Geared to expat palate

Purple Bodhi has just prepared some dishes especially for expats. Owner Ms Yang from Taiwan has a lot of experience on the Beijing dining scene, and helped several restaurants to design their cuisine. Therefore the eatery offers some creative dishes, which left me with a good impression on a previous visit.

We started with a cold appetizer with three items: healthy spinach roll, an appetite-stimulating sweet and sour cherry turnip, and fragrant Shanghai porous bean curd. That was followed by Feng Sheng Shui Qi, a Singaporean combo salmon salad, looking colorful and tasting fresh.

Ms Yang had the restaurant prepare several dishes she said catered more to the expats' palate: sweet and sour fried chicken with Thai sauce and diced mango, beef fillet with fried sweet potato and black pepper. The dishes were both full of flavor, although the beef fillet had a part that was a bit too hard to chew.

Hainan chicken, a signature dish at the restaurant, was very tender. The Asian flavor BBQ pork ribs looked nice, and tasted really sweet.

The Chinese yam juice and pear and guava juice were both not bad. The eatery now has a proper color-illustrated menu. The average cost is 120 yuan per person.

(China Daily 06/12/2010 page12)