One of my favourite restaurants in Kunming is a Dai place in a tiny lane off Jianshe Rd. The restaurant is in the house of a local guy and his family, who are all very friendly and charming, and makes generally delicious food at very cheap prices.

However, most times I regret going there the next day; ending up with a pretty bad case of the trots. Does anyone else have this experience at this restaurant? I think it must be the hygiene of the place, as I generally have a strong tolerance to chili.

Are there any other restaurants in Kunming that you have this type of love-hate relationship with?

Hey, this is a really nice little thread, thanks. Just want to share my humble views on this subject if you don't mind. Yea, I love to hate all sorts of places. Especially, or in particular, all those cutting edge, trend setting "western" food places all around Green Lake, and on Wen Lin Jie and Wen Hua Xiang. The little local places I eat at for 10 to 20 RMB (or less) I really have no gripe with. If I spend 6 RMB on something and it is not great so what. I get what I paid for and was not lied to.

It is when I order a salami sandwich at a place like The Box for about $5 and get four paper thin slices of salami on a dry, stale baguette that my bile begins to churn. Hey, why put a tomato or some lettuce and onion on there! Why put on some mustard or mayonnaise or even shoe polish. Just microscopically thin meat slices and nothing else, identical to the way sandwiches are made in the west! I felt like I was having a Philly sub almost.

Or you can order the world famous butter ham sandwich at the epicurean wonderland we call The French Cafe. Ohhhhhh, one mouth watering morsel after another there. The butter ham sandwich is sweeping across Europe and North America now, with it revolutionary combination of paper thin slices of ham, a greedy splash of yellow butter (just because it is yellow does not mean it is made of gold people) served on yet another stale, dry baguette. Yes, the concept of lettuce, salt and pepper, a tomato or onion or any damned thing is forsaken on this minimalist masterpiece that will cost you a mere five American dollars (and that is if you can even even get the lazy waitresses to serve you). Or if you want something hot I recommend any of their scorching hot and yet still bland and tasteless panninis. Again, we have just been adding too many ingredients and items in the west. All you really need is a smidgen of bland tomato paste and a tiny piece of some sort of chess that covers about 10% of the pannini and you have an authentic Italian style grilled sandwich. Luckily there are plenty of foreigners who just happen to love getting ripped off at places like this and you will see, they will running to its defense, telling me Ia m spoiled and I can just leave if I don't it, and claiming the bread there is as good an French bread in real Parisian cafes. HAHA! They hate it too, they are just laden with western white man guilt and want to seem metropolitan and suave. "Um... wow, this is..er... as good as any sandwich I ever...er.. had in LA. yea... ah... the same, really." BS!

Or you can try the pizza bagel at Salvadores. What brainstorming went into this wonder that will set you back three American dollars but is worth every damned cent of it. For three bucks you get ONE bagel with unseasoned tomato paste on it, and some "secret" cheese that is all hard and chewy. No salt. No pepper. No oregano or seasoning. I lived in Seattle for ten years and never, NEVER, had such a bagel. Believe me. Enjoy their mustardless and mayoless burgers (if you can speak some Chinese you can get those if you can get a free waitress, but the thrill is in eating half a burger and gagging on the dryness of it before you realize they never add anything like that unless you can speak Chinese and ask for it). Have fun here ordering your breakfast eggs from the variety of choices on the menu and getting them scrambled no matter what. This quite a dining experience for you and the entire family.

Oh let me think, what other marvels are there in the Green Lake Wen Hua Xiang area, an area quickly becoming the culinary hub of all of China and Asia. I can hardly remember all the mouth watering delicacies I have partaken of there over my five years in Kunming.

Oh there is that Game Cafe, managed by Daniel. A nice guy but he is more interested in keeping his geeky game players happy and counting all the cards he rents out to them than worrying about his food ordering customers. Yes, if you want to be totally ignored by an unprofessional staff and pay for one soggy pizza after another (I got three and decided I had had it with that dump) then this is the place for you. I also love the way they decide how much vinegar dressing you need on your salad for you, which is way too much. After a couple bites your facial expression suddenly looks like your average Frenchmen's, all puckered up and snooty. Ah, just kidding there, relax :)And then when you get your soggy pizza the girl flops it down on your table and vanishes. No napkins. No forks. No salt. No pepper. No water. My friends, five star service in Chicago is not this good.

And you must try the veggie burger at The Prague Cafe. With a slick Euro-sounding name and the obligatory book shelves with old travel guides for your reading pleasure the Prague Veggie burger is taking the Kunming dining experience to new levels. Yes, for about 28 RMB you get a scoop of bland mashed potatoes on a hamburger bun. Yes, flavorless mashed potatoes and some bread for $5! I know you will love it just as much as I did!

Or try their authentic truck-stop style American breakfast, that seems to take 40 minutes to prepare during slow hours. Yes for about $8 (if you order an extra side of ham) you get some ham served about ten minutes before you get your eggs and "hot dog", even though you told them to serve everything at the same time. Probably just my bad Chinese, yea, not their total stupidity. Yea, has to be my fault yet again. A hotdog is not breakfast sausage, which is what it says on the menu. This is supposed to be your Jimmy Dean style breakfast sausage, but unless your a bitter grump like me you will say "oh well, they tried. And actually I often call hot dogs breakfast sausage. And you know, if I was from Kunming and went to LA or NYC, or Paris (where they don't have any good food) I might have a hard time finding my favorite spicy rice noodles, so...yea. And I want to sound all enlightened and tolerant, so I don't really feel SCREWED OVER HERE!" And don't worry, eventually (after you've eaten your ham out of hunger and boredom) your egg that you ordered over-easy comes cooked some other way (hey, it has the options on the damned menu!) and you have the staple of every truck-stop, greasy spoon breakfast: a cucumber cherry tomato salad! And after you have finished your meal and coffee, and your table has been cleaned you better not leave yet... because after 40 minutes you will finally get your toast! This type of eating experience is very rare, and can only be enjoyed in Kunming, the Spring Time City.

And not only the food, but the sheer fabulous ambiance of eating at places like The French Cafe and having beggars and street lunatics sit at your outside table with you and have the waitresses do nothing is part of the unique dining experience you will have in Kunming. As well you can sit at any number of eateries and bistros on Wen Hua Xiang and watch parents let their kids urinate and defecate right on the street rather than take them to the public restroom 20 yards away on the street corner and spend three jiao there. or when they let their brats piss on somebody's bike and they catch you looking at them judgmentally you can experience all sort of dirty looks from the raffled parent, since the problem is all yours, not theirs. I have had this enriching experience and so can you my friend. I defy you to find this experience in Venice. Or you can soak in the view at Mazagran while having one of their overpriced and unpredictable dishes and watch down to the street as the sausage guy (you kn ow him... those brown horrible sausges on stick, all sweet tasting and disgusting looking, but covered in the miracle spice, red pepper! )that works next to Guo Zi Lou picks his nose with relish. Doesn't seem to affect his business. I know people see him digging away but they still queue up for his booger ridden, sweet/spicy sausages.

Half the fun will be trying to guess what meat you are really eating and why salads consists only of cucumbers and cherry tomatoes, or why the only dressing seem to be white salad dressing or Chinese vinegar. You like sushi? Fear not, there are a number of street vendors serving top quality salmon and tuna sushi, and they are served with heaping amounts of mayonnaise and ketchup, just the way sushi is prepared in Tokyo. Oh don't forget, you HAVE to have wasabi. Why? Because the heat of the wasabi will (hold on a second...hahahahahahahahahahahah) warm up the cold sushi and make it safe to eat.

Yes, there will never be an end to your eating adventures and money sucking experiences in the wonderful Green Lake/Wen Hua Xiang dining district. Perhaps I am a narrow minded hater. Or perhaps I hate getting crappy food, and service, for more than I would pay at a low end restaurant in a city with real food like Seattle, which is not a cheap city to eat in. Dollar for dollar not cheaper than here for sure, but at least you get something you can swallow and that will not come oozing out in the middle of the night.

Bon appetite.

OK BillDan. What can I say but............ditto!

Manna, Salvador's, The Box, The Indian place on Wen Hua Xiang.

Manna's food tastes fine but got the runs every time I went there. I have been in China a long time, and rarely get diarrhea anymore. But both Manna and that Indian place are surefire ways to get a wet bathroom run.

Salvador's has some of the friendliest servers and most edible western food in Kunming. Not quite gourmet, but what do you want, this is Kunming. You can't deny that the customer service is also really good. If they really mess up, they wont ask you to pay. I also think they treat their workers better than most places, relatively speaking (not a very high standard in KM).

But, I don't want to hear about it. I can't stomach the whole "capitalism with a human face" sales pitch. It is a shit job, and maybe that is nobody's fault, but why not just have the stomach to own up to it? I know why. Because "community friendly" exploitation and "green business" are all the rage- and a niche market. As if restaurants or shopping of any kind is some kind of solution to global problems. C'mon are we kids here? It's just a restaurant.

On that level, I would almost prefer to eat at a normal Chinese restaurant where they don't give a shit and they don't pretend to be doing their part to make the world a better place.

The workers at the Box have always been really kind to me. They have plenty of good desserts and drinks too. I would probably volunteer there for free for a day (but hit on every cute female customer) if they asked me too. That is the love part.

But I have had the sorriest dinner food of all time there. I once ate a burger that I swear was wet mud spread onto a bun. And it fell apart like Mud would as well. I can't say I am angry about it, its good for a laugh, there you have my hate towards that burger!
So, I love to avoid actually ordering anything that is not a beer or a dessert.
There are other places, not expat spots at all, but I think they really aren't well known enough to gokm readers to mention. I will say that the very big on Jiaoling Lu BBQ/gaifan place, the only 2 story one that is open very late, is extremely unfriendly. Not saying don't eat there, but don't expect to make any friends while you're at it.

KFC is really great, because if you want to lose weight and save time and money, just walk in the front door: you won't be hungry at all anymore after that nasty odor wafts over your olfactory system for about 2 seconds. No need to eat. Voila, then, out you go, and on your bike. I should market this as a weight loss system.

Okay, BillDan, you made me laugh but still, I have to wonder why are you here in Kunming? I thought Kunming was a place peope came to because they wanted to try new things and have a bit of an adventure, not the perfect panini. As I see it we're really lucky to have so many people willing to face your kind of scorn, put up their money and work hard to make the cafes and restaurants in Kunming as good as they are.

I'm not knocking your restaurant Barbara, but I don't think anyone's idea of an 'adventure' is shelling out 40 kuai for cardboard. It's called getting ripped off where I come from.

Billdan is a Negative Nancy. You don't come to Kunming to find the perfect panini indeed. If you're a bit creative in your choices on the menu and not too stingy, you can get a decent bite of Western food. Not great, but definitely good enough.

I have sympathies for both consumers and restaurant owners.

To Consumers:

Traditionally almost everything here are lies, a fake first impression, something westerners consumers have difficulty understanding. China's traditional business model isn't based on return customers nor accepting feedback.

To Business owners:
Bravo......
It's ridiculous how a business owner's time is spent training staff over and over and over and over.....
This includes dealing with the food suppliers "substitutes" instead of delivering the real products if it's available at all ...the list goes on and on....
It's a monumental task to accomplish anything in Kunming or China?

Oh dear, Manifico, I really didn't think our pizzas were that bad. But cheer up. They're only 20 kuai on Fridays between 7 and 9 pm

Dear Barbara, no one's complaining about your pizza. 20 kuai for a pizza is a really good deal. The frozen pizza they sell at Carrefour goes for 20 kuai. And it's really small and probably tastes like the cardboard box it comes in.