Chris, who likes to say he’s half-Italian (because I guess he is), started craving fettuccine alfredo one day, which made me start to crave some pasta. I love pasta. It’s a good thing northern Chinese cuisine favors noodles.

So one day after work, we decided to venture out across town to the nearest Annie’s, a popular local chain with five or six locations spread around eastern Beijing. It took a while to find the one in Beijing High Life, but it was a cute little restaurant — very clean, professional and Western. It was like walking into a small-town Italian joint, and that was what the food was like, too.

Annie’s tries to put a little class into the dining experience, but it’s not good enough to be a nice dinner. We got free bread to munch on while we waited for our food, which never happens in China. The food was nicely presented. I got the potato gnocchi, and it was yummy but not delicious. There just wasn’t anything especially remarkable about it. If this post sounds boring, it’s because I can’t make Annie’s sound exciting.

To its credit, Annie’s is a nice change from the loud, old and used Chinese restaurants without having to break the bank for it. There was enough of my gnocchi to make another meal of it, which makes it a great deal. Chinese food portions are always large, but Western food portions, especially in China, never are.

A couple of weekends ago (man, that was a long time ago), Chris and I took Pang Li out to eat Mexican after he helped us try to get train tickets to Dandong. I was really craving a burrito that day. Ironically, I ended up getting two tacos once we made our way out to the Silk Street Market area, where Mexican Wave is anchored, beckoning Americans who looking for something familiar.

According to its menu, Mexican Wave is the oldest Mexican establishment still in business in Beijing. If the restaurant can serve as an indicator, Mexican food in China is the complete opposite of Mexican food in America: expensive small servings instead of cheap large portions.

It tasted like standard Mexican fare, though, but it didn’t satisfy my Mexican craving. Had I known the tacos came in a hard tortilla shell, I wouldn’t have ordered two. But the carne asada and pollo asada were delicious. It seemed a little cleaner than Mexican food back home, too, which is unusual because — when is anything cleaner in China?