Gulou Area

Coffee and beef at a reasonable price
By Annie Wei

Luce is a new, spacious and reasonably-priced Italian restaurant tucked away in Jiu Gulou Dajie.

The menu includes great Italian dishes like two eggs frittata with olive, Parmesan and tomato for 18 yuan, a two-egg omelet with mushrooms, Parmesan and tomato at 18 yuan, a roast beef fillet with balsamic reduction for 40 yuan and mixed green salsa with balsamic vinaigrette for 15 yuan. A fruit salad costs 15 yuan, and drinks like espresso, cappuccino and latte are 8, 18 and 20 yuan respectively.

While the frittata and omelets may not be too traditional, the espresso is great for its price, and the roast beef fillet with balsamic reduction is half what it costs in most restaurants.

While its entrance looks like a hutong gate, the interior is nice, spacious and simple. The first room seems like a yard from the original house, but decorated with a window roof. The table is light-colored wood with a cozy sofa and chairs.

Luce has expanded into more space and opened rooftop dining, though it is currently closed for the winter. A waitress said most diners come for dinner, and it attracts a lot of business as a party venue.

“I like this place,” a woman diner said, “The ambiance is great, and it’s like we booked the whole restaurant. We can talk about whatever we want and laugh loudly.”

This reporter went there with her friends for a girls’-night-out. They ordered two bottles of red wine, several kinds of salad and cold dishes, risotto, beef, coffee and sea bass. The bill for the night was 100 and 150 yuan per person.

A girls’-night-out is the ladies’ version of boys-night-out for highly-educated and high-paid women to talk about clothes, travels abroad, books, movies, boyfriends and ribbing the laowai men in town.

Luce
Where: 138 Jiu Gulou Dajie, Xicheng
Open: 10 am – midnight
Tel: 8402 4417