Eating out with Confidence

Ordering out or eating at a restaurant in China is very very cheap (at a typical chinese restaurant). However food sanitation and the guarantee that your beef is actually beef and that your chicken won't have millions of bones in it is not so great (did i mention i went vegetarian for a few months here? and that there was a recent scandal where a chain of people were caught selling rat meat as lamb?) Also I'm never sure if the oil used to cook my food in is straight from a clean bottle or cooked in a clean pan free of bugs.

You know those little food rating signs you see in the corner of restaurants? Even starbucks has a red rating. McDonalds is one of the few places i have seen that has a green food safety sign. 

One place that I always feel confident that i am eating safe food is in one of the many bakeries and bread shops that line almost every other street in Shenzhen. They smell amazing and sell a variety of breads and drinks. One of my favorite bakeries is Cafe 85 which also sells decent priced coffee (about half the price of Starbucks here) 

I always try new pastries with caution--they are either sweet like you'd expect them to be or they have meat in them//on them. The middle one in the middle row has shredded pork all over it. My first time trying that one was not pleasant! 

They also have tons of cake. Cake here tastes a little different from at home and cake in chinese is 蛋糕 (dan gao) which translates into egg cream...eewww

every bakery has egg tarts

and lots of hot dogs

haha a little promiscuous to see in china

its really rare to find cheap iced coffee besides at starbucks--it kinda freaked me out that they put a plastic layer of the top of it (and made it challenging to put in creamer or sugar in...i guess ill have to figure out how to tell them before i take the order!)