with bean sprouts
Recommended
Restaurant: 4th Floor Canteen Buffet
Location: UIBE Canteen
Cost: $
The menu includes: No menu, you walk around the buffet area, pile up your plate with whatever you feel like.
Order: As of Fall 2017, 500g of food costs 15 RMB. Note: it can get crowded during rush lunch hours and the buffet isn’t always open to everyone (sometimes they hold events here and close it to students)
Recommended
Restaurant: 4th Floor Canteen Restaurant
Location: UIBE Canteen
Cost: $
The menu includes: Pictures of the food, English
Order: We ordered fried pumpkin, gongbao chicken, veggies, soup, and soda.
Recommended
Restaurant: 香鼎坊私房菜
Location: Outside of East Gate
Cost: $$
The menu includes: Pictures of the food, English
Order: We ordered a beef and carrot dish (it tasted like beef stew), a pork intestines dish (it just tasted like pork), Bamboo shoots (it tasted like lo mein), Jiaozi
Recommended
Restaurant: In and Out (Yunnan Food)
Location: Sanlitun Bei Xiaoping Jie
Cost: $$$
The menu includes: Pictures of the food, English
Order: Rice noodle, Roasted fish, Yak, Rice wine
Comments: Go on Monday because of the promotion, the maximum discount you can get is 50%!
Recommended
Restaurant: Guangdong Restaurant
Location: Nearby Sino-Japan Friendship Hospital
Cost: $$
The menu includes: Pictures of the food, English
Order: Spicy eggplant, garlic veggies, pork ribs, pineapple cake
Comments: Average 50-70 rmb per person
Recommended
Restaurant: 香草香草
Location: Outside of West gate to the South
Order: A hot pot with mutton meat, mushrooms, bok choi, bamboo, and tomatoes.
Comments: It was delicious and the staff was very helpful and friendly.
Recommended
Restaurant: Migas
Location: Sanlitun
Order: Croquettes, tomato bread, octopus with chickpeas, almond chicken with chipotle sauce, sangria
Comments: The restaurant has a rooftop bar and serves only Spanish food.
Recommended
Restaurant: Nice Noodle Soup Ladies
Location: Out East Gate, down the good foods store lane about 5 stores past the Pasta Factory
Order: Hong shao nu rou mien (Braised beef noodle soup)
Comments: There’s also a wonton soup with a great chicken broth. You can order different broths depending on your tastes. The chicken soup broth is the standard one that they offer, so if you don’t specify you will get that.
Recommended
Restaurant: Pasta Factory
Location: New big restaurant outside West Gate nearby 24hr noodle. Old small restaurant outside East Gate down the alley.
Order: Spicy sausage and chicken pasta with 1 RMB tea add-on
Comments: Pasta, salads, and paninis are all good.
Recommended
Restaurant: 金渝川菜(药居店)
Location: Outside East Gate
Order: 金针菇, spicy/salty green beans, cold green bean things, salty steamed pork, fried rice, buns
Comments: Technically a Chongqing style food restaurant. Pretty big. Good to take visiting friends, parents, etc to experience Chinese food. Big menu with big photos.
Recommended
Restaurant: Xishun Korean Sushi
Location: Inside East Gate Food Alley
Order: Kimchi Fried Rice with Pork Belly, Shrimp Fried Rice, Kimchi Ramen, Pig
Hooves
Comments: Combines traditional Chinese food with Korean flavors. Their fried rice is absolutely delicious.
Recommended
The past few weekends have been some of the most exciting of the entire semester, full of trips to the zoo, mountain hikes, ancient parks, and more! Our first trip out of many was a visit to the Beijing Zoo. I had mentioned earlier in the semester that I wanted to see some pandas, since I was in China after all, and our TBC friend Andy made it happen.
Spending a whole semester in Beijing, I knew I had to make the trip down south and check out Shanghai, and the city certainly lived up to the expectations. Everyone describes Shanghai as this super futuristic metropolis, and after spending a weekend there I understand why it has this reputation.