Kunming Restaurants

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You might have alreadly knew, in Yunnan, you must try their famous Guo Qiao Mi Xian (Cross Bridge Rice Noodles). Brief descriptions of this dish would be: you would be served a very hot bowl of soup base (usually chicken stock), a bowl of plain rice noodle, a plate of super thin slices of meat (chicken, pork etc) and a small plate of raw vegetable and usually a raw quail egg. The name "Cross bridge" is the action where you pour in the ingredients and the noodles into the hot soup.

There is a proper way of putting in your ingredients, first the egg, then the meat. Wait for a while, then put in the vegetables and the noodles last. This is to ensure all the ingredients will be properly cooked.

It tasted good, i like it. Just that it's abit too oily. According to my tour guide, that is to keep the soup base hot enough to cook the meat slices. Fair enough!

This restaurant I went, as according to my tour guide again, was one of the oldest and most traditional restaurant selling the cross bridge rice noodle. A bowl of what I ate cost just $12RMB.

I ended up here a morning as I woke up too late to have breakfast in the hotel and this was the only place opened at 11 am.
The breakfast was good, so I decided to come back for dinner.I got a fried rice that was nice and above all, as I asked, it was not spicy and I got offered for the first time in Yunnan a draught Tsingao beer.Tsingao is the beer I drunk every evening and it was absolutely not that good, but I must say the draught version was really nice and with much less gas than the bottle one, it was my last day...if I only found it before I guess I would have drunk much more beer in China.

Favorite Dish: Draught Tsingao beer.

This is a VERY small cafe along the Dongfeng road where I had the chance to eat the best vegetable noodles of all my trip in Yunnan.
I say VERY small because there just 4 or 5 tables and the waiter has hardly the space to walk betwen them.

Favorite Dish: Vegetable noodles.

In Camelia hotel you have two restaurants: at first floor and at the lobby, which is also a bar.
I tried to go to the restaurant at first floor but no way, noone could understand a word of what I said, so I decided to try the one at the lobby and there, things were better.
The restaurant was good, but, as in the rest of Yunnan, you'll have troubles if, like me, you cannot eat spicy, infact even when they are sure the dish is not spicy it's easy to find there pepper, usually I have been lucky with springrolls, here and in other restaurant I didn't find them to be spicy.

Favorite Dish: Springrolls, I am not sure if they were that good, but at least they were not spicy.

When walking around in the Green Lake Parc, and spending some hours there, you can have a simple lunch in one of the pavilions at the back site of this parc. On the first floor, there is even a terrasse, on which you have a splendid view all over the lake.
Simple menu card and really not expensive. I don't remerber the name, but have a look on the annex photo.

As far as I know the only restaurant in Kunming that bakes their pizza's in a wood-fired oven.
Very tasty stuff!
But more amazing is the wide variety of dishes. The menu is so extensive that it can be hard to make a choice: it varies from Italian, western and Mexican food to Chinese and Indian.
The restaurant itself is built around an open courtyard, three stories high and has a very pleasant relaxed atmosphere about it. It used to be the officers-mess of the flying tigers once, which explains all the flying tiger pictures in the poolroom.
They also have about the biggest library/book-exchange I've ever seen in China, free wifi internet (which I'm now using) and a children play-pen upstairs

Favorite Dish: Although their pizza's are really good (especially the Italian ones, with the thin crusty base) I most enjoyed their Indian food, the chicken tikka masala and the lamb vindaloo. Very authentic! The only thing I didn't really care for was the dal, which was a bit too bland for my taste. The chapatis and nan are good too though.

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There's a cafe which serves great food at the intersection of Dong Feng Dong Lu and Bai Ta Lu, about 300 meters away from Camelia hotel (turn right from the hotel).

I love the tuna sandwich especially, served with fries - huge serving

Price of food - about average.

They offer free internet service. Limited surfing time.

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I had the noodles at this restaurant during lunch.
I won't go into the history for the name....
You get a bowl of noodle, a separate steaming hot bowl of soup and the raw ingredients (meat, some vegetables).
The raw ingredients are mixed into the bowl of hot steaming soup, and then poured over the noodles.

Must try.

Get a bottle of beer to accompany the noodles. ;-)
Damage - RMB 25 (Sept 05 - beer + noodle)