Avocado Shakes and Northern Style at Ju Xian Yuan

The first part of this posting is for everybody. Because Asian restaurants in Ottawa have actual Asian customers, they have begun serving beverages that are popular in Asia. One of these beverages is the avocado shake. If you are familiar with avocado as the main ingredient in guacamole this will seem absurd to you.

Listen up: My trust rating on Technorati may only be 14, but I do not give bad advice about food and restaurants. Avocado with ice cream is delicious. Avocado shakes are delicious. Order one when you have the chance unless you are lactose intolerant or have some problem with sugar.

[The rest of this post is about one of the restaurants in Ottawa where you can get an avocado shake. Out-of-towners may simply read the post below about dancing at Blue Skies, or move on. I suggest you try one of the links in "Dave's recommendations on other sites" over on the sidebar.]

We love that Northern Style!

Manon and I had our first date at Man's Restaurant. It had big portions of delicious food at low prices. Our kind of place. So we were disappointed when it closed and reopened as Ju Xian Yuan. But not so disappointed that we couldn't try the new place.

And tonight was the night.

Wow, it was good!

The first few pages of the menu offered "Northern Style Cuisine" I've never had anything described as Northern style before, so I ordered us three things from those pages.

First was the Northern Charcoal Style BBQ Skewered Lamb (5 skewers: $6). I have not had kebabs this good since I was in Ghana. Tender and spicy. Manon said something about cardamom. I'm not good at distinguishing spices so I don't know, but these were awesome.

The next dish out was the Northern Style Egg Plant with Chef Sauce. Also fantastic. ($8.95). [If you've got an anti-eggplant thing, you really should try to get over it. Think of it as one of those things you do to build neural pathways and stave of Alzheimer's. Don't tell me you can't do this. There was a time you didn't like the taste of beer.]

Then the Spicy Chicken ($9.95). Absolutely perfect.

We finished everything except a few mouthfuls of steamed rice and the chili peppers in the Spicy Chicken.

I'm looking forward to next time. There are a lot of dishes I have to try.

Ju Xiang Yuan Asian Cuisine 641 Somerset Street West Ottawa , ON , K1R 5K3 613-321-3669 [Hours]