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.

What do you do when you’re feeling sad in China? If you’re Chinese, I’m not sure. If you’re an American girl in China, I’m still not sure. The Chinese put some unusual twists on my usual comfort foods, so I have to say I’m still feeling a little down in the dumps.

Take potato chips, for example. I went to our local Huapu supermarket (which happens to be owned by the American supermarket giant IGA), and like for everything else in China, there was a huge selection of chips. There were even American chip brands like Pringles, Lays and Doritos. The problem was, they all came in weird meat flavors. Mexican Tomato Meat Flavor, Italian Chicken Flavor and French Chicken Flavor were just a few of the flavors the Lays came in. The Asian chips all had pictures of various kinds of meats on their bags, indicating what I assumed to be steak, beef soup, chicken, chicken-on-a-stick, shrimp and well, you get the point. There was even some spicy one that called itself “piquant” flavored. No thank you.

Then there is the ice cream problem. Ice cream, it seems, is still a novelty in China. A scoop of ice cream, which I’ve only seen sold in more touristy/Westerner-frequented areas, costs 20 yuan. For a single little tiny scoop! What a rip off! Ice cream on sticks are very common; you can’t go 10 meters without passing a cooler of them. But I don’t like ice cream on sticks. I want a full pint of Ben and Jerry’s Mint Chocolate Cookie. At the supermarket, there are more expected flavors, unlike the potato chips, like vanilla, strawberry, blueberry…but nothing that interests me. I’ve settled for green tea just because, hey, I’m in Asia. Might as well go for the Asian flavor.

Not juice.

And juice? Fresh-squeezed juices come in all different combinations, but they’re expensive and not readily available. How hard is it to find bottled juice that tastes just as drinkable? China is curing my juice addiction! I’m not sure what this stuff I’m drinking is, but it ain’t juice. It tastes like artificially flavored sugar water. The orange juice tastes kind of like Tang or orange soda without the fizz. The pomegranate tasted like pomegranate soda without the fizz. So the other day, I bought three bottles of juice, thinking at least one of them has to taste alright. Right? Well, no. None of them tastes juice-y, just sugary and artificially flavored. The one on the left, which I thought would be kind of like lemonade, reminds me of lemon-scented household cleaners. I think the pink bottle is something peach-y, but I can’t really tell, and the stuff inside tastes like liquid pear candy (this is not a good thing). And the one on the right can’t decide whether it wants to be bitter or citrusy. In short, my quest for good bottled juice still continues.