French Cafe bottled coffee

The FamilyMart convenience store across from my apartment complex used to sell Starbucks bottled coffee, but after selling out their first lot of stock never acquired any more. Most Chinese convenience stores sell a variety of mostly identical uncompelling bottled coffees.

These appeared on the shelf where the Starbucks bottles used to be and looked interesting enough to give a shot. Like the Starbucks bottles which are around 22 RMB, these are also expensive at around 18 RMB apiece.

Bottles from the front.

Bottles from the back. Made in Korea, maybe that means the product quality is more trustworthy and one doesn't need to worry about things like malamine.

I need to stop drinking these bottled coffees. I could make instant coffee with milk, cool it in the fridge and it would likely taste as good. It would cost a fraction of the price, and would more than likely be nowhere near as fattening.

Starbucks chocolate mooncake

Bean flavour is big in China. To me, bean is something you eat when you're eating Mexican or it's all that's left in the cupboard. So when a friend suggested that I should try Starbucks' chocolate mooncake, I decided to give it a go. I pass several Starbucks a day, so why not.. However, they don't actually sell mooncake. Instead they sell tickets which you take to a Carrefour supermarket, where you redeem them for a box of mooncakes. And I think a box of mooncakes costs around 250 RMB. Expensive! I walked into a random Starbucks near Nanjing Xi Lu and after having this all explained to me, asked if I could have one to try.

My free mooncake.

Second layer of wrapping, the box.

The presumably pressed into shape mooncake.

The filling of the mooncake.

Until I sat down to take these photos, I didn't realise that the flowers along this part of Nanjing Xi Lu were actually chilis. I was tempted to pick a few and take them home, since I had run out but then I thought about pesticides and similar additives and thought better of it.

Anyway.. at first I could taste the chocolate, but then all I could taste was bean. It appears to be a chocolate tainted bean filling. The texture reminded me of the sensation of what I would imagine toe nail cheese to feel like, should I find myself eating a mooncake-shaped chunk of it.

Do not try again. Definitely do not go through the hoop jumping required to buy a box.