Cha’s is a cute spot – if you haven’t been, you should go, preferably not during rush times since its pretty packed. The service is shit, but the food is good (most of the time). It’s done up like an old 50’s style cha chaan teng and serves a mean milk tea.
I love/am borderline obsessed with cha chaan teng food, and on this particular day I was especially in the mood for beef tendon noodles and ngo gun ho fun (greasy, soy saucy wide rice noodles pan fried with beef, yellow garlic chives, and bean sprouts).
They didn’t have beef tendon on their menu, so I ordered ho fun with five-spice beef in soup. This was close, but no cigar. The broth was tasty, but the beef was tough and stringy – the rice noodles were chopped up and falling apart in the soup. Gah. Face to palm.
We also ordered these fried turnip cakes, which had great flavor but were heavily battered. I did order the greasy beef noodle I was going on and on about, but forgot to photograph it – it was very tasty but only came with 2 meager slices of beef and no yellow garlic chive. Semi-fail.
This was crispy fried eggplant – tasty, but not a lot of eggplant.
I usually like Cha’s a lot, but on this particular day, I was really in the mood to taste my favorite dishes.. and the ones Cha’s was serving up just didn’t fit the bill.
And to end this post sweetly… Cha’s banana split! Yummy.. now if only it didnt take f#@$ing forever to deliver to our table..
Cha’s
30 Sinan Lu near Huaihai Zhong Lu
思南路30号近淮海中路
+86 21 6093 2062
