Bite-Sized China Update: Malls you wish existed in Vancouver

There's a district named Xidan a few subway stops away from the school we are at in Beijing that features a whole street-length full of malls. You could spend days and not be able to get through all these malls. Me and a friend decided we'd take a day to thoroughly waste our time through one.

Why does the topic of malls come up here? Because four of the floors of this mall were dedicated solely towards food. That's right. Four full floors.

Their directory solely for the food floors. Look at it. Just look at it.
omnomnom...

This bakery seems to be all over the place, and I adore it very much. Very cute.

I would take more pictures, but I was stopped by the shopkeepers. Too bad, some pretty stuff. Although I'm pretty sure not too different from back home.

This place however, you'd have trouble finding in Vancouver. If you've ever been to a Taiwanese Cafe/something of the sort, you've probably seen the thick slices of dessert toast. This was exactly that. Made to order and with much variety (Peanut butter... chocolate... plain.. there was definitely more but I've forgotten..)

We ended up with the thick chocolate toast. As much as I like the idea, the thick cuts of toast didn't really appeal to me. While I was expecting a dessert level of sweet toasty bread, and a crisp outer texture and pillowy inner, what I got was. well. A plain heavy thick cut piece of toast with watery chocolate flavouring. And it wasn't bad, but I don't think I'd order it again.
Or I'd get peanut butter.
Are the ones back home like this as well?

Fun to eat though.

Another little dessert we can get back in Vancouver. In truth, I've never tried/ordered shaved ice before (gasp, I know.) But I do have seen and have been told what they taste like back home.

So that being said, this strawberry shaved ice was absolutely amazing. Sure, it's not much to look at, without toppings or anything else that might put it over the top, but in it's simplicity you've got something akin to a pillow of layered airy ice-cream. The layers are so thin they're almost translucent, and despite how big it looked, the two of us easily devoured this.

Apologies for the terrible photo, but this place sold jacket potatoes. And as with most asian flavours, there were some fairly interesting combinations... curry, "vegetarian"... I wish I were allowed to take a picture of the menu.

And so this is the one we ordered. A nice hot, fresh baked potato stuffed with a tuna, carrot and corn mix. It surprised me that the mix was cold, but its coolness and the sweetness contrasted well with the hot potato. Also devoured (and although not exclusive to Beijing, it was great)

And finally, this was from one of the restaurants within the mall. Most have the menus featured outside, so we took a look. "Stir-fried wikipedia with pimientos". It was too much, I needed to try to get a photo. Got heck for it, and a very rude server tried to shoo us away, but I present this photo, just for you..;

Anyways, I know there wasn't much eaten on this occasion, but I just wanted to post about the sheer amount of variety of food and amount in this mall. Ridiculous. Loved it. A few more spontaneous photos taken while no one was looking. : )