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When you need food for the soul, here’s where
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MORE and more Hangzhou restaurants, such as Grandma’s Kitchen, Xin Bai Lu and Long Tang Li, are using cheap eats to lure customers.
The trick is how to make a profit, balancing quality and cost to make quick return.
At any Grandma’s Kitchen restaurant in Hangzhou, a table receives at least three batches of eaters during lunch or dinner.
Today Shanghai Daily visits some small, cheap and popular restaurants to see why they are able to attract so many foodies.
“Be a good dining hall in neighborhood” is how Ma Kunshan, owner of Good Dining Hall, sets his restaurant.
“The competition among high-end restaurants is tough,” Ma explains. “I prefer to serve ordinary people in their own communities.”
Good Dining Hall is in Dongshannong community, and Ma’s ambition is to open more branches in other communities.
The homely, clean restaurant provides local dishes from 3 yuan to 38 yuan, with an average cost of about 20 yuan (without drinks) a head.
Prices may be cheap, but the quality is anything but.
The steamed eggplant is organic and the fish and snail soup — just 18 yuan — is a signature dish in spring, renowned for its umami.
The soy sauce pot features pig feet, belly and liver.
Ma picks the ingredients personally at the markets every day.
“To gourmets, this is of course more important thing,” he says.
Address: In Dongshannong residential area on Xiyanghong Road, not far from the strip’s west end that connects Yugu Road.
Tel: (0571) 8138-7520
No more than five tables, almost no decoration, no fancy tableware, and no menu. Yes: noisy, crowded and long lines.
Only real foodies love Lan Bian Wan, the so small simple, yet so savory eatery.
Lan Bian Wan means blue-brim bowl. The container was the feature on Hangzhou tables about three decades ago, and thus the owner — born in the 1970s — offers nostalgia.
The restaurant cooks only home-style traditional Hangzhou food.
To order, customers just need to raise to look at two large pictures on the wall. The photos of dishes tell everything, so it is okay if you don’t speak Chinese.
The prices are below the pictures, and most are 10-30 yuan (US$1.45-4.36).
This is a local diner, looking for “mom food.”
Hangzhou food is mild and uses few spices.
But many dishes use soy sauce. If you like savory soy sauce-based dishes, look for the dark-red photos on the walls.
We recommend Jiangding (stir-fried dices of tofu or vegetables with sauce), which tastes like kung pao chicken but replace chicken with pork.
Steamed foods are another signature. At the gate, huge bamboo steamers jetting white chicken, salted fish, and stingy tofu all day long. Steamed Chicken is a must — the cooks only use half-year-old organic chicken.
Meat-lovers can have a pie of salted fish steamed with pork.
The pork absorbs the saltiness of the fish and preserved meat takes in the fat from the pork.
For an even more exotic flavor, try fermented tofu steamed with pork rissole.
As a frequent customer says: it “smells smelly, yet tastes tasty.”
Address: 45-3 Shiwukui Lane
Tel: 152-6709-1869
Sitting in one of the most expensive locations in the city, Da Pai Da still manages to offer a long list of dishes under 30 yuan, such as 5-yuan tofu and 18-yuan quail.
The restaurant attracts locals and tourists for its cheap, authentic Hangzhou cuisine, stylish decoration and of course its location near West Lake.
The house has upturned eaves and black tiles in antique Chinese style, but French windows and a glass ceiling make it a light-filled place, especially on sunny days.
Traditional bamboo baskets, pottery wine jars and Chinese couplets decorate the inside, while all waitstaff wear Song Dynasty (960-1279) style costumes.
Yet customers order by scanning QR codes with smartphones.
The food is home-style and ingredients are simple. Most are traditional Hangzhou flavor.
The taste is mild and pleasing. The portions are not large so customers can try different options.
Recommended dishes include duck braised in pot, stir-fried shrimps, kung pao chicken and cheese pumpkin.
Address: 41 Xueshi Rd (opposite to B3 exit of Longxiangqiao Metro station)
Tel: (0571) 8805-7737
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