Palms Garden - Chinese Restaurant

I love traditional Chinese food. It's really quite difficult to find a good place in Germany as most Chinese restaurants have adapted dishes that sometimes don't even exist in Asia. I hate all-you-can-eat buffets normally because usually there aren't enough customers so the food stays in the trays for hours which changes its flavor... Besides, Chinese food can be cooked within minutes. Whenever I'm hungry and tell my dad (he's a chef), he'll have the food done in no time. Unfortunately, I don't live that close that I could visit him every week. So I'm always looking out for new locations...

 

I live an hour away from Frankfurt but I still go to that restaurant Palms Garden because it is THAT insanely GREAT... Even though it is all-you-can-eat... but the Chinese Hot Pot is to die for... There are so many customers every day, not only on special occasions. Every time we need to wait for a table to be cleared. There are a bunch of Asian people every time. That's a very easy indication of great traditional Chinese food btw ;-) not only in Germany.

We always choose the half-spicy-half-non-spicy broth. But be careful - spicy really is spicy...

The incredible amount of ingredients for the hot pot is cooled in the open fridge (left picture). You can take small plates to carry them to your table. On the right-hand side, you can see the main ingredients for the dips. You can mix whatever you like. I mostly go with satay sauce (not saté as peanut butter but a Chinese BBQ sauce), some garlic and spring onions... There's nothing like great satay sauce... Yummy :)

On the lower pictures, you can see the normal buffet. I'm not a big fan of that but if you only choose the normal buffet, it's cheaper.

I mostly take a lot of seafood and spinach... There are also some weird looking mushrooms which aren't on the picture - I think they are called Miso in Japanese.

 

The dessert consists of ice cream, fruits (seasonal and canned), sesame rolls, cream puffs, fried bananas, coconut pearls, etc.

For dinner, we usually pay around 17€ per person (including 1€ for all-you-can-drink soft drinks). One little hot pot stove costs around 5€, which is enough for four people. So depending on the amount of people, it might be a little more than 17€... If you come during lunch time, it is cheaper but there's also less variety. If you don't chose the hot pot, it'll be less as well.

 

China, here I come again

Last week, I went to a job interview where I was spontaneously invited to go on a 4- day business trip to Beijing. It's only a couple days but I'm very excited but also anxious as I don't really know what I can contribute to the trip. If I pass the test, I will be signing the contract after the trip.

Now, I have two more weeks to prepare myself. Not only information about the company that we will visit but also some special vocabularies about the machines and stuff like that. Besides, I was asked to study a special treatment which is supposed to be quite promising. I will be reading publications and stuff about it, treating it like one of my research subjects...

I must say, I'm still quite baffled that I was asked to join the trip. On the second day, I told a couple of my friends about the offer and one of them jokingly said "maybe they want to sell you in China"... Don't hope think so... Everything seems quite legit. I got the flight information, the booking confirmation for the hotel. The company exists for almost 10 years. I've got the invitation letter and they will handle my visa. I hope everything will work out just fine... So long... I will keep you updated about my journey.