The Coffee Shop - Zhouzhuang Restaurant Review

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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.