Tas Firini Uzun - Turkish Pide Restaurant (Mannheim)

Hands down. This is the best Turkish restaurant, I've ever been to. They have the best pide and lamacun of all times. My boyfriend and me usually have a butter cheese pide and a large lamacun together for only about 10€.

The only downfall is that the restaurant just doesn't look too nice. But it's always crowded. So the owners probably don't really care if it looks appealing from the interior design aspect.

But let me tell you something... Most restaurant that look really stylish have a bad chef who can make tasteless stuff but makes it look really beautiful. This restaurant is exactly the opposite. It might not look too special but the food is amazing. The best thing is the stone oven. It is huge! Three men work altogether. Everything is soooo delicious. So if you're in Mannheim, go visit and see for yourself. The dishes are very affordable. Most dishes cost about 5€.

Tas Firini Uzun

G5, 12

68159 Mannheim

 

Din Tai Fung 鼎泰豐

Din Tai Fung is a Taiwanese franchise restaurant with high-quality food. They are especially famous for their mini dumplings (Xiao Long Bao 小籠包).

Do you see the people outside this restaurant? That's during lunch time and they all wait to be seated. Don't imagine how dinner time looks like...

I've been to one in Beijing with my cousin and his wife and this one is in Taiwan. But they are also located in Australia, USA, Singapore, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and other cities in China. I can't wait for them to come to Europe.

It's also easy for foreigners because their menu has pictures and is written in several languages including English.

Anyway a must-eat is the dim sum dish Xiao Long Bao 小籠包

 

 

Miyako - Japanese Restaurant in Geneva

I made a business trip to Geneva a couple months ago. Since my colleague and me were early, we decided to have sushi.

This is seriously the best sushi I've had in Europe. But the price is ridiculous. We paid about 70 CHF each for a little bit of sushi - I got one roll of six pieces, a tea and a tofu.

The menu is amazing. I haven't seen that many dishes in a long time. This guy above did my fried tofu.

Sorry I didn't take many pictures because I was hungry and wanted to eat it immediate.

Since everything is expensive in Geneva it probably wasn't all that expensive but coming from Germany it definitely is.

If you've got too much money and appreciate great Japanese food, you can take a look. It got great reviews on trip advisor.

http://www.miyako.ch/

Restaurant Japonais Miyako
Rue de Chantepoulet 11
1201 Genève
Switzerland

 

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.

 

Happy New Snake Year!

Happy Chinese New Year, my lovely fellow bloggers! I wish you all the best in the world for the new snake year! It's supposed to be a year of many changes. That's true for me at least.

Anyway, I'm back in Germany again. Everything had been so busy in Taiwan. We've visited so many relatives and friends that I've had absolutely no time for blogging while I was gone...

 

Tonight we went to a great Chinese restaurant in Heidelberg: the Hot Pot House.

 

They serve authentic Chinese cuisine. It's quite rare as many China restaurants tend to serve western style Chinese food... If you're at least six people, it's worth ordering hot pot. All you can eat for 15€. There are six different broths to chose from: cabbage, seafood, mushroom, curry, spicy, and non-spicy bone marrow soup. There are several dips and several plates of meat, seafood, vegetables, noodles, etc. Very delicious and filling... The soups are excellent. We've tried bone marrow and curry soup so far...

 

Wedding Dinners, Reception etc.

Since my friend married twice (civil and church), she invited us for two dinners. The first dinner was at "Le caveau des vignerons (Chez Gloria)" << click >>. I had the best steak of my life! It was amazing... Unfortunately, I was soo eager to eat it that I missed out on taking pictures of the main course.

Here are some of the appetizers and me wearing that cute napkin thing for lopsters to save my dress from oil splatters. Looking like a Sir / Lady at the same time ^.^ The shrimps were marinated in mayonaise - they were soo delicious that I even ate two pieces.

On the day of the church wedding, same thing - too hungry for the main course and no pictures were taken... But I got some from the Hors D'Oevre at the reception at the "Hotel Victoria" and the first appetizer and dessert at the party at "La Terasse du Petit Palais" which belongs to the Montreux Palace. The locations were amazing.

The "Hotel Victoria" << click >> is on top of a mountain. The view over the Lake Geneva is absolutely stunning... It's also where my boyfriend me had the kissing picture of the former blog post.

"La Terasse du Petit Palais" << click >> is right at the lake, it was perfect for the wedding - they had a big ballroom for the round tables, a dance floor, the terrace outside with a bar to cool down, tons of waiters to serve the plates at almost the same time. 

Gion Tsujiri in Kyoto

My very lovely Japanese friends Yoko and Mirika told me to eat at this great tea shop when being in Kyoto. As a German, I would rather call it a café but anyway... Mirika went with me and we had a lovely dessert at Gion Tsujiri which specialized in green tea sweets - there is the famous icecream, small waffle rolls, cream, jelly, soft rice balls, cakes, muffins... really anthing you could imagine that could be made of green tea powder. It's fantastic, but be careful, you have to stand in line for quite awhile and it is very crowded.

It is also possible to buy a lot of those sweets from the restaurant in the integrated little shop nearby.

As the name already implies, the café is in the Gion District of Kyoto, where the famous Geishas once paced in ancient times...

Gion Tsujiri (Kyoto City, Gionmachi-Minamigawa 573-3)