Saturday, August 14, 2010

My Best Coffee

Coffee at My Best Coffee
Michael_Haz: Jason, I'm curious - were you able to get coffee in China or was tea the only beverage?
Yes, and most places that sell coffee make a big production of it. I saw some of the best presentations of coffee in China--lattes in glass cups so you can see the layers, that sort of thing. The coffee vending machines offer lattes and cappuccinos; every style of coffee you can think of plus some you've never heard of.

At work people are offered tea and bottled water. If you want coffee you go to a coffee house which never offers just coffee, they always are restaurants with huge menus, usually with some western-style dishes and often ice-cream.

One of my co-workers who had been to China recommended we try My Best Coffee, a chain of these coffee houses, because the menus also contain English.

It had some weird translations like "Fried French Fries", but it was understandable:

P8070241

I'm there with a coworker; when I make my order "something" happens and it seems like every waiter and waitress in the place comes to our table. It was every tourist's worst nightmare. They were all looking at their watches and talking about time. I have a very limited ability to speak Mandarin and they had very limited ability to speak English, but they were finally able to tell me I was only able to order Chinese food at the current time. Which was strange because I thought what I ordered was Chinese.

I ended up with this (I think it's also not Chinese, but they were probably just humoring me):

My Best Coffee meal

5 comments:

Pete said...

I imagine the octopus balls are fairly tiny.

Jason (the commenter) said...

As long as they aren't too chewy.

chickelit said...

I imagine the octopus balls are fairly tiny.

Not if you are Paul the Prescient. That octopus had huge balls.

chickelit said...

So calibrate us Jason. How much was popcorn in American money?

Jason (the commenter) said...

12 yuan would be $1.77, and that's in a fancy restaurant.