Restaurant Review: Bai Sheng Chinese Restaurant, Gaborone

When we heard that the most upscale hotel in town, the Grand Palm, had just opened a new Chinese restaurant, we had to check it out!

Front lawn of the Grand Palm Hotel.

If you read A Botswana Struggle Session, you will know already that I desperately needed to find somewhere new where my reputation as a pleasant diner had not yet been tarnished to get my Chinese food fix. There are quite a few Chinese restaurants in town - necessary to serve the significant Chinese population here - but so far we haven't found the one that has all the dishes we used to most enjoy back in Shanghai.

We were pleasantly surprised by the authentic cuisine, good service, and relaxing atmosphere at this restaurant last night. The restaurant's outdoor seating area has an Oriental garden theme, with an ornate color scheme and appealing vegetation. The service was quite good as well, and the waiter responded to our requests more quickly than we've come to expect in Gaborone. An open kitchen adjacent to the garden allows you to watch the chefs at work - something which could potentially be too much information in some restaurants (I'd rather not know that you just dropped that meat on the floor and put it back in a dinner plate, thank you very much!), but in this one at least I didn't observe any major health and safety infractions. Comforting.

The menu offered a decent mixture of traditional Chinese dishes and Western favorites; we ordered Beijing duck, vegetable dumplings, cashew chicken, stir-fried vegetables, vegetable chow mein, fried rice, and (interestingly) fried octopus. For dessert, we had caramelized apples and pumpkin tarts. In my opinion, the best was the Beijing duck, which was served authentically with little bean curd pancakes, duck sauce, and green onions. The caramelized apples were also fresh, sweet and delicious, and tasted similar to a dish we used to order at one of our favorite restaurants in Shanghai.

All in all, it was a very pleasant dining experience, and I'd highly recommend it to anyone looking for a new addition to their usual Gaborone restaurant rotation.  Let's mix it up and do crocodiles this time!

Restaurant Rating (On a Scale of to )

Food	So good, it was definitely worth the swim over here. I would have liked to see a few more traditional Chinese dishes on the menu.
Service	So good, it was definitely worth the swim over here. Good service, especially by Gaborone standards, but some of the dishes were a little slow coming out.
Ambience	Forget hunting! I’m eating here from now on. Very nice sitting outside.
Overall Experience	So good, it was definitely worth the swim over here. YUM!