Spanish Tapas at Saffron

The Beijing restaurant scene seems to be on a tapas frenzy lately.  Over the past six months, I've seen 4 new Spanish restaurants open up, all located fairly close to one another and all serving sangria and tapas.  Why would all of them cater to the same market, which only represents a sliver of the Beijing population? I have no idea, but I'm not going to complain!

This morning, a few girlfriends and I met up at one of the older Spanish establishments in the city - Saffron at Wudaoying Hutong.  I came here about 2 years ago for dinner - didn't exactly love the food back then, but I always loved the rustic setting at Saffron, so when my girlfriends and I had to organize brunch, I was glad to give the restaurant's food a second chance.  And I was happy I did!

Our brunch started off with foie gras...

Followed by a Serrano ham and tomato bruschetta

Then we moved onto the grilled mushrooms...

And nibbled on some manchego cheese...

Before digging into the seafood paella!

Brunch mates Susan and Karen

Brunch mate DSB

Would I come back to Saffron? Absolutely!

Fiery Fish Marathon at 巫山烤全鱼

Earlier this week, while I was chatting with fellow high school classmate Jeff (Go Bears!), we scheduled a lunch date to catch up over spicy food.  Meanwhile, our other friend Cheech was craving fish.  So what did Jeff do? He organized Saturday lunch  at Wushan Kao Quanyu (巫山烤全鱼), a popular local chain restaurant known for its spicy fish dishes!


Dianping, the Chinese Zagat-like restaurant guide rated Wushan 5 stars.  There was another blog that Jeff found that gave Wushan raving reviews.  After reading the blog's mouth watering description, I was excited to fill my tummy with kao yu a la Chongqing style!

When I arrived at the Xiaoyun Lu restaurant, it was already bustling with patrons (although this picture doesn't really show the patrons, lol). The menu had 4 different types of fish and 6 different types of flavors to choose from.  With 6 people in our party, we ordered 3 kinds - one cooked in a sour spicy sauce, one cooked in a black bean sauce, and a third one cooked in a fiery Sichuan hot sauce.

Fiery fish marathon!

How am I going to tackle this?

Chi Chi picking through the carcass of the spicy fish

While it was a bit atypical to eat spicy fish for lunch, the trip to Wushan was well worth it.  Our favorite was the sour spicy fish, although I enjoyed the black bean sauce and the fiery spicy one too.  

After stuffing our stomachs, we headed next door to Bellagio to continue the food fest - Taiwanese shaved ice desserts!

Mango pudding with coconut ice cream...very cool and refreshing

Peanut smoothie...which tasted like peanut butter ice cream.  So rich and decadent!

And the star of the show (my favorite) - a towering shaved ice sculpture topped with pineapples, red beans, mung beans, tapioca pudding and lots of other goodies!

I have to admit, I was pretty full and lethargic after lunch.  Came home, did some chores, and then crashed and napped for 3 hours before Mike and I went out for our Saturday date night - Sake Manzo! More to come later...

Vroom vroom!

Last week, Mike and I spotted a cute looking scooter on Xingfucun Lu.  Turns out it belonged to a friend of a friend, so we did some research and hunted the bike down in Tongzhou (通洲)!

If you have never heard of the sleepy town of Tongzhou, well, neither did we. It wasn't exactly the easiest place to get to!  We had to take line 1 all the way to Sihui East, transfer to the Batong line and head to the Tongzhou Beiyuan Station.  After riding the subway for 40 minutes, we paid a guy 5 RMB to bike us down to 新南路59号, a street full of stores that sold motorcycles, scooters and other forms of electronic bikes!

Where were we???

Here's the new toy! Vroom vroom!

Going out for a test drive!

Actually, this wasn't the bike we bought.  We chose a black one (same look) since we didn't think the brown one was "manly" enough.  Anyway, the store will deliver the bike to our apartment tomorrow.  Weeeeeee!!!!

Proud Owner of a Macbook

and all the nifty software that comes with it!