Results tagged “blarneystone”

Just because we’re on the other side of the world from Ireland doesn’t mean that there won’t be plenty going on for St Paddy’s Day over here in Shanghai. This year, March 17th — the date when all of us are a little bit Irish — inconveniently falls on a Monday but fear not, the Emerald Isle’s Shanghai contingent are celebrating early with a bunch of events this weekend.

ODDS AND ENDS:

Heading south down Hengshan Rd from Dongping Rd, turn trustingly left down a dark lane with a large ad for Yang's Kitchen on the wall. Keep walking till you see an old villa on your right-hand side where there is a faded brass plate with the faint engraved lettering "Le Garcon Chinois." (Actual address is No.3, Lane 9, Hengshan Rd). Go up the stairs and you are there. Le Garcon Chinois restaurant has a cosy and unpretentious bar that serves good quality drinks at very reasonable prices. There is an extensive cocktail list with most drinks priced RMB35-55. House spirits are mostly RMB35-40, including Bombay Sapphire and Tanqueray gins, both at RMB35. Vodka sippers can enjoy Grey Goose for RMB55, while Tequila massacists can revel in self-destruction by slamming down shots of Jose Cuervo 1800 at RMB45 a pop. Even though the bottled beers are run-of-the-mill, they are good value priced between RMB20-25 (Qingdao RMB20; others RMB25). For those on the wagon, soft drinks are also priced RMB20-25. Wine drinkers will be pleasantly surprised, with several wines available by the glass priced from RMB45-58, with the pick of the bunch being a fine Bordeaux red at RMB58. Should you wish to indulge in a bottle, a good selection is offered with this scribe noticing Vasse Felix merlot, Petaluma chardonnay and Henri Bourgeois sauvignon blanc. Being located close to many other well known expat bars and restaurants, this place should be on many more drinkers' drinking circuits. Go give it a try.

HAPPY DRINKING AND MERRY CHRISTMAS!

DONGPING ROAD: DOOMED OR REDISCOVERED? As some readers may know, the strip of Dongping Road on the south side from Hengshan to Yueyang Roads is leased to the bars, restaurants, tailors etc by the music college behind them. Most of the leases are coming up for renewal over the next 2-12 months.There has been some concern that the music college may decide to reclaim their land for their own expansion purposes, rather than renew the...

CARMEN RESTAURANT: Carmen Restaurant recently materialised on Xikang Lu, near the even newer Steak and Eggs. Passing by, what caught our eye was their blackboard promotion for all you can drink: 50RMB for chicks and 80RMB for blokes. Went inside and discovered the deal was just for draught beer (Carlsberg) and cocktails. OK, could be acceptable, but decided we'd better try their cocktails first before committing to an all-out drink fest. Winopete chose a G&T that was actually quite decent. A friend opted for vodka and tonic which was also quite satisfactory. What was not so good was being hurried into deciding did we want the all-u-can-drink deal or single drinks, and also being asked to pay before a sip of alcohol had passed our lips. Furthermore, this night a bunch of rowdy German card players to descended around us which led to the staff cranking up the music to a very conversation-unfriendly level. The timing of both these events led to us upping and leaving. The mouldy-looking furniture for a brand new venue is never going to earn brownie points with me, but a decent all-you-can-drink deal grabs our attention, especially given the dwindling reputation of Bon Bon. The bottom line is we'll try Carmen again.

Shanghaiist has been feeling very French of late. After wondering when Paul was going to re-open and hanging out at Bar Rouge's "Excusez-moi" party... well, we had dinner in La Crêperie - Shanghai's new and so far only eatery devoted to crêpes from the Brittany region.

Anyway, we thought some of you might want to know that we recently found relatively cheap legitimate breakfast cereal at the supermarket underneath the Westgate Mall (Mei Long Zhen, Nanjing Xi Lu and Jiangning Lu) -- and it's not the same Chinese Trix and Cheerios that have been available for 12.9 kuai per 150 gram box for a while now.

We think we can safely say that SLICE is Shanghai's best English-language magazine about golf. This is, of course, not a difficult title to lay claim to -- kind of like saying Acropolis is the city's best Greek restaurant. (It's the only one, and we still have nightmares about our only visit there three years ago -- sometimes the nightmares are about the "moussaka," other times they are about the roach that crawled across our table.) But SLICE, which debuted in October, isn't playing the game like it's the only game in town. It's a slick little magazine that, style-wise at least, gives all the local English language rags a run for their money. This week, TIME Asia even gave SLICE a nice plug.

OK, we think we've finally recovered from Friday night. The Shanghaiist launch party at British Bulldog Pub was hot, in almost every definition of the word. We packed the place, forcing the bar to open its rarely used third level. Opening band Xingfu 13 rocked the house in a shortened set (they were delayed by a lack of a stool for their drummer, and couldn't stay longer because they were using a cable needed by the other bands back at Tang Hui -- how indie rock is that?). And the Shanghai Cowboys killed, and confused the handful of regular pub patrons in attendance. Based on some very unscientific drunken polling, everyone had a good time at the party (except for maybe the uncharacteristically frazzled event organizer -- but you'd be frazzled too if you had to deal with ... ah, we're not going to name names). The raffle -- though somewhat unorganized because bar management forced the Shanghaiist crew upstairs at the last minute -- made several prize winners very happy, some eerily so.

A final party plug before Shanghaiist lugs a shitload of T-shirts and raffle prizes over to the British Bulldog Pub. We had a couple last-minute additions to the raffle prize list (below), so be sure to check it out one more time. (Raffle tickets are 10 kuai, by the way, and five for 40 kuai. Entrance, of course, is free.) There are two threads about the party currently running on local message boards. One controversially suggests that "cute guys don't read blogs." Maybe that's true. But we at Shanghaiist read somewhere -- probably a blog -- that cute guys and hot girls tend to like live music and alcoholic beverages. And on those two criteria, we have you covered. As our friend Jake would say, this party is going to be "fresh."

Not sure if you heard or not, but we're having a party on Friday. And while people seem genuinely excited about the great live music, the cool prizes (see below) and the chance to meet Shamus, we all know that what will really pack 'em in the British Bulldog Pub are the Shanghaiist.com T-shirts! (Play along, folks.) Yep, Friday will be your first opportunity to purchase these custom-made, 100-percent-cotton wonders that have local fashionistas foaming at their pouty little mouths. You know why, right? They are ringer Ts! Shanghaiist T-shirts, which come in normal Western sizes, will sell for 60 RMB on Friday. That's less than a beer in some bars in Shanghai. Some lucky party-goers will win a shirt in our lucky draw. Here are some of the other prizes up for grabs:

Not sure where you are right now, but we're pretty sure we know where you will be exactly one week from now -- somewhere in Shanghai saying, "Oh shit, I forgot about that Shanghaiist party." And that would be too bad, because for a bunch of bloggers, we've actually organized a pretty (if we do say so our damn selves) damn good time. And by good time, we mean semi-cheap booze*, great live music and (almost) free stuff.