First Impressions - Sep 26th

After sleeping in all morning, Shirley and I barely made it to the hotel breakfast before it closed. I’m glad we made it because this was my first impression of the food I will be eating for the next few days. There was a wide variety of food, from American classics like French toast and bacon to traditional Chinese foods like rice porridge and purple sticky rice. Shirley assured me it wouldn’t be a true Lanzhou meal without Lanzhou beef noodles, and low-and-behold, there was in fact a chef making fresh, homemade beef noodles for breakfast. I’ve tried two new fruits already too, juju berries and logan, also called, "dragon's eye."

Shortly after breakfast, Shirley’s uncle insisted he come meet us and host us at his place for lunch. It was a great spread with all sorts of things including: Kantonese chicken, Shanhai-style chicken, garlic cucumber salad, egg-tomato stir fry, whole shrimp and bitter melon.

Later, Shirley’s extended family also wanted to eat with us, so we traveled to the edge of Lanzhou City to a lamb restaurant that just six years ago was an old brick building with no restrooms, has since been transformed into an elegant two-story restaurant with marble floors and chandeliers, along with it’s own hotel built all around it. It has the reputation of being the best place to get lamb in all of Lanzhou, and I must say, it was amazing.