Beijing Grandma's Home (Thursday, August 16th, 2018)

Steve did some research (Trip Advisor) to find us a new restaurant to try, and the one that got the best reviews is called Grandma's Home.  It is in the big mall about a block from our hotel.  So back to the mall we went!

When we got to the restaurant, we couldn't believe the line to get in.  We put our name in and they said that it would be about 45 minutes.  

They hand out menus when you check in, so that you can be ready to order when you get your table.  The only problem with that is the menus are entirely in Chinese with no pictures.  So Steve looked up pictures of some food that looked good to us online, and a really nice young man made an attempt at picking our food out on the menu for us.  The menu was very extensive, so he really had his work cut out for him, but he was great and seemed to enjoy talking to us.

While we were waiting, they brought around a cart of juice and fruit which was complimentary to everyone who was waiting for a table.





Our number was A17, but we quickly realized that they only called out the numbers in Chinese as well.

But it didn't take us long to realize that there was a screen that showed  what numbers they were currently on, so we just watched the screen closely until our number came up.

We were seated in one of probably twenty small rooms in the restaurant.  It was a huge restaurant, and the atmosphere was very nice. 

This ended up being a Chinese version of shrimp scampi.

And then we ordered a couple of vegetables to go with it.

This restaurant was about as authentic as it gets!  There was nothing available to help out us poor gringos, but we had a great time trying.  If we had known what we were ordering, we would have added a little more spice to our dishes, but we enjoyed the food, and really enjoyed the experience.  

When it came time to pay (whole meal was about $10), they didn't know how to handle us either.  The waiter took our money and then the cashier ushered us into the back room to collect for our meal.  We had fun trying to explain that we had already paid.  But very quickly our waiter came in to the cashier and rescued us.  We didn't even have to pullout google translate.