From the cable car station in Zhangjiajie, we quickly hailed a cab to bring us to lunch/dinner. Our taxi driver was another one of those chatty types and we wasted no time in asking whether or not we were interested to see a cultural park. Obviously, we didn’t have time for the since we were starving. We politely asked him to bring us to our hotel.
I asked him what is a nice place to eat here in Zhangjiajie. He recommended this place Jiudouliang Restaurant 九斗粮酒楼, which was conveniently near our hotel, we just needed to cross the street to get back to our hotel. He was babbling about how nice the place is, most expecially how nice the ambience is. According to him, most of the restaurants around here do not have that ambience anymore, but the one he is recommending to us is nice. In fact, he eats there once in a while.
He recommended a few dishes which would amount to a hundred RMB, no thanks, we are on a budget. Anyway, it seemed that he really liked this place and kept talking about it. I’m sure we can find some thing not too expensive to eat there. He finally got there and just drove off. I was half expecting him to get a commission for bringing customers there. At least someone wasn’t out to earn money off of us.
Jiudouliang Restaurant has that old Chinese building style. In fact, it is more Tujia than the traditional houses seen elsewhere. This is after all a Tujia restaurant. Tujia is one of the minority group in Hunan province, some of their dishes have become characteristic of Hunan food. The place looks like it is pretty old and it made of wood, at least most parts of it. They brought us to the dining area which looks more like a dining area of a house than a restaurant. This must be the ambience that the taxi driver was talking about. The dining area is divided by nice wooden sliding doors. It even has a small altar of its own. Our table is made out of solid wood and it quite big for us, since was meant for 12 people.
We quickly looked through the menu and true enough there were some stuff which is quite expensive, most especially the fish dishes which ran into the hundreds. It seemed to be their specialty. We ordered the standard stuff, barbecued meat and the home style beancurd. Fortunately, the dishes were much better than the similar dishes elsewhere. The food is cooked the traditional way, meaning over a wood fire, not a stove. The smoked meat is made by them and can be seen from the entrance.
It was a really nice place to eat in, but being only two people we couldn’t order that many. At times the room can get quite spooky too since it wasn’t that bright inside. The ambience was great and the food was better than average, although we didn’t get to try the more expensive ones. My friend quickly ate and left for the hotel as soon as he could. He still needed to pack and freshen up before the long trip to Guangzhou. I sat their inthe dining room eating myself getting a preview of how it is to eat alone in China.
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