Chinese gem in Geneva
Visiting lovely friends back from Singapore times at their new home in Geneva and starting quite the food crawl over the four short days we spend with them.
One of my favorite places, that we’ve visited was ‘Xiang Yu’, a Chinese restaurant, they had not yet tried themselves.
We were welcomed warmly and brought to our table, swiftly everything was setup and our order was taken at once.
We ended up overordering a lil – this shall become a pattern during the course of this weekend – and almost every dish had some punch to it, Sichuan-style.
Exceptions were our selected sets of dumplings – ‘Xiao Long Bao’, ‘Jiaozi’ and ‘Har Gow’ – which we actually reordered three times.
I especially appreciated the soupy xlb, they were absolutely delicious altogether, skin, soup and filling. The jiaozi were nicely spiced and even the har gow, which I normally don’t fancy too much, head a pleasant consistency.
Smashed garlicky cucumber salad to mislead my tastebuds just nicely before and in-between the more tingling and numbing dishes, like the Sichuan fried chicken and mapo tofu, as well as the more tame mala mian and that almost glazed, spicy-sweetish eggplant dish.
All in, this was a wonderful lunch – J’s birthday lunch in fact – with just well done dishes, prepared in ways I haven’t experienced in a very long time. Geneva is quite the drive but ‘Xiang Yu’ just adds to the pros side of taking it.
Get Your Grub On!
Restaurant Xiang Yu 湘遇
Rue du Fribourg 16
1201 Genève
Switzerland
![[1] Beef bowl with lean beef, meatball, veal tongue and liver.](https://getmygrubon.files.wordpress.com/2018/02/00100dportrait_00100_burst20180208123951436_cover7323236692915200304-e1518120094187.jpg?w=545)
We had kind of an Asian food streak this week so it just made sense to throw in a little Thai spree as well. Luckily we made it here early as this outlet is always (always) booked out and so today they still had some terrace seats left for us walk-ins.
Usually when I’m on the People’s Park side of Chinatown I tend to get me some of that delicious intestine burning 
I had organized a training in Bangkok and had to stay behind at the office a little longer one night after the session had finished. When I was back at the hotel I just wanted to grab something quick before catching up with everyone for a few drinks next door. I ventured for the Kowloon restaurant in the basement, that I had recognized before, thinking some noodles and dumplings would just do fine.
To my surprise the Xiao Long Bao were quite great. Looking unpretentiously ugly and with very little, yet tasty soup within, the best part about them was the deliciously fine and juicy mince. Some proper feel good food.
I was already pretty stuffed from the noodles and the big buns when finally the fried tofu arrived, not a too shabby portion by itself. The blocks of silky tofu had a light crisp coating without any apparent flavor but thankfully that gooey sauce managed to add some lightly intriguing sweetness to it all. I would have preferred this in between my slurps of soup or after a dumpling here and there but all six beancurd bricks in a row was a rather boring occasion.
After a very questionable fish head steamboat dinner my friends took me down Liang Seah Street for some Asian dessert. At first I wasn’t too excited but boy was I up for a surprise. This place was awesome and had a pretty similar menu to 
Lunchtime again and we still didn’t feel like a salad or anything else remotely light and so went back to 
As I had their awesome 
It felt like a hundred years that I had been to ‘Lao Beijing’ but tonight I wanted to refresh my memory big time and went berserk on their menu. I spotted ‘Xiao Long Bao‘ (小笼汤包) so it came naturally to start with those favourite little steamers. Not being the prettiest of its’ kind, they were quite nice, had thin skin and a generous slurp of soup in ’em but neither the meat nor the broth had a too distinguished flavour.
Dumpling time wasn’t over just yet so we had a round of awesome ‘Pork & Cabbage Jiao Zi‘ (boiled). The cool thing here was the cabbage, not very common and tasted great together with the fine meat mass. Aside another regular on my orders, some crunchy and slightly spicy, delicious garlic cucumbers.
Over to the noodles some ‘Beijing Style Zhang Jian Mian‘ (老北京炸酱面) came our way. The noodles were soft and and thin and the whole thing tasted nice refreshing with all those chopped scallions but wasn’t really like a bean sauce but more like a lightish bolognese, nonetheless good.
My food fanatic friend A. recommended this place to me that he found during his last Taiwan trip and tonight a colleague helped me hunt it down just across the street from the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall in Da’an. ‘Hang Zhou’s’ is quite a rustic place with low tables and tiny chairs and still had many customers enjoying their dinner here, despite the late hour we arrived.
Walking around the foot outlet cramped basement arcade connecting Mid Valley and the Gardens Mall seeking for some dinner inspiration gave us a severe case of sensory overload. We were tired and couldn’t really make up our mind and since my friend just wanted something light and healthy we ended up at ‘Zun Express’ a Chinese herbal soup place. The ‘Ginseng Herbal Chicken Soup‘ I had was actually pretty good, I mean it was just boring chicken soup but seemed to be perfect when you’re down with the flu or something; strengthening I guess and the little chicken meat that was in there was tender and tasted ok. All in all this wasn’t a very filling experience and I skipped the rest of the non soupy dishes on the menu because despite them all being called healthy, 99% also had the word “fried” in their description. Let’s just say I was happy there was a ‘
Get Your Grub On! 