It was a Japan-filled day. I went to the Xidan Muji today to check out their housewares. It was a little pricey for things I wasn’t even looking for, but I thought I’d buy a notebook and fun pen. Still, it wasn’t a total loss of a day. Look what I found on the 6th floor of Joy City:

It’s mochi ice cream! I’m so happy they’ve hit China. It was pretty hard to find them back in the States. The little kiosk that was selling them was crowded with curious Chinese people inquiring about them. They were cheap, too! — 5 to 6 kuai each depending on the flavor. I got my favorites, green tea and red bean, and the box of six cost only 33 kuai. (As you can see, I already ate one.) Other flavors include chocolate, yogurt and blueberry cream.

I find it a little funny that Chinese people haven’t heard about these little balls of heaven. Japan isn’t that far off their coast, and it’s actually derived from a popular southern Chinese snack called muah chee (mochi is probably the Japanese bastardization of the Chinese name. Chinese mochi is pronounced like muah-jee.) Chinese mochi are balls of chewy glutinous rice flour coated in dried coconut shavings and filled with super finely chopped toasted sesame and sugar (or peanuts and sugar or red beans).

In other Joh’s-favorite-foreign-snacks news, Krispy Kreme has also hit China! But in Shanghai, though =(

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?

I’ve been in Beijing for almost two months and had not yet eaten the famous Beijing kao ya (Peking roast duck, duh). Until tonight.

A few of my colleagues took Chris and me to a nearby branch of Bianyifang. Most people are more familiar with Quanjude, but Bianyifang goes back further in history—like 600 years worth of history. And, well, they make a really tasty duck.

Apparently, what’s special about Bianyifang is that they roast their ducks in a closed oven (not an open pit). Not that I know the difference between the two, but compared to roast ducks back in the States (severely misleading but still the only point of reference I have), Bianyifang’s duck kicks ass. Tender, subtle flavors and crispy-juicy-succulent skin: such culinary mastery barely registered as I gobbled the duck up.

I realized how little I actually knew about the Peking duck tradition. I knew the part where the cook brings out the duck and carves it up in front of you into thin little slices. But apparently it is served and eaten with these very thin steamed “pancakes,” with which you wrap up some duck meat, cucumbers and onions. There’s also hoisin sauce, rose and chrysanthemum petals and sugar for garnish. We went all out and got some buns (that can be used to create a sandwich), duck soup, duck kidneys, duck stomach and these duck rolls that were kind of like egg rolls. I ate half a duck brain. (The duck head is chopped in half, so the inner workings of a duck mind is exposed.)

Pictures are forthcoming.

Chinese beer has its fair share of critics (loaded with preservatives, bland, low alcohol content, etc.), but what are the alternatives? It’s either no beer or expensive imports. But Chinese beer also has a really weird pricing system that doesn’t seem to be governed by a normal market economy. Here is what you can expect to pay:

• 40+ kuai (~$7), small bottle: Tourist-frequented bars, like those along Sanlitun Lu. Not worth it because a) pay just a few yuan more, and you can get a good import; and b) there’s probably a place selling a big bottle for 3 kuai just around the corner.
• 30 kuai (~$5), big bottle: fancier and/or tourist-y restaurants. If you’re splurging already, then you might as well splurge on beer, too.
• 20 kuai (~$3), big bottle: above-average restaurants. Not a great deal, but not especially bad, either. Here, it just depends on whether you want to pay an extra 20, and the answer is usually no.
• 20 kuai (~$3), small bottle: low-key, high-gravity bars and clubs; worth it for the company you keep at the bars and clubs.
• 10 to 15 kuai (~$1.50 to $2.50), big bottle: restaurants; depends on how badly you want a beer with your meal.
• 3 kuai (~50 cents), big bottle: standard at hutong restaurants and roadside vendors. Definitely worth it to go with your chuan.
• 2.50 kuai (~35 cents), draft: found in a hutong restaurant near our work.
• 2.50 kuai (~35 cents), big bottle: small store right outside our apartment; bring back the bottles (which is sent back to the bottling place to be reused), and you get 5 mao back. Which means, the cheapest beer we’ve found in Beijing is less than 30 cents for 600 milliliters. Conveniently, it takes less time than a song to go to the store, buy a bottle and return to the apartment.

Anyway, there’s a beer festival going on somewhere near our colleague’s house. I am obviously off to find it so I can perhaps try out some different (dark) beers. Not now—it’s only 9 in the morning.

Perhaps you’ve noticed a random picture of what is supposed to be beef stroganoff in the picture gallery. It was taken last Saturday after Chris and I wandered around the Russian part of town in search of the Shard Shop. We never found it, but hungry and exhausted from a late night/early morning, we found Chocolate. Their nest-like swings won us over, and we quickly nestled in them.

Chocolate is a night club/restaurant, and as heard around the blogosphere, it’s a pretty swank place to go at night. Its over-the-top decor (probably hinted at with the nest swings) of chandeliers and velvet chairs makes it seem gaudy—but it wants to be and even makes it a good thing. Anyway, I only had the beef stroganoff and an 80-yuan bottle of pineapple juice. They did bring us some ice in a bucket, though.

I’ve never actually had beef stroganoff before, except for what I make. The beef was sauteed with onions and mushrooms, which I love, and it was definitely shredded—so props to them on that. But the sauce was a weird orange color and a bit thick for my liking. Instead of sour cream, it seemed like just cream, and it just overwhelmed the beef-onion-mushroom flavors. I was really glad it came in a bread bowl so I could soak up some of the sauce with it. It didn’t help that it cost 40 kuai, either.

I wish I had tried something else on the menu, which offered things I’ve never heard of and can’t really remember. They were all misspelled Russian foods, but I have a feeling that anything I ordered would have been only subpar.

I went a good four weeks without eating any foreign cuisine. I was thinking about this earlier and I realized that I couldn’t think of anything I wanted from the States. I thought of my usual favorites, like sushi or pasta, but nothing made my mouth water. I just wanted good, cheap Chinese food, like dumplings or noodles and a vegetable dish.

Chris and I decided to hit up Nan Luo Gu Xiang after a fitting at the tailor shop. We had been introduced to the hutong last week when we went out with some friends. We wandered up the street as it was getting dark, then wandered back down. We settled on a pizza place called Cottage Pizza (there may or may not have been more to the name), really just because it happened to be right where we stopped. When we first got to China, I had suggested that we do an international food week, where we would try a different cuisine each night. Now, I don’t think I could go a whole week eating non-Chinese food anymore; I think this will be a fun series, though.

Chinese people, traditionally, have stuck to their Chinese food. The restaurants that serve foreign fare have a disproportionate number of Westerners/tourists/expats/whatever-they-are. They also are generally pricier than Chinese restaurants, an extra disincentive for Chinese people not to try something different. It seems almost counterintuitive: Chinese people seem to eat everything—from fish head to ox tail to chicken feet—but they will wrinkle their noses at filet mignon or osso buco.

So Chris and I step into this Cottage Pizza. It’s a tiny coffeeshop-style hangout, with low ceilings, couches for their booths and the tiniest and tightest staircase leading to an upstairs. There were three groups—all Asian—already seated, in each corner of the room. Naturally, we took over the remaining corner. It was actually really cozy, with more couches and dim lighting. Modern dishware completed the coffeeshop vibe, but wasn’t this a pizza joint? We ordered “The Hot One,” which had chili peppers, onions, tomatoes, beef and spicy chicken and some garlic bread. The garlic bread were tiny pieces of toast with a little butter and even less garlic—actually not very different from some pizza places back home. We waited for our pizza while sipping on our sodas. (I got this salty lemon soda thing, which tasted just as weird as it sounds.)

The pizza came. It was a deep dish with a thick crust. I usually prefer New York style, but the crust was actually pretty good: not too soft, not too baked and not greasy. The pizza itself had an ample covering of toppings with just the right amount of cheese. In fact, the cheese was good—unlike in the States, the smell (or taste) of it didn’t overwhelm the pizza, so the topping flavors were in full control. There was a little too much onions and peppers and not enough sauce, but overall, it was a decent American-style pizza. Had I been in a pizza mood, it would have hit the spot.

Head on over to the gallery for pics.