Helen's gets a fair amount of attention from dastardly and roguish locals who, though they gross enough cash to pay for real alcohol and non-piss beer, prefer a more self-destructive hedonism. Its patronage relishes in the traffic of backpackers and Europeons ready to fondle jewels after a modicum of jabbering effort, but one's likely to wake up with a severe hangover and an anonymous hag excreting into one's day. Praised as being cool or hip, I'm left to question the integrity of these phrases, so vacuous that they suck aberrations of nauseating decadence into their descriptive breadth.
Cultural disgust aside, this place's beer sucks, but you can get a tower's worth of a hangover for a reasonable price, assuming that the ingesting of pure piss is in any way reasonable. If you don't mind colored and diluted ethanol, the cocktails ain't bad. Also there's food, I'm told, but if the disparity between claims to serving alcohol and the alcohol served are proportional to their claims of serving food and what would ultimately be passed through tinctured bowels, I'd rather hit any one of the nice restaurants on that strip. I ordered a hamburger once, I believe, but they may've mistaken my order for a paper-mache burger.
Anyway, I bestow upon this place two stars, as they seem to maintain a slew of patrons and therefore serve some purpose, one not dissimilar to a lightning rod.
Also: smokey, loud, crowded.
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Comments
Re: Let's not
Hey,
Well I appreciate your eloquence in bashing Helen's, it seems you may have stepped a bit out of bounds with your claims.
First of all, the beer that we serve from the tap is Yanjing, straight from the company, which is the beer you will get at most other places for the same price (either that or Tsingdao). It is in no way composed of urine, and it is certainly not "pure piss," although I like your alliteration. If you don't like the tap beer (which many people enjoy) you can always get a 10 kuai large bottle of Tsingdao, much cheaper than the many other local places, and most certainly not made of pee.
Secondly, the alcohol is in no way fake. I personally attest to the veracity of this since I in fact oversee acquiring said alcohol. It all comes directly from a legitimate distributor. Go to Propaganda or Solutions and drink the alcohol there. You will immediately taste the difference.
As for the food, we are currently working on improving it (we have a new chef at one of our other locations devoted to improving the menu) and the changes should be coming out soon. Many people who come to Helen's like the hamburger, and I guess it is a matter of taste. It's cheap, but we do use good quality ingredients and care for the food we make for our customers, maybe come back and try something else, you could like it.
Of course, your minor inconsistencies aside, if you have any suggestions on how to improve Helen's (besides limiting the pee quotient in the beer, I stand firm on this issue) you are more than welcome to let me know.
-Gideon
Re: Let's not
Dear Crow (as your unfortunate Chinese name translates too),
Our liquor is real. I have worked at bars in the states and know what real liquor tastes like, and it is the same in Helen's. It is not top of the line liquor that we serve, as our prices are low. However, the Stolichnaya is Stolichnaya, the Bacardi is Bacardi, the Gordon's is Gordon's etc. You get what is clearly shown behind the bar. Maybe your palette has been hurt by the constant smog or spicy food, or maybe you just have a stick up your a** and don't like admitting you are wrong. I'm going to assume you have limited experience and are commenting on the quality of alcohol based on your perception of the environment of Helen's, mostly because I think you are wound way too tight to get anything up there.
Love and kisses,
Gideon
Re: Let's not
Yessir indeedy.
However...
That being said, you are always more than welcome to come if you so please. Just please refrain from unsubstantiated claims that our alcohol is fake.
Re: Let's not
DaJin, why don't you tell us the name of your alcohol supplier? I too believe the booze is fake, I have been there 2 or 3 times and found the liquor undrinkable.
As 乌鸦 said, coming from a supplier does not mean that it is real. My good friend who runs 2 bars here has had constant problems with "real suppliers" and fake booze. He also has the issue of "real suppliers" approaching his Chinese staff and asking them to rescue the empty liquor bottles from the trash so that they can refill and re-seal them. The going rate is almost 5 kuai a bottle and that is enough to make almost any fuwuyuan around town a happy stack of pocket money, considering minimum wage is around 1200rmb a month. These "real suppliers" come around with a big truck every night at about 3am and collect box loads of empties which go straight to the nearest basement bathtub moonshine gig to be relabeled, refilled and resealed.
There are dozens of commonly used "real suppliers" servicing Beijing. From my (well researched) understanding there are only several who guarantee their booze and those ones are significantly more expensive than the other. I seriously doubt, with the prices Helen's charges that they are paying the more expensive suppliers.
Also, being a catty douche on the internet, trying to be clever by making fun of someones forum name.... these things are very unprofessional and certainly do not endear customers to your venue. I hope your boss sees this.
Re: Let's not
Bottle-o, thanks for the support on this, I was also a bit stunned by the logic of "if the supplier says it's real, it's real." Sure, the stripper prates her paps as pure, and they're as tangible as any other titties, but they will not for an infant suckling serve. That said, I am very interested in that which you have researched well. There should really be some oversight and authentication effort organized locally that grants some seal of approval to bars caring enough about their patrons well-being to serve what they say they're serving. Likewise, college bars should have the balls to question the integrity of their booze, or at least to not blindly rebut the due suspicions of others.
It is not uncommon to have villages die or go blind because someone's bootlegging booze. DaJin, imagine wearing those slick Stevie Wonder shades, but for his reason, not yours.
http://factsanddetails.com/china.php?itemid=143&catid=11&subcatid=73
乌鸦嘴
Re: Let's not
There are stickers which most real booze should come with, they are silver and hologramed. Sadly, even those are easy to fake.
A huge issue is often not with the suppliers, themselves but rather with the truckers. Truck drivers are bought off to switch the real booze for fake stuff en route for delivery. The real stuff is then sold for a higher price to higher-end venues and the guys who thought they were getting the real stuff get loads of fake shit. Its like money laundering. The suppliers are doing the right thing but unknowingly helping the bootleggers legitimize their shoddy business.
My friend who has bars here conducts daily random sampling and comparisons to bottles he has purchased abroad. He only deals with one of the more expensive distributors and that company offers a guarantee in which if a fake bottle is found the fakes will be replaced at a rate of 1:2 fake:real.
Any bar charging 10-25kuai for a mixed drink is absolutely not using a legit supplier and most likely are using fake alcohol whether they know it and turn a blind eye or are completely ignorant.
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