A two-day trip to Shenyang, here’s a casual travel log. This trip to Shenyang was basically all about shopping and eating. With temperatures dropping nationwide over the weekend—Changchun actually fell below -25°C—Shenyang was relatively milder, making it a decent choice to escape the cold, though it was still well below freezing at around -10°C. I had originally planned to visit traditional attractions like Beiling Park, the Imperial Palace, and Marshal Mansion, but it was simply too cold to make that happen. So, we ended up doing almost entirely indoor activities~~ Archery and watching movies were also great options~~~
Let’s start with Saturday: went archery in the morning, then after having a terribly disappointing pork chop rice dish at an unnamed small restaurant… we browsed around MixC Mall, and afterward headed to the nearby Grand Hyatt Lobby Lounge for tea. The Grand Hyatt is arguably the best hotel in Shenyang, both in terms of facilities and dining quality. Another plus is that the lobby lounge isn’t on the ground floor—it’s located on one of the upper twenties floors, offering some views from the windows. The non-smoking area is quite small, but very quiet with hardly anyone around, right next to the bar counter.
The ambiance is excellent:
On one side of the window, you can see a construction site, the TV tower, and a park; on the other side is the Shangri-La Hotel.
Beverage prices at the Lobby Lounge are very reasonable, with coffee costing around 30 RMB, similar to Starbucks prices~ We ordered Jin Jun Mei black tea and 20-year-aged Pu’er tea, served in Gongfu tea sets, which was quite impressive.
In the evening, we visited a highly popular upscale skewer restaurant listed on Dianping. In reality, the ambiance wasn’t particularly upscale, though the prices certainly were… It’s said to be located in the former residence of Miss Zhao Si, featuring a classical yet dilapidated style, and somewhat dirty. The tableware consisted of those pre-packaged sterilized utensils typically found in street-side stalls, which felt quite unclean…
The standout feature of their skewers is the use of red willow branches as sticks, infusing the meat with a subtle woody aroma. They also selected cuts with decent texture, such as chuck roll and cucumber strip beef, but they used way too much seasoning, making everything extremely salty…
There’s also the famous ‘Shrimp Chicken Skin Skewer’—what a ridiculous name! Essentially, it’s shrimp wrapped in chicken skin. This dish feels more like a gimmick than anything else; the taste wasn’t particularly good. As for the chicken gizzard skewers, they were completely ruined—incredibly tough and impossible to chew.
Garlic-roasted eggplant tasted great, but was far too greasy…
Seafood Steam Bath—the flavor itself was fine, but the ingredients weren’t fresh, and there was plenty of sand…
Foil-baked catfish was delicious, sweet and sour, with nicely textured flesh.
They had a live singer performing, and this young guy really sang beautifully.
To sum up this restaurant… Both service and ambiance were mediocre, especially the environment, which was essentially on par with typical street-side eateries. However, they’ve adopted many marketing strategies appealing to younger crowds, building a solid reputation. Their dishes tend to be heavily seasoned, perfectly catering to youthful tastes, but a single meal here would definitely exceed your daily sodium intake, and the prices are somewhat excessive.
Clearly, this city isn’t adequately prepared for such extreme cold. Independent storefront restaurants like this one suffer from insufficient heating indoors—you even need to keep your jacket on while dining~~~ Restaurants located inside malls or hotels don’t have this issue.
Photos in this post taken with SONY NEX-5R + 16-50 f3.5-5.6, post-processed in Lightroom.
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