Shubo Opens at Topwin Center, Providing Health Nuts with Salad Boxes

With Topwin Center opened on 1 Nan Sanlitun Lu we have seen a lot of restaurants opening there, for example Taiwanese hotpot Coucou, the more upscale sister restaurant of Xiabu Xiabu which opened this month.

There is also this intruiging healthy restaurant: Shubo. We were told the name came from both Chinese and English, 蔬菜 (shū cài, vegetable) and box: Shubo (vegetable box).

There are six salads to choose from: chicken breast, beef, duck breast, tuna, shrimp, and vegetarian. Prices and sizes come in female and male versions, which is rather strange. Prices range from RMB 29 to 37 for 'female' versions, and RMB 32 to 39 for 'male' versions. 

For rice lovers, they also branch out into four varieties of low-calorie rices, such as vegetarian, ginger beef, lentils, and cuttlefish (RMB 28-38). To pair with them, there are five low-calorie sauces, such as caesar yogurt, oil vinegar, black sesame paste, bone black pepper sauce, and Thai lime juice and sweet chili sauce. These sauces accompany the dishes for free (suck it, 7-eleven). You can also DIY your salad by choosing different slow-cook meats, adding grains (such as quinoa, buckwheat rice, barley rice, and corn grain), vegetables, fruits, and beans. There’s number of calories next to each ingredient, geekily.

We tried Peru sunshine vegetarian salad (RMB 36 'female' version, RMB 39 'male' version), with quinoa, avocado, broccoli, cherry tomatoes, purple sweet potato, and pumpkin. We can see where the name comes from: when you open the lid, the salad does seem to shine from all the different ingredients and colors. Their staff recommended pairing it with the caesar yogurt dressing. The pumpkin was tender, and the avocado was fresh. The only problem was, and this is truly a problem as old as time, that there wasn't enough dressing to go with the entire salad. Sigh. 

We also ordered the natural cuttlefish low-calorie rice, which took 15 minutes to cook. We saw them preparing it: peeling the purple sweet potatoes, washing lettuce (at least they wash them, that's a good sign), tearing the lettuce into smaller piece with gloves, cooking the fish, and frying the rice. The relatively large portion of rice wasn’t served with sauce or a dressing, but contained hummus, zucchini, corn, carrot, broccoli, cauliflower, and long beans. It was a little spicy with a kick from the black pepper. But all in all, this meal, which contained 519 calories, satisfied me. I will definitely come back whenever my inner vegetarian wakes up.

Shubo
B1-13C Topwin Center, 1 Nan Sanlitun Lu, Chaoyang (135 2046 1116)
蔬小盒: 朝阳区南三里屯路1号通盈中心B1-13C 

More stories by this author here.

Email: tracywang@thebeijinger.com
Twitter: @flyingfigure
Instagram: @flyingfigure

Photos: Tracy Wang