Lunchtime!

Yunnan University is situated right by what they call 外人街, Foreigners Street, and there is no shortage of interesting food options for lunch between my Mandarin lessons. For the first week, I literally only went to one place, 胡九小吃, horribly translated to 'The No.9 Man in the City', a chain of Yunnanese fast food eateries specialising in Yunnanese spicy noodles. I literally still cannot get enough of them, especially as they are only about Y6-7 a bowl.

But I was starting to get strange looks from the staff, so decided it might be best to venture out to see what else was out there. One of the more popular places is Heavenly Manna on 文化巷Wenhua Xiang, popular with foreign students because it claims it doesn't use any MSG in its food. The menu is ridiculously long, specialising in homestyle cooking - I would love to go back with a few friends, because going on your tod really doesn't make sense here, given portions are huge and family style. The day I went, I plumped for 魚香茄子 (fish scented aubergine) and 家常豆腐 (family style tofu):


Both were pretty good, but I should have probably chosen something not spicy :p And of course I completely blew my usual lunch budget - this came to a grand sum of Y20!

My private Mandarin tutor 飛飛, Fei Fei has been raving on about this Indian restaurant near our lessons ever since I got here, adn I was interested to see the Chinese take on Indian food (trust me, the Indian take on Chinese food is not pretty!). The Indian Kitchen is on 文林街 Wenlin Jie, and is apparently owned by an Indian. Well, when I walked in, he certainly wasn't about, nor were any other Indians, and the walls appear to have been decorated by the Indian Tourist Board.

The menu though, is pretty much what you'd expect from a typical English Indian place - onion bhajis and pakoras for starters, lots of baltis and jalfrezis and tandooris for mains. This was the first non-Chinese meal I had eaten since I arrived here, so I thought I would plump for the most Western thing possible: our national dish the chicken tikka masala!!!

And it was pretty much like the ones we have at home, although this version (we are in Yunnan after all) definitely had a kick to it. I decided to be a pig and also had some naan bread:

This looked pretty underwhelming when it arrived, but it was actually very very good, you could tell it was straight out of the tandoor, even reminded me of the breads we had in India. I was completely completely stuffed though, and burped my way through my Mandarin lesson afterwards (poor Fei Fei). But I was starting to learn the lesson that non-Chinese food is ridiculously expensive compared to Chinese - this set me back Y40. Later that day I found Earl Grey tea at Y10 a pop - might turn into an expensive habit given that I drink buckets of the stuff.

After yoga one evening, I decided to continue experimenting and spotted a chain of Japanese ramen eateries right next door. I have seen 味千拉麵 Ajisen Ramen all over Hong Kong before, and don't think they've got that good a reputation there, and apparently it is huge in China now (67 stores in Shanghai alone, according to wiki). I was tired and hungry, with memories of Ryo's in Sydney in the back of my head, so I went for a 豬軟骨拉麵 (tender pork ribs ramen):

Again, very keenly priced at Y28 a bowl of noodles in China, but I must admit it wasn't all that bad. Given that the soup base must be mass-produced somewhere, it had a decent flavour, and the pork rib was very morish. Not sure why it is quite so popular though, given its price and you can definitely find more interesting noodles all over China. I will have to venture into a proper Japanese sushi place next to see what that is like here...