It's sad I can't get a single bowl of pho, but I will pass the ten millionth mi xian place on my way home. So close, yet so far.

There is a nice Thai place, with atmosphere and the Thai minority chefs on Bejing Lu, just south of Carrefour and the Junfa centre (new glass building that has bends in it).

South of Jin Hua Lu, on the east side of Beijing Lu, about 100m from the street corner. There is a road set back 10m and a spur to a carpark. Walk towards the carpark and the restaurant is on the right on the ground floor.

Sorry my directions are vague.

bluppfisk, yes the restaurant I mean is on Jianshe lu. I didn't know it was a Dai restaurant, I thought it was Thai as my friends and I ordered actual Thai dishes (unless we're talking about a different restaurant?) For good Dai food, there are two Dai restaurants almost next to each other on Yuanxi lu, not far from both Yunnan University and Yunnan University of Nationalities. They're not the cleanest restaurants either, but they do have a decent menu and much better seating than the aforementioned hole-in-the-wall restaurant.

There's also a good, but tiny Thai cafe downstairs in the basement of duanshi jie, not far from Nanping jie. To get there, you have to walk along the pedestrian street and you go down to the basement level which is visible right next to McDonald's. The cafe is about halfway somewhere on the left. Although it doesn't offer many menu items, they do make a pretty authentic somtam (spicy papaya salad) with khao niao (sticky rice) and gai yang (Isarn style fried chicken).

AlexKMG: "can't get a single bowl of pho, but I will pass the ten millionth mi xian place on my way home."

This is so true man. How many mi xian palces does one block need, and they all serve the exact same product. In my area it is the same. mi xian. mi xian. mi xian. When my students talk about mi xian from their hometowns they seem to go into some sort of orgasmic stupor. I can't image a neighborhood back in the US that had only hot dogs. A long row of restaurants and 90% are hot dog restaurants and the other 10% serve french fries. anything that crops up showing some variety soon goes out of business here. A place down the street opened (now closed) and touted itself as "western food'. The 1st in my area. They had spaghetti. Wow. Cool. I ordered some and it was basically a plate of spicy mi xian. Not Italian noodles or even mian tiao. Just spicy mi xian slopped on a plate and called spaghetti and now costs 20 RMB instead or 3 or 4. Thank God they went out of business.

I went to Vietnam in 2005 and was just WOWED by the food there. I rarely eat soup out, but I had Pho in a hole in the wall place in Saigon that was so beautiful that I took a picture of it. I am going to return to Vietnam next month and mostly what I will eat is the local food.

I am an American who lives in Hangzhou in Zhejiang and just joined this board to ask some travel questions for Xishaungbanna and Laos. This thread got me thinking about western food.

Concerning food, I will say that I have been in China for 11 years and have travelled from the East Coast all the way to Kashgar and in my opinion, over 90% of so called "western food" just sucks. I once had "Mexican food" (not Caoco's) when visiting in Kunming that was god awful. I waited forever for it, almost left and then when the food finally came was miserable. It was so bad I walked out without paying with them chasing me down the street. I got away from them but I refused to pay for that sh*t and didn't. Yeah, I may have been in the wrong, but I wasn't going to pay for that.

However, by looking at your events list to the left, Kunming has it going on much better than Hangzhou.

The Chinese do not know how to make it correctly and it most always comes out bad, greasy, oily and weird, not to mention expensive. Not only that, the less than 10% of places that do manage to make a good product goes out of business!

Also, all the "western" restaurants have the same crap. Pizza, hamburgers, speghetti, chicken wings etc. All of it of dubious taste. I am a slow learner, but I have just about stopped eating in these type of places, especially in tourist areas (Yangshuo being a good example of gut rotting tourist garbage food). If nothing else, it is good to eat the local food, it's cheaper and its better for what it is.

I don't hate all Chinese food, some of it is very good. I love rice. It's just the people who run these places do not know how to make the product correctly, and they have to conform to the "Chinese taste", while most of the Chinese themselves, even the educated and urbane ones, refuse to eat anything new. It's maddening.

I read recently online about Chinese travellers taking a tour of Europe, places like Greece, Italy, Spain and France and what was ironic but so true was that the tourists ate CHINESE FOOD and did not try the local food. Rice and meat and noodles, dofu, the same crap they can eat back home. Chinese are picky eaters and will refuse to try anything that they do not know, period. Some will.

Haha I know what you mean @senorboogiewoogie about Chinese travellers in Europe. I mean, if you're going to travel, why wouldn't you try the local food? Also, I heard that Chinese people from mainland China don't eat "kung pao chicken" even though that is the staple of Chinese food found in Chinese restaurants in all western countries.

BTW I always try to eat a combination of western and local food. I have lived in Vietnam and usually stuck to eating western food for most meals, mainly because the quality is so good (many restaurants and cafes are run by westerners and/or have western chefs) and because away from the tourist areas, local food, while good is served in places with no atmosphere, like on a dirty street corner where you have to sit on 1-foot high plastic stools that almost break if someone like me sits down on them. We were also served lunch at work, but the quality of the food was pretty bad. There were times I couldn't take it and spent 1hour out of my 90minute lunch break driving back and forth between work and the tourist area to get a decent western style meal.

BTW the food scene in Laos is pretty good. The bigger towns and cities have a good selection of western style restaurants and bars with about the same quality food you'll find in Thailand (and prices too). Local food is good too, though rustic: think whole grilled fish, salted and with all the little bones still inside eaten together with sticky rice, somtam (spicy papaya salad), other grilled meats and uncooked meat in blood with peanuts and last but not least: duck embryoes.

There is a Vietnamese restaurant nearby the new French Cafe (between French/McDonalds) called Mui Ne. Mui Ne is a beach resort town in Vietnam, very nice.

We went to the restaurant tonight and it was expensive (200kuai+ for 5 dishes) and about halfway to authentic. Note that it was restaurant Vietnamese food, not street Vietnamese food, damn!

The VietFrench fusion restaurant has opened bottom food court area of wangfujing. Like all Vietnamese places in fancy malls, expensive and half authentic. Tried the pho, soup was alright but they used really thick flat noodles. Place is clean and food tasty, and slightly more authentic than some others. They did have bun and spring rolls on menu in addition to pho in regards to street food items.

I went into the Vietnamese restaurant near Brooklyn before they opened and the owner already announced she wouldn't do authentic Vietnamese food because 'the yunnanese don't like that kind of taste' so don't get your hopes up. Beijing is the only place where I've had a pho that tasted more or less like what I'm having here in Hanoi.

So jealous, Hanoi. Some of the best eating on the planet in that city. Tell me the place or places in Beijing. I might be up there in a few months.