Mainland China: July 19th, 2007

Our first attempt to visit Mainland China in Indiranagar was thwarted by the Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal Wimbledon final and so we finally managed to organize another trip with our friends Nisha and Prabhu (Prabhu has featured previously on Dosahunters I and II), while Nisha would not consent to such cheap dining and we had to re set our price range for and go to Mainland China.

It is located at the veery end of 100 foot road, just before one turns off to go to Airport Road and so parking is not really available. Fortunately, there is valet parking. The restaurant has a nice ambience and apparently unless one travels with young children and eats early 7-7:30 pm, reservations are recommended.

We started with the kimchi (free!), which I haven’t enjoyedin recent years at most Chinese restaurants, but this one was surprisingly nice and fresh as well as cold. The corn soup for our daughter was also nice, but was a little sweet. For starters, we ordered some tofu which was stuffed and some stuffed vegetarian sui mai. Although they were both good, the stuffing was the same. The meat eaters seemed happy with fried chicken wontons. For the main course, hakka noodles are a must to keep our daughter under control. She ate them with relish and they lived up to the mark. The vegetarian fried rice was also very good (considering one can’t really go wrong with it!). For the main course we ordered the four treasure (baby corn, mushroom, capsicum and asparagus) vegetable in Hunan sauce. We were extremely happy with this because it tasted great, without the usual excessive garlic. The meat eaters seemed happy with General Tao’s chicken. Dessert was Darsaan (fried noodles with honey and sesame) with vanilla ice cream (standard fare) and chocolate rolls with caramel sauce (nice stuffing of chocolate and nuts, but deep fried…chocolate spring rolls!). Nisha and Prabhu’s son Sid didn’t bother to look up while enjoying his chocolate ice cream.

Overall, I would say good Chinese food even though we didn’t order anything out of the ordinary. I liked the fact that we weren’t too “garlicked” out at the end of the meal. The post meal dehydration (a necessity with any Chinese meal) was not too bad. The service was kind and prompt. A high chair is available.

Overall:

Food: ****

Ambience: ****

Overall: ****