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Middle 8th Restaurant 中八楼
This chain attracts a smart and hip, nightlife crowd and is a decent, affordable spot to sample Yunnan's distinctive cuisine. The menu offers two dishes which each include three different kinds of mushroom, as well as a twist on one of China’s mots popular dishes – Kungpao Mushroom (宫保蘑菇). The gongbao mogu is less sweet and more spicy than most Kungpao Chicken you’ll encounter in Beijing. Worms are another Yunnan specialty, and Middle 8th has an appetizer made of four types of the wriggly soil-dwellers. The piping hot “crossing-the-bridge” noodles (过桥米线) include about 20 different ingredients, but light on the stomach. A range of wines and sweet rice wine is also available and there is also a separate and slightly down-market barbecue section diagonally opposite the Sanlitun store. Voted “Best Yunnan” in the Beijinger’s 2009 Restaurant Awards.
Locations
Zhongguancun
- Zhongguancun 中关村
- R17, Zhongguancun Pedestrian Mall, 15 Zhongguancun Dajie, Haidian District
- 海淀区中关村大街15号中关村广场步行街R17
- Daily 11am-10.30pm
- 5172 1728
- Parking available
- No smoking sections
- Chinese bank cards accepted
- ¥¥¥ 50-80
Sanlitun
- Sanlitun 三里屯
- Zhongba Lou, Sanlitun Zhongjie, Chaoyang District
- 朝阳区三里屯中街中八楼
- Daily 11am-11.30pm
- 6413 0629
- Parking available
- Chinese bank cards accepted
- ¥¥¥ 50-80
CBD
- CBD CBD
- L404A, South Tower, The Place, 9 Guanghua Lu, Chaoyang District
- 朝阳区光化路9号，世贸天阶南楼L404A
- 11am-11pm
- 6587 1431
- Chinese bank cards accepted
- ¥¥¥ 50-80
Contact
Map of Middle 8th Restaurant
User reviews of Middle 8th Restaurant 中八楼
Great FInd - Sanlitun Branch
- Joined: Jul 10th, 2009
- Posts: 3
Review of Middle 8th Restaurant
This restaurant will make you fall in love with Yunnan cuisine. Joined a friend there for dinner last night and we enjoyed a Shrimp and Mushroom dish, chicken and potato dish, grilled beef (with terrific spicy chutney-like sauce on the side) and delicious meatball dish (served with cheese on top, meatballs were quite tasty. They sat atop a bed of finely diced tomato, eggplant and pineapple. Surprising and delicious flavors. We could find nothing to complain about with the dishes we ordered and would have happily enjoyed more were we not so full. Service was excellent, friendly and the nonsmoking dining room (in a building adjacent to the Yoyo hotel and not connected to the "main" restaurant") was clean, well appointed and very comfortable. Great place - menu is very well done, extraordinary in scope and, so far, all delicious.
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Great place for a date!
- Joined: Nov 20th, 2009
- Posts: 13
Review of Middle 8th Restaurant
This place is my go-to spot to take a new date. You definitely have to make sure to pick a good night - it gets real busy on the weekends, and in this weather, you don't want to have to sit outside with your gal for half an hour while you wait for a table to be free.
That aside, the place has a relatively upscale (but not too fancy) atmosphere, the waitstaff are friendly, and the food is excellent. I've occasionally been charged a little extra because they brought the wrong bill, but honestly, it doesn't take that long to sort out a problem like that. I've never had an issue with waiting for the food, but maybe I've just been lucky?
Anyway, this place is great - I don't go there often, but when I do, I can always count on having a good experience. My date might be boring, but hey...at least I'll get a good meal out of it.
- 90 views
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Decent food at decent price
- Joined: May 10th, 2009
- Posts: 5
Review of Middle 8th Restaurant
I agree with most of the previous posts. The service can be spotty at times (do they really need to read everything back to me and then still forget an item I ordered?) However, I would say that generally the food is quite good. The braised cabbage with pork, the hot and sour soup (28 and 12 rmb) are both usually very good and very reasonable. I don't find it expensive compared to alot of other places. Some dishes though are spotty, the chicken wings can be very fatty and unedible. Overall though if you find the 5 or 6 dishes you really like it's a great place to go for an inexpensive meal (relatively)
- 164 views
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Pretty Good Yunnan Food!
- Joined: Mar 1st, 2009
- Posts: 16
Review of Middle 8th Restaurant
One of my favorite Yunnan Food especially the mushroom dish which looks like meat, that was so good. There is a dish with super spicy crispy fish, though too hot for me, but still really. Don't try the steam fish, not as good as I thought, but popular among the chinese for some funny reason. Again, this proves that popular does not equals to good.
Yes, due to the popularity of this place, the waiters/waitresses seems to be too busy, can't blame them but the owner of hiring insufficient manpower, and also the flow /system of ordered foods coming out from the kitchen sucks, we tried many times that 1 dish is finished and got to wait for 10-15 minutes for the 2nd dish to be brought up to us, and another 10 mins for the 3rd dish...so, have to improve on that.
The rice wine is a must try! So good.
- 109 views
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Food are good, but be careful
- Joined: Mar 2nd, 2005
- Posts: 17
Review of Middle 8th Restaurant
I like their food. Not sure what real Yunnan food is like, if you ask to vote for the best Yunnan restaurants, I will give my point to this one. There is only one thing you have to be careful. Check the bill, every time I went there, there are problems in the bill, normally about 20 or 30 RMB more than it should be, and the explanation is always "sorry, we got the wrong bill". Never the less payment ones though.
- 359 views
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Nice atmosphere, slow service mediocer food.
- Joined: May 11th, 2008
- Posts: 204
Review of Middle 8th Restaurant
First thing that strikes it the atmosphere which is chic and modern. The space is well lit with nice art and nice spaces to facilitate your dinning experience.
The menu has beautiful pictures although some of the prices are rather high.
The service is patchy. Some things arrive quickly others are very slow. I had to ask for rice three times and it took about 30 minutes to reheat our soup which got cold. I thought they had thrown it out and was getting ready to pay when it arrived back at the table.
The food is just so so. Some of the cold dishes have a strike or two of brilliance but the rest seem uninspired.
- 255 views
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