Tuesday 30 October 2007

Dancing to a new vegetarian restaurant

Last night I visited a rather new vegetarian restaurant that wasn't in the list when I wrote my review of vegetarian Beijing earlier. It's another one of the Lily vegetarian restaurant (百合素餐厅) chain, this one located in a traditional hutong house near the crossroads of Dongzhimenneidajie (东直门内大街) and Dongzhimenneibeixiaojie (东直门内北小街), south from Xiaojie bridge (小街桥) or west from Dongzhimen metro station. The fact that it is built in a hutong and retains the traditional hutong feel about it makes this place more interesting especially to travellers, and indeed it seemed many foreigners had found their way there. The menus were bilingual in Chinese and English and included some pictures of the foods. The menu seemed largely the same as the other Lily restaurants, which means a lot of mock meat and especially mock fish dishes. I tried the "lychee flavoured vegetarian fish", "curry vegetarian chicken with potato" and "mushroom hotpot with vegetarian satay", and some dumplings to go with it. The portions were quite large, and the food wasn't bad, but I wasn't really impressed with them either. Therefore I give the restaurants three smiley faces in my very own restaurant criteria as seen in the earlier review. Prices were similar to the other places in relatively central Beijing.

Otherwise, I've been biding my time dancing tango as we have a teacher visiting from Germany, the dance is great, much recommended to everyone. It's very creative, communicative, beautiful, and most of all, fun! I'm also just starting up salsa now, must keep dancing as the temperatures go low!

Contact details for the above mentioned Lily vegetarian / 百合素餐厅(香草园店):
东城区东直门内北小街香草园胡同23号(四合院内), 64052082.
From Dongzhimen metro station, take exit A to Dongshimennei and turn around as the exit faces north and you should head to the road going west. Then head straight on along Dongzhimenneidajie until you reach Dongzhimenneibeixiaojie. Cross that street and walk north, the Xiangcaoyuan hutong is the first or second little street on the left. The road sign is quite small so be on the lookout.

5 comments:

dreamy said...

yes i heard from my dad its starting to get cold in china now! I dun really like restaurants with a lot of mock meats too... its a little unhealthy and uncreative :)

Jari (travelling-vegan) said...

Not necessarily, that depends on what they do. For example there is this restaurant in BJ that does a totally amazing potato fish, a dish that looks like a fish but is made mainly of potatoes. It's yummy, beautiful, and a totally creative idea. Not sure on the health part but shouldn't be bad.

dreamy said...

ah if it's juz potatoes then i guess it's ok :) The mock stuff we have here are oily and have seasoning (which I think comes with a considerable amt of MSG as well).

Anonymous said...

That's like a dancing place!!! B-)

Jari (travelling-vegan) said...

The latter picture is indeed a dancing place, not the restaurant... taken at the tango classes of Hagen.