Let’s start with the tasty part — the food.
As I said in my previous article about the hotel, it’s better to take breakfast only at the hotel; breakfast will be enough to keep you from getting hungry until the countless little cafés start opening. There are plenty of cafés and restaurants, but not everywhere is the food good.
The legendary “Moscow Tavern” completely disappointed me from my first — and last — visit. The portions are very small; yes, there is Russian food, but it isn’t well cooked, there are lots of children and it’s very noisy. I ordered 3 dishes for myself there and didn’t even satisfy my hunger.
McDonald’s: the burgers aren’t tasty (the meat itself) — it feels as if all the meat on this island is soy. But on the other hand, McDonald’s is one of the few places that sells decent coffee.
The “Pineapple” mall — on the second and 3rd floors there are lots of different cafés where you can eat perfectly well, including a café where little plates travel along a conveyor belt and you take whatever you like from it. When you’ve finished, they count the plates and write out the bill by the number of plates. On the second floor there’s a whole row of stalls with local food. There are also lots of boutiques and a huge supermarket.
The underground market is a very long, 2-level underground passage. On the upper level they sell souvenirs, clothes and much more.
But anyone who wants to eat needs to go down to the lower level. There, on both sides, are little cafés for every taste (it was here that I tried sea urchin for the first time in my life) and a little entertainment in the form of boat rides — yes, that’s right, boat rides on the lower level of an underground passage: down the middle there’s a long pool with fountains and little boats for children.
You can get here by taxi or by bus (the bus doesn’t give change, so get small notes before the trip).
The beach: along the shoreline there are also little cafés; during the day they hardly cook anything and just sell drinks, but in the evening it all turns into colourful, pretty cafés with live music for every taste.
And I’ve saved the best for last: eating at the “U Lili” (At Lily’s) café.
An inconspicuous café (the door next to my hotel, Barry Boutique); the dining room is small but has 2 floors. Very tasty beer, big portions, and the cooking is very good. There’s a menu in Russian, and the owner and staff speak Russian, if poorly. The menu has both Russian and non-Russian cuisine. Since I don’t like eating food abroad that I can eat at home, I ordered things as unlike my usual food as possible. There I met other guests from St Petersburg, and we often went there for lunch and dinner. Every time we paid, we were given a small gift from the café — sometimes a bottle of beer, sometimes ice cream, sometimes a coconut drink. It wasn’t just for us: they did it for every guest. For our last dinner before leaving China, the guys and I went to the market and bought all sorts of seafood: shells, mussels, lobsters, crabs, fish, prawns and more. When we came to the café, we asked them to cook our haul for the evening and left it all there. When we came for dinner in the evening (before the agreed time), everything was ready, and since it was our last dinner, they cooked us a turtle as a gift (it tastes like chicken, no more, no less)! I’d also like to point out that this is one of the few cafés without a shortage of ordinary paper napkins: in other cafés you have to beg for a napkin and they might give you one!!! napkin. Here the napkins are on the table — take as many as you need. The café is run by a family (they named the café that way for our convenience); they were very friendly, told us where and how they live, chatted with us, said goodbye and hugged us. All in all, a wonderful café with wonderful people.
To the left of the hotel (the next door) there’s an escalator down to an underground supermarket, where you can do your shopping; it has everything other supermarkets have: drinks, groceries, fish, meat, sweets and anything your heart desires. This market also has a Chinese tea section, where you can taste the teas before buying and choose the one you like.
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