Western food woes

 

Liuzhou has an unfortunate history as far as western food is concerned. Western food restaurants come and go faster than steroid fuelled Olympic athletes. We have had all sorts. Seven or eight years ago there was an excellent French restaurant on San Zhong Road. I even proposed to my wife there! She accepted and the restaurant closed down. I leave you to judge who made the best decision.

I wasn’t surprised. By the restaurant. We went often and we were always the only people there. Roll forward to 2007. What choices are there for western food? Apart from local hotels, to which I will return, very little. The problem is that the people who open Western food restaurants have seldom actually eaten the stuff. I remember one fool woman telling me how to make pizza. She had clearly never had intercourse with any sort of pizza. But she saw a picture and worked it out! Or so she said.

Then there are the shops which sell western stuff.

These are all rapidly reducing their western shelf space. A city centre shop which devoted 50% of its space to imported foodstuffs has recently reduced this to about 20% and has stopped restocking. As are others. The Laowai food will disappear.

In the meantime, I was delighted to find that Nanning’s excellent Pantry had opened a store here in Liuzhou. Sadly, they seem determined to commit commercial suicide. First, they located themselves in an obscure housing complex, miles from the city centre. Just as the city closed the access bridge for repairs for five months. In their wisdom they have now decided to close half the month. Last weekend I visited the parent store and asked why. I was told “We close the store because no one comes.” Maybe that's because no one knows you are there. The only publicity is on my website!

I pointed out that I had been but the store was closed and asked how they know no one comes if they are closed. That didn’t compute. Eyes glazed over and I got the Chinese grin which signifies bafflement or embarrassment.

But all is well. We still have the western restaurants in Liuzhou’s better hotels. Or not. A couple of weeks ago I went with a friend to Liuzhou’s top hotel (they tell me) – the 5 star Liuzhou Fandian. (Note. This hotel is government owned and the government give out the stars.) Here is what I wrote on my website.

“It is difficult to know what to say about this place. Situated on the ground floor of Liuzhou's 5 star Liuzhou Hotel (Liuzhou Fandian), Prince is a steak restaurant., although its menu has alternative dishes.

However on a recent visit, at just before 7 pm on a Friday evening, I was presented with the menu, which is a design disaster. Someone decided that all dishes should be pictured. Unfortunately, one steak looks pretty much like another so the pictures are not really all that helpful, especially the ones out of focus or just too small. Each dish is, of course, captioned in both Chinese and English. The English is almost unreadable. Green lettering over a picture of a salad doesn't really help.

I was perusing this menu trying to find something I could read when the manager appeared and informed us that only steaks were available. He pointed to two pages of the 20+ page menu and said that was all they had. Oh! And, of the 12 listed soups, they only had two. For a 5 star hotel restaurant to run out of 80% of its menu so early in the evening is nothing short of disgraceful. If you run out of food so early - go buy more!

We duly ordered our steaks, which were not what we really wanted, and they arrived reasonably promptly, cooked exactly as we had requested. They have Japanese, American, New Zealand and local beef and although it's not the greatest steak I've ever eaten, it was perfectly acceptable. Note: When you order a steak, that's what you get - with the tiny addition of two cherry tomatoes, a lump of corn cob and two slices of cucumber. No carbohydrates were on the menu. Come on, guys! A steak needs some fries! (The full time we were there, the waitresses were kept busy delivering bowls of rice to carb deprived Chinese steak eaters!)

As I was munching into my steak, I noticed adjacent tables being served non-steak menu items which we had been told were 'not available'. These included tables which had ordered after us!

So, all in all, a very disappointing experience. I have been to this restaurant many times before and the service was never so awful. Perhaps the new manager should spend less time wining and dining his friends (he was at the next table to us) and more time doing restaurant manager stuff like buying food.”

Of course, there are other hotel restaurants. The 4 star Lijing (probably best hotel in Liuzhou despite its lack of that last star) has western food. Or, at least, it has recreations of food which the chef has only ever seen in photographs.

Our best choice at the moment is the pizza restaurant. They sell fairly authentic wood-fired pizzas. The problem is the place is usually empty. There aren’t enough Laowai to support it and the vast majority of locals just aren’t interested. Sure, a more sophisticated clientele would work wonders, but they ain’t here. It is not an oversight that Pizza Hut aren’t here. Nanning can support two. Guilin has one. But Liuzhou is still Hicksville.

We had an absolutely wonderful pizza place a few years ago. Best pizza I’ve eaten outside Italy. It closed too.

A few bars around town have what they call Western Food. It is usually nothing of the sort. They wouldn’t recognise western food if it bit them on the bum.

Even the foreign owned bars are not much better. Overpriced cliché dishes straight from the microwave. Broccoli isn’t the only vegetable! And they can't cope with more than one customer at a time. last time I was with about eight people. The last person was served more than one hour after the first. They also sell a few "Chinese" dishes. Fried rice or fried noodles. Only ten times more expensive than every corner cafe in the city and ten times less tasty.

Still, it's an improvement on the restaurant which served me my dessert before the soup and where the main course never arrived. Yes, that was foreign owned, too.

Do I care? Not a jot! If I want western food that much, I will go home. I’m surrounded by stunningly good food and feel no need to go in search of microwaved travesties of anything edible which LOOKS vaguely western.

P.S. Chinese food in Europe is also pretty terrible.