Went to Abashi last Saturday and the food was good. More about that later, but what really struck me was the mixture of clientele …there was a big group of Indians having a party, about 4 tables of Japanese, a few Laowai and, yes, even some Chinese! Very Cosmopolitan, and maybe what you would expect of a Japanese owned Indian Curry house in China.
As is typical of Japanese owned places, Abashi is spick and span. It’s also tastefully decked out with South Asian motifs and nick-nacks and has nice Japanese-style clean straight lines for the furniture.
The Chinese waitstaff will greet you in Japanese, “Irashaimase!” and most of them speak Japanese, but there’s one who can speak English. There are English menus too.
There are four types of curry: Red, Green, White, and Yellow. The Indian flag is green, red, and white, and Japanese are yellow so that might explain it.
Three of the curries - green, yellow and white - have a thick consistency.
Green has a spinach base and is the most expensive. The three others are the same price.
Yellow has a tomatoey tang.
White is creamy.
The Red curry has a soupy consistency and is a bit spicier than the others.
If you want them to spice any of them up a bit, just ask and they are happy to oblige. The white curry doesn’t really suit being spicy though.
You can get chicken, pork, and mutton curries (no Holy Cow!) and there are also mixed veg, and potato and aubergine available.
We tried all of the curry colours and they were all good. I don’t get to eat mutton that much in China so I loved the yellow mutton curry.
You can get rice, of course, but you really should eat your curry with a big naan bread. They are generously sized (if a bit pricey at 14 rmb) and delicious. They come in the shape of an elephant’s head with a long trunk, which is the Abashi symbol.
Wash down your curry and naan with a draught Asahi beer or a mango lassi and it should come to about 50 rmb a head.
Bally’s is an American gym that takes itself and fitness seriously. It’s the biggest and most successful chain of American fitness centers, and so unsurprisingly it’s well equipped and well run and you can almost always find someone who can speak English.
They have two branches in Dalian, one in the basement of the Guangdong Development Bank building at Zhongshan square and one at the Roosevelt Centre. I have only ever been to the Zhongshan branch, but I am assured that the Roosevelt one is almost exactly the same only a bit bigger. Your membership gets you access to both.
I’m not a gym rat, but even I can tell there’s an impressive array of machines and free weights. The machines are all imported from America, and so all the instructions are in English. There’s also plenty of walking, cycling, and step machines, which all have TVs attached to help the grueling time pass. Shame they all show CCTV then. There is also a large exercise room where you can partake in whatever form of aerobics, yoga, tai chi or martial arts they are offering. There is a wide choice and they even have the occasional guest yogameisters from India. At the back of the gym there’s another room with a lot of bikes for frantic group music biking sessions. Oh yes, and there’s also a corner with a punchbag, some skipping ropes and lots of balls.
I joined mainly for the not too busy (and no kids!) swimming pool, as well as the dry and steam saunas. A swim and a sauna at the end of a day is wonderful and the Zhongshan branch stays open till 9 so you can manage it even if you work late. A little grumble though…the dry sauna is only just hot enough for a proper sweat and so it’s necessary to keep putting water on the heater to “loyly” up the temperature a bit. The steam sauna is only operational about half the time. And some of the punters seem to like gobbing and hawking in the sauna. Classy!
The staff are friendly and you can be assigned a personal trainer who speaks English if you so require. I had two personal training sessions with the lovely Phoebe. The first was in the pool where she improved my freestyle in 30 minutes and the second was in the gym where she quickly told me I was fat and unfit. Ah, Chinese straightalking!
The décor inside is nicely done. Softly lit corridors with potted plastic plants and eerily genuine looking plastic palm trees, and the main gym is well lit and decked out with large photos of beautiful and multicultural people getting fitter. There are also motivational slogans all around such as ““BE A WINNER, BE BEAUTIFUL, BE POWERFUL, BE DIFFERENT, BE SPECIAL, BE YOURSELF, BE THE BEST as well as TAKE IT TO THE MAX and my favourite, GO HARD OR GO HOME”. There’s always some music playing and it’s mostly English, and mostly hip-hop or rock ballads. Eminem and Queen seem to be popular. And there’s free Internet access and a little shop that sells gym related stuff like clothes, drinks, and bucket-like pots of whey and vitamins.
But perhaps the best thing about the place is that it’s never busy. I go there fairly regularly and have never had to wait for a machine or swim around someone in the swimming pool.
All in all, a good place and reasonable value at 5000 a year, or 8000 for two years. For a little while yet there’s a modest discount available so if you’re interested in joining soon then you can phone the English speaking “Vane”, a friendly young lass, on 15998572095. Please mention Dalian Xpat.
I lived in Japan for 3 years and took to the cuisine like a fish to water, so I get sushi cravings from time to time. The Japanese like to give an honorific “O” prefix to important (honoured) aspects and things in their culture and hence you have “O-kaasan” (honourable mother) “O-yu” (honourable hot water - it makes sense when you go to a Japanese hot-springs resort) and of course there is the right honourable “O-sushi”. This pretty much sums up the way I feel about sushi.
Being back in my home town of Brighton, Britain, for a few months last year was a shock. My 15 pounds an hour English teacher wage would get me about 8-10 pieces of (Yo!) sushi, which would make me about one quarter full. And most of the sushi I ate in “Brighton-by-the-sea” did not look fresh and did not taste right. I didn’t go often.
So what’s to be had in Dalian, a city famed for its seafood throughout the land? Well, the Chinese, by and large, do not do raw fish. Maybe it’s too Japanese and would stick in a nationalist’s craw. Maybe it’s because the average Chinese still doesn’t like to stray outside of the Chinese kitchen that often. But a few do, and there are a lot of Japanese living and working here, so sushi can be hunted down. The high end Japanese restaurants in Dalian serve the real McCoy, but still and all they are aimed at Japanese businessmen so they bump up the price…why not?
It took me a while, but I think I’ve found the cheapest and most cheerful sushi place in town on the fifth floor foodcourt at NewMart. It’s welcoming, clean, does very decent sushi, and between the hours of 5 and 9 it has an “All you can eat” (tabehodai) sushi buffet for 58 yuan. There’s a wide range available, including almost all my favourites such as tuna, salmon, octopus, squid, scallop, sardine, mackerel, yellow tail, and I could go on.
That’s 4 British pounds for all the honourable raw fish you can handle and since my hourly wage here is 8 pounds, you can see that Dalian well and truly trounces Brighton on the “quality-of-living-as-measured-by-a-bellyful-of-O-sushi” benchmark.
They also do a good range of beers, hot and cold sake, and some hot food such as Japanese style eel with rice, chicken, pork, fish, and Japanese style curry rice.
It’s a great place.
That’s all for now honourable reader.
With Respect
Kim
Bobo’s bar is named after the friendly Chinese patron, Mr Bobo. He can’t speak English but his Chinese and his Japanese are pretty good. His great little bar is a five minute stroll up Yan’an Lu from Zhongshan square and provides a more relaxed alternative to “Dave’s” if you’re in that area.
Bobo's has three sections, one indoor and two outdoor. The first outdoor part is simply a couple of tables out front where you can sit and watch the world go by when the weather’s nice. Pass through the main bar and you’ll find the other outdoor section, a lovely little Japanese/Chinese style courtyard garden with a bamboo bridge, a dinky little river, and a covered pagoda with enough seats for about 12 people. Perfect for warm summer evenings.
And inside is Bobo’s den. It’s a busy looking grotto with enough seats for about 40 people, a dartboard, a screen and projector, Tibetan style hangings, and a lot of Football and Rock&Roll posters. Man. U., Liverpool, and Milan fans should feel welcome.
Most of the time the big screen is showing CCTV 5, but in the afternoons they’ll often show some movies. I spent a pleasant afternoon there watching “Click” with Mr Adam Sandler only last week. There’s also wireless internet access.
Bobo’s fridge stocks the usual bottles of TsingTao and Harbin for 10 rmb, Carlsberg and Heineken for 20, and if you’re feeling extravagant there’s Erdinger dark and light Weisbeer for 50. One nice touch is that Bobo or staff will invariably pop a big gratis plate of peanuts in front of you to help the beers go down.
Wine, champagne, some Japanese sakes and shochus, and some Chinese baijou’s are available. A shot of vodka will set you back 20 kwai, and there’s an impressive choice of whiskies.
For the sober and industrious there’s a big refillable pot of good Chinese tea for 40, or some Italian espresso for 25.
But maybe what really moves this place up from pretty good to very good is the excellent Uygur style bread and kebabs that are cooked up for you right outside (by real Uygurs!) and brought in while you sup. You can fill up for 10 RMB easily.
It gets quite busy at weekends, but a normal weekday evening will see about 5-10 people. The crowd is usually a mixture of Chinese, Japanese, and Laowai.
Mr Bobo doesn’t sell cigarettes for some odd reason, but you can nip over to the convenience store just across the Yan’an road, should you get tobacco pangs.
Bar Bacco is my local. It’s in a Japanese-influenced area southwest of Lao Dong Park, near Dalian University of Foreign Languages, or DaWai. It’s a small bar (only seats 11) but it packs a lot of good things into its compact little L shaped room.
The boss and owner is Master-san, a dapper looking 30 something Japanese guy who can speak Good Chinese and reasonable English, if you press him. The bar help is a final year DaWai student called Frank, and he speaks great English, good Japanese, and is a friendly likeable guy. If you’re an English speaker it’s most likely that Frank will be the one to serve you and chat with you. Master-san mostly looks after the 99% of the clientele who are Japanese.
Indeed, Bar Bacco whisks you back to Japan. The same salarymen types sucking on their cigarettes and talking office politics, and the same exemplary service and cleanliness. I lived in Tokyo for 3 years and so for me it is very nostalgic to be surrounded by the rhythms, polite phrases, and body language of Japanese. I can speak a bit, but not really enough to follow the conversations. I just like sipping my draught Asahi and letting it wash over me. One warning however, the other thing that often washes over you in this bar are the billowing clouds of cigarette smoke. I’m not completely sure why it’s called Bar Bacco, but the to “bacco” link is certainly there.
And what of the wares? Well, for me the draught Asahi at 15 RMB a glass is good value as it’s a clean taste, a big glass and they pour the beer with a nice little head of froth. The cocktail list is extensive, and Master-san is a cocktail master. There are also wines and spirits and other bottled beers for sale, but disappointingly for a sake fan like me, Master-san only stocks one kind of Japanese sake (nihonshu). However, it’s a good one and I’d recommend it.
The menu is Italian, homemade by the master of the house. Antipasta, Pasta, Pizza, Salad, Panino, Dolce. All good stuff and you can watch the painstaking care he puts into making it as you have your drink. Very reasonably priced as well at mostly round the 30-40 RMB mark.
Highly recommended. Just hope there’s a seat when you get there.
163x
Coltsfan
