Babela's Kitchen

We meet Andi's friend and her husband the other day in Hefei for lunch. They decided to go to a cheap western style restaurant that is quite popular here in China called Babela's Kitchen. Not everything on the menu was bad as they had some typical pasta dishes(the restaurant is trying to go for an Italian theme), salads, pizzas, etc. However, there are some that make no since but apparently are very popular here. Looking at this menu gave me great confidence in opening a restaurant here.

This was the cover to the menu. Menu's here in China are very different then what we receive in America. Here, they are usually quite thick and always have pictures of the food unlike our menu's where there is only a description. I have also been to one place where there were no menus. Instead, you were led to a large display window where most of the dishes were already prepared and wrapped in plastic, allowing you to choose which ones you wanted.

The menu was formatted similar to our menu's however desserts were at the beginning. After trying that horrible chestnut cheesecake in Shanghai, I decided to stay away from these as well.

They had an appetizer section with mostly fried items. Notice the "cornflakes" aka tortilla chips at the top.

"The Wild Germ Hates Soup with Crisp Skin." This one I had no clue on! When Andi read it in Chinese.....Mushroom Soup! I have found that here in China, there are usually a mistake or two when something is translated into English. I have seen it on menu's, advertisements, and T-shirts. One of the best T-shirts I saw was on a girl in Shanghai. The T-shirt read "Whore Sucking Cherries!" I really wish I had gotten a picture of the shirt. :p

At first I thought this one was kinda weird but then I realized it's somewhat a play on Waldorf Salad.

 Sauerkraut Risotto. I've put a lot of things in risotto but never sauerkraut.

I have no clue what Germany Sauce it and didn't really want to find out! The sausages look like breakfast links, huh?

The top dish of "Assorted Meat Deluxe" seems like something Americans would like; it's all fried!

I took a picture of these because there definition of "Omelette" is more like scrambled eggs on top of rice. If I would have ever given my old chef Todd Winer an omelette that looked like this, he would have sent the whole plate flying back to me! :p

The famous "Fruit Puff Pizza" Andi had told me so much about. Banana's, mango, and I think pineapple. Gross!

You can also get it "Hawaiian" style where they cover it in what looks to be mayonnaise. The "Mixed French Fries" pizza looks a little strange to me but I'm sure we do this somewhere in America.

Japanese style comes with dried bonito flakes on top. You'll notice in all the pictures of pizza, the crust is super thin. When I looked closely at it, I think they use some type of puff pasty like dough as it seems very brittle.

Andi ordered the Seafood Curry with Omellete. The omellete was a very thin crepe on top of a small mound of rice. The curry sauce however wasn't that bad.

Since most of the items on the menu didn't appeal to me, I went with "Hot and Spicy Beef with Rice and Vegetables." I figured how could I go wrong with these three main components in Chinese culture. Well, it went very wrong.; it was like eating mouthfuls of air. There was very little chili oil on the bottom of the bowl which didn't add any spice. The carrots were close to small rocks as they hadn't been blanched long enough. There was no flavor at all, even from the beef. Just bland and boring. However, most Chinese people don't really like strong flavors so I guess I shouldn't have been so surprised. On the other hand, I don't think I'll be going back to Babela's Kitchen anytime soon!