7080 Garden Restaurant (87 Nanshan Road / 南山路87号)

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When we stopped at 7080 we’d just been on a hike around the Jade Emperor hill for most of the day so were pretty exhausted and up for some filling grub.
Unfortunately for foreign guests the English menu is a little limited compared to the endless blackboards with the Chinese options on, but luckily we know enough characters to make out a better drinks list other than beer, which I think was depressingly the only option on the English menu. (I haven’t changed my position on this one - the beer in China just tastes to me like bitter fizzy water, and you have to actually pay money to drink it?! Tom says it’s similar to the stuff in American beer kegs, but I wouldn’t really know I just long for a pint of reasonably priced cold Guinness…I heard they sell it an Irish bar in the east, but it’s over £7 a pint!)

Anyway, I digress, at 7080 you order as you enter then choose a seat - we got a great table up on the roof area overlooking the trees and the food definitely hit the spot. We ordered half a chicken and I could actually identify it as half a chicken, which is perhaps the first time that‘s happened here. It was cooked in a simple sweet soy sauce and was so tender it almost fell off the bone. We also got glutinous rice balls - they have a really chewy and sticky consistency and come with sesame seed and cinnamon dips. A new favourite. French fries are self-explanatory, but they were mixed with Chinese fries which seemed to be large strips of crunchy batter - pure satisfying stodge all washed down with a trusty watermelon juice.
Total bill around 120rmb / £12. For those with a Chinese account, you can use Union Pay cards here, which was just as well as we had run out of cash!

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Photos

French and Chinese fries
These were also coated in a slightly sweet sticky sauce but unfortunately the English menu gave no indication of what it was