Heidi Lau's

While my mom was here (she left on Sunday to fly out of Beijing on Monday), the one thing on my list of places to take her was my favorite Shenyang restaurant. It's not called Heidi Lau's. It's called Hai Di Lao Huoguo, which means Glory of the Bottom of the Sea Hotpot. It's fantastic. Heidi Lau would be proud.

My mom took a picture of us on our way. We live in the hip shopping district, so everything is within walking distance. Or you could point out how lame we are that we haven't explored anything in Shenyang beyond walking distance of our apartment. Both are true.

Hei Di Lao is a popular restaurant, so when you get there, there is often a wait-- in our case, about 45 minutes. They sat us down at a table while we waited and served us sour plum juice. The tables where we sat were either Chinese Chess boards or that one game that has hundreds of little round black or white pieces. I'm not terribly familiar with how to play either game, but they were available. Pretty cool.

You could also go get a manicure or hand massage. For free. My mom took advantage of that, but there wasn't time for me to also.

Once we got to our table and ate, they brought us our aprons. I got a normal apron this time, which was nice after wearing the frilly maternity apron all the other times we've come. I covered Naomi with Kevin's apron and tried to eat with her off to the side, dripping occasionally on the apron. Our waiter saw me struggling and went to go get me a stroller. Then I could put the baby down, wrap her in the fuzzy blanket he also brought, and eat with both hands if I needed to. Talk about customer service!

And where has Penny been this whole time? Well, in this particular restaurant, Penny has learned to cast off her fear of Chinese women running over to pick her up. In fact, when the waitresses come running, she puts up her hands and says, "Play?"

Then they whisk her off to the playroom. We only got one non-blurry shot because Penny was so avidly rocking on her horsie. They had videos playing, too. At one point when I went to check on her, they had a video of a dance routine playing. Penny was running and skipping around the room, waiving her hands and dancing along with the video.

When they returned her to our table, she had a new clip in her hair and a new little stuffed animal. Penny loves Hai Di Lao!

The food is excellent, the service is out-of-this-world, and the price can't be beat either. Our meal cost about 50 kuai per person-- which is about 6-7 dollars.

When you come to visit us, we'll take you to Hai Di Lao!