Rendez-Vous 约会空间

Article By Anthony Cordina

9F, SKP, Nan Guan Zheng Jie.
南关正街西安SKP商场9层
(029) 8369 9050
10:00am – 10:00pm

Average Price per Person /人均消费: 170RMB

PROS: Great food, unique atmosphere

CONS: No touching!

Rendez-vous is not just a restaurant. It is also a bookstore, a café and a cocktail bar with a curiosity shop thrown in the middle. It is a sophisticated balance of all these parts that can only be fully appreciated by visiting Rendez-vous.

Combining all these elements, Rendez-vous can make one feel as if they were strolling around the duty-free zone at an airport. The books, many of which are in English and about art, architecture and design, can be read at your leisure while sipping cocktails. You can also buy them to add to your home collection. Rendez-vous get all their books directly from the printers, so their prices are often less than you would pay online.
The curiosity shop will have you feeling like a kid again as you ogle over the giant golden Dia de los Muertos skull, exquisite miniature steam engines from Germany and genuine Swarovski-encrusted iPhone covers and water bottles, to mention but a few (no touching please!).

And then there is the food. With all the attention paid to the books and high-end toys I was expecting the food to be a sort of accompaniment, something to snack on while browsing. It is not. The food is easily among the best, if not the best western food I have had the good fortune of trying in Xi’an. The Beef Carpaccio, Signature Crab Cakes, Asparagus Potato Soup, Minestrone, Slow Cooked Beef Ribs, Pan-Seared Cod Fish and Lava Chocolate Cake all come highly recommended and are the works of Chef Phillip, who trained at The International Culinary Institute of Las Vegas and served as Head Chef of The Clement Hotel in Palo Alto, California before joining SKP.

From the 9th floor, North-west corner of the SKP luxury department store, you can enjoy a view of South Gate while drinking coffee and reading books, enjoy an amazing lunch or dinner with friends and then get loose at the cocktail bar with the lights of the city wall as your backdrop. Rendez-vous aims to provide all its guests with a relaxed environment where you can enjoy the finer things and feel in absolutely no hurry to leave. Rendez-vous is very foreigner friendly and the handsome Mr. Eric Wang, the Food and Beverage Manager, who is also fluent in English, does an outstanding job of ensuring exemplary food and service. Rendez-vous is a novel concept which cannot be praised enough and you should absolutely experience it for yourself.

Anthony Cordina never breaks the second rule of Fight Club. He can be reached at reviews@xianease.com

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