Oggi Pizzeria is an Italian-owned restaurant that aims to reproduce the essence of Southern Italy in Guangzhou. To do this they have the skills of Chef Raffaele De Gregorio from the island of Capri who has created a menu that combines both Pizzeria and Trattoria.

Oggi has recently expanded into the Jian She Liu Ma Lu area with a new restaurant just off the main street. Their original restaurant is located in Ti Yu Lu and is large with a pleasant outdoor seating area. The new restaurant is much smaller and cosy, but is nicely situated away from the main road. Until recently it had a very nice outdoor area overlooking a public square, but local authorities seem to have stopped that.

This is a very popular place for locals eating lunch or dinner, and it is very much a canteen environment with an almost ruthless level of efficiency designed to serve lots of food to lots of people.

Immediately next to the plaza is 'Hero Square', the largest outdoor 'entertainment' square in Guangzhou, and one that is always hosting some shopping promotion and sporting event (typically skating).

Corner's Deli is a speciality food chain store with several locations across Guangzhou. They have a good selection foods from around the worlds, with lots of choice in fresh cheeses and meats. Depending on the location you can also find various frozen foods, pastas, sauces, and oils. If you need to make bread then they have most kinds of flour including speciality kinds.

Although part of the CITIC Plaza, Backstreet is a curiously quirky corridor that stretches from one tower to the next and goes underneath the car park. It seems to be aimed at a more younger and cheaper audience, and contains about 20 or so shops and restaurants that range from a stationers to jewellery shops to a Japanese restaurant.

For expats Backstreet is of particular interest because of Corner's Deli, a large speciality food store that caters for Westerners and Japanese.

Set in the funky catacombs that are the Backstreet underneath Citic Plaza, Le Vila is a stylish modern café restaurant that aims to bridge the gap between quality and value for money, and this it does with enthusiasm.

If you've never been to the backstreet, it is a tunnel that goes under Citic Plaza, and can be found just outside the main shopping mall. The tunnel is full of small boutique shops, restaurants, a foreign-food supermarket, and lots of other interesting designer places. Le Vila can be found immediately upon entering one entrance, and is a large café with an 'outdoor' seating area (outdoor of the café) that is pleasantly surrounded with plants and water.

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The store contains a cafe, with some very basic foods, along with a food shop selling cheap ice cream, hot dogs, and assorted Swedish snacks.

Buongiorno is one of the latest batch of Western restaurants in Guangzhou, and has a prime location in the popular Jian She Liu Ma Lu area (just opposite the Garden Hotel). The restaurant is owned and staffed by Italians, and you are guaranteed to see the Italian owners running around the restaurant and ensuring everyone is happy during busy periods.

While the quality of other items may be high, the Hot Chocolate is not and was almost undrinkable. The staff, while pleasant, did not seem to care.

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Zinc Cafe & Bar is a modern international-style establishment with a wide variety of drinks, snacks made with the finest ingredients and new music from all over the western world. They regularly hold special events.

Nice stylish cafe, good food, good music!