Article By Gary Wood
I’ll be honest, I don’t spend much time in the north of the city. However, during a recent trip to this neck of the woods I stumbled across a newly opened shopping plaza (印象城店) with numerous places to pick up some fi ne cuisine. Out of all these fi ne establishments, I chose Pepper Lunch (胡椒厨房).
As far as décor is concerned, the inside of this restaurant isn’t exactly going to turn heads, but the simplicity of the furniture is something I liked about this joint. The seating is comfortable, comprised of sofas and regular dining table chairs with soft cushions; ideal comfort for eating what one would describe as a hearty meal. The walls were adorned with various images displaying examples of their enchanting dishes in both English and Chinese.
We had three dishes from the menu, which I will describe in no particular order. To begin, one of the dishes was a New Zealand beef steak called ‘The Giant’ and was served with mashed potato, sweet corn and green beans. The steak was served on a hot plate and we had to cook it ourselves, but once it was done it tasted fantastic and came with a barbecue sauce to dip the steak pieces into. The second dish was ‘Jumbo beef with peppered rice.’ Basically, this dish is served on a hot plate with a portion of rice surrounded by thinly sliced raw beef and again, you have to cook it yourself. The rice had a lot of peppery ingredients added into it, so when stirring the dish during cooking the fi ery kick was added into the meat. The fi nal dish was
the same as the last dish, except the rice was be replaced with pasta and during the
cooking of the meat a stir-in spicy sauce was added. This stir-in sauce took this dish to the next level and gave it a real hot and spicy twist, which neither of us were expecting. If I could choose my favourite dish out of all those sampled that evening I would probably go with the last one, ‘Beef Aglio Olio.’
Overall, I would recommend people pay this place a visit just to try something different as a number of the dishes on the menu are a little unusual and it makes a nice change. However, this place can be a nightmare to fi nd on a GPS should you be driving there as it is located in a fairly new mall, and unfortunately the drinks menu was quite limited.
B1, Yin Xiang Cheng, Long shou South Road, Wei Yang Distirct
( 龙首南路印象城-1楼 )
029-8633 8280
11:00am-10:00pm
B1, Ginwa Zhu Jiang Time Square, No.335, South of Huang Cheng East Road
( 环城南路东段335号世纪金花珠江时代广场B1楼 )
029-8935 8605
11:00am-10:00pm
Average Price per Person /人均消费 : 70 RMB
PROS:
Unique cuisine, comfortable atmosphere
CONS:
Limited drinks menu
You can reach him at garywoodgac@hotmail.com
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