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Food choices in Zhouzhuang are quite limited in their
diversity, and unless you are looking for seafood and local cuisine, there
really isn’t much you can do.
Fortunately for Westerners who are weary to eat at restaurants that
don’t tend to place a high priority on sanitation, there is the Coffee Shop.
I have always been a bit hesitant eating in Zhouzhuang after
my first encounter with food there back in 2009. After wandering around scoping
out the various restaurants my friends and I picked the one that we felt might
be the safest to eat at (I couldn’t have been more wrong). After getting some
pretty nasty food poisoning (which ruined my last day of vacation in Shanghai)
I vowed never to eat in Zhouzhuang again, opting to bring snacks with me for
every subsequent day trip to the village.
On my last visit however, I decided to stay overnight for
the first time. I’ve heard so many wonderful things about Zhouzhuang at night
which is impossible to experience unless you have your own car (or hire one) as
the tourist buses all head back for Shanghai in the late afternoon. This being
the case, I decided to give Zhouzhuang’s culinary offering one more try.
After checking in at our hostel, the Longxing Inn, we walked
around the main commercial street to check out some restaurants.
Not far from the hostel we found the Coffee
Shop which had advertisements for pizza and other western foods.
The outside of the hostel is beautifully
decorated and inviting (the little window sill is pretty awesome).
After walking inside the main entrance I immediately
fell in love with the place.
The lobby is very reminiscent of the trendy hostels I’ve managed to find all
over the country.
Next to the entrance
is a notice board with leaflets and fliers from other awesome hostels in other
parts of the country (definitely worth looking into if you’ll be traveling
around and are looking for cool places to stay on a budget). The restaurant and
bar are open, comfortable, and tastefully decorated.
This is an awesome place to hang out!
The most coveted place in the restaurant is a
table with 2 very comfortable couches and is situated at a large window looking
into their small, yet beautiful, courtyard.
The menus, which are black construction paper, folded
accordion style, with neon and white crayon writing (a perfect fit for the
trendy atmosphere) are pretty cool as well.
They don’t have an incredibly large selection though, just a few
sandwiches, pizzas, pastas, breakfast choices, and a few Chinese dishes.
I opted to try one of their pizzas (which ran
about 35 RMB) and my wife tried the grilled ham and cheese sandwich (about 25
RMB).
The pizza, which was your standard 9 inches, size wasn’t
that bad. It wasn’t the best pizza I’ve had, but given the location, definitely
worth the money. I ordered the Hawaiian
pizza which had your standard ham and pineapple on it, but also had corn on it
too. It took a little getting used to,
but once I got over it, it was actually quite good. The cheese and the sauce
were a tad disappointing however. The
cheese wasn’t the best quality and was quite rubbery and bland, but what am I
supposed to expect for 35 RMB?
The sandwich was pretty disappointing though. The sandwich
should have been called “warmed up ham on bread with a slice of cheese and
salad dressing on it.”
We were expecting
a traditional grilled cheese sandwich with ham inside for added
deliciousness.
The salad dressing
definitely didn’t help the situation either.
Definitely avoid this sandwich!
What I loved about this place was just how "at home" I felt while there. The service is well above your typical Chinese restaurant. The staff is all very friendly and if you can speak the language, are always happy to chat with. The hostel also has 2 very friendly dogs that live on the premises and will roam around the hostel and restaurant adding to that homely feel.
The restaurant also has a full bar and offers a variety of
mixed beverages, local beer, juices, and sodas.
The restaurant can get quite busy during the peak lunch period (between
11:00 am and 1:30pm) but was almost empty in the evening. This is the perfect place to wind down and
throw back a cold one after a long day of exploring the village. Highly recommended!
Rating:
Price: $
Value: 3.5/5
Taste: 3/5
Service: 4/5
Selection: 2.5/5
How to get there:
I can’t seem to find an address for the restaurant so
starting from the Longxing Inn Hostel which is at 80 Beishi Jie, walk north
along Beishi Jie (stay on the same side as the hostel) until you come across
the Coffee Shop. It should be about 50 meters or so away from Longxing Inn.
**The Coffee Shop is actually a hostel as well, and this
review is simply for the restaurant contained inside as I have not personally
stayed overnight in one of their rooms.