Hyatt Regency Hangzhou
During my Dec 2016 trip to China, I had meetings with in Shanghai and Hangzhou. I love hairy crabs, so since I am in China during the season of hairy crabs, I had to have them everyday!
My regular hotel whenever I visit Hangzhou is the Hyatt Regency Hangzhou which is next to the well known West Lake or Xihu. Besides being near Westlake and thus is convenient for sightseeing, the Hyatt Regency Hangzhou is also conveniently located near shopping and food outlets and restaurants. There are many family restaurants along Hubin road that were popular with locals, every cheap and worth a try, e.g., Grandma’s Place and Green Tea Restaurant. I frequently eat in these restaurants whenever in Hangzhou.
This is a Hyatt Regency and not a Grand Hyatt, so the rooms here are a tard simpler than the ones in the Grand Hyatt in Shanghai. But don’t expect the rooms to be cheaper here. Hangzhou is a very popular tourist destination and the location of this hotel can’t be beaten. I have to pay RMB1300 ++ here per night without breakfast.
The rooms are again typical contemporary Hyatt style. Pleasant and functional. But not luxurious. Room size is comfortable.
HuBin 28 – Hairy crabs and excellent Hangzhou Cuisine!
On this trip, instead of eating at the local restaurants nearby like we normally do, my colleague and I decided to eat at HuBin 28, Hyatt Regency’s Chinese restaurant which is named after the hotel’s address and had made it to the list of Asia’s 50 top restaurants in 2015. It is also known to be one of the best places to eat hairy crabs in Hangzhou. This restaurant is very popular so it is best to make advance reservations. We called that same day for a table but they were full. But when we told them that we will be staying at the hotel and were on our way to Hangzhou, they took down our details and suggested that we inform the front desk at check in when we arrive and they will try their best to accommodate us. We did as suggested and within 10mins of us getting to our rooms, we received a call that our table was ready. Such is the service of Hyatt….excellent! It is this good service that makes me choose the Hyatt chain whenever I can.
Uniquely designed with a residential ambience, HuBin 28 is among the most famous restaurants in Hangzhou and serves traditional dishes from Hangzhou, as well as specialties from surrounding cities.
They serve all the usual Hangzhou specialities like Longjing Prawns, Westlake Vinegar Fish, Dongpo Pork and Song Sao Fish soup but we only tried 2 of them on this ocassion as our main target was the hairy crabs.
For the starter, we had the boiled ‘Song Sao’ fish soup 宋嫂鱼羹 a traditonal Hangzhou dish. Almost every Chinese restaurant in Hangzhou serves this soup, but very few can make it with such high standard. The soup was creamy, with generous portion of fried-Mandarin fish. It was not fishy at all. And this is coming from someone who is not a fan of fish. Probably the best Song Sao fish soup in town.
Another Hangzhou speciality and must have here is the Braised traditional ‘dongpo’ pork 金牌扣肉. This is the most popular and famous dish of this restaurant. It was made of 500g braised ‘dongpo’ pork, braised dried bamboo shoots and drained Chinese cabbage, served with 12 chestnut pancakes. The pork is very thinly sliced and rolled around to form a “mountain”. When you eat, you unroll the pork slice and put it together with the fried bamboo shoots into the chestnut pancake. Eat it as you would a hamburger. It is delicious. My experience with Dongpo Pork is that it is really fatty. But not here. It is really very well done and not fatty at all. Yummy!
We decided to have a pair of male and female hairy crabs each. The hairy crabs here each comes with the authentic Yangcheng Lake tags. How you tell the males and females is by the looking at the back of the crabs. The female shell is roundish in shape while the male is shape and pointed. The smaller female crabs were about 150g each and had brighter orange roes which was harder in texture. The male crabs larger at about 200g each had light yellow and whitish roe that was soft and creamy. Dec is when the male crabs’ roe are at its fullest. It is a little past the season for the female crabs but the ones we had still had decent amount of roe. This was pure indulgence! Yum yum!
Our last dish was the tofu with crab roe. I like to add a little vinegar to this dish when I eat it. A simple dish but oh so good!
We were too full after the meal for dessert. Total bill for 2 of us came to around RMB1500. The female crabs were RMB189 each while the male crabs were RMB229 each. A meal well worth its price.
HuBin 28 lives up to its reputation and is definitely one of the best Chinese restaurants in Hangzhou. Good food, good ambience and excellent service. Highly recommended!