Green Tea 绿茶

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As usual with any of our excursions, the main motivation to go to Longjing was food, so after our tea shopping we decided to walk back through Longjing Park and then stop at Green Tea for an early dinner. It's number 83 Longjing Road. ( 龙井路83号)

I’m not sure how I first heard about the restaurant Green Tea , but I’ve yet to find anyone here who hasn’t been, and now I know why! I can’t over-emphasise how good this meal was.

The place was way more low-key than I was expecting, with a cool backpacker vibe - and ordering was very foreigner-friendly. They have a paper menu with English translations and tick boxes by each of the dishes - so you just tick what you want and hand it to a waiter. We ordered the tomato and veg soup, shrimps fried with pumpkin, shredded potato fried with coriander and chilli, and spicy lamb. It was so unbelievably satisfying. The tomato soup was made with beans and lotus root with huge chunks of fresh tomatoes. It had a really sweet flavour which really complimented the chilli in the rest of the dishes. I think my favourite was the chilli and potato, but the lamb was a revelation for Tom. He's been cooking a dish like it back in England for years, but this was the real deal – sizzling thin slices of lamb marinated in cumin and coriander with caramelised onion. Unfortunately I had gorged myself on the spuds, so I was pretty much full before it had even arrived, let alone having room for anything sweet! (This was a shame, because we were getting major food envy from the home-made bread topped with ice cream that our neighbours were tucking into.) Anyway there was no need to worry, the waiters were perfectly happy to pack up our lamb as a take-away, and we shall be back for the ice cream another day!

Total bill including two half litre glasses of grapefruit and lime juice came to 102, but it could probably have fed three people

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Photos

Green Tea
It's next door to the Tea Museum

Dessert!
You can just make out the bread and icecream dish bottom middle pic.

Grapefruit and Lime Juice
This cost 15 yuan each, but there was also free barley tea which you could help yourself to from a big barrell in the main room.