Get Me To The Greek Mediterranean THROWDOWN: Opa! vs. Yiamas

There are two good Greek restaurants in Taipei: Opa! Greek Taverna, formerly in a fantastic space near Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall (now in the brightly-lit and utterly soulless ATT 4 Fun), and Yiamas Greek Taverna just off Anhe Road across from Far Eastern Shangri La Hotel (where Toast used to be - I'm sad that place closed, I liked their ceviche, but happy to be within walking distance of a Greek restaurant).

I want to review and rank these two places based on their actual food, but honestly, the food is about the same. A few notes:

Hummus: used to be fantastic at Opa!, now merely good. It is also good at Yiamas but my homemade hummus is still better. It was silkier at the old Opa!, but something has changed at the new one...mostly related to texture but it could use more of a kick generally. I'm wondering if locals didn't like the old recipe.

Lemon chicken: I haven't tried this at Yiamas yet but at Opa! it's as good as ever, and a huge serving.

Moussaka: Very good at both restaurants, but my husband says it was better when Opa! was still in its old location. It was like heaven, he said, and when we went to ATT 4 Fun, it was still good but had an air of microwave about it. Not surprising as they must have a much smaller kitchen.

Htipiti (or roasted red bell pepper and feta dip): excellent at both restaurants.

Lamb ribs: excellent at both restaurants. You get more lamb for your money at Yiamas, but the ribs at the old Opa! were more tender and less chewy. No idea how they are at the new Opa!

Desserts: more or less identical at both restaurants.

They are literally almost like two copies of each other. The menus are virtually identical and prices similar, to the point where I wonder if one didn't steal the other's. So you could really go to either and get a similar food experience.

This is where ambiance comes in. Opa! used to be in a neat space decorated with murals inspired by Grecian scenery. I happen to like street-level restaurants in atmospheric side lanes in bustling neighborhoods with vibrant street life. I am less a fan of large shopping malls (that is to say, I hate them, especially in Taiwan where the ceilings are low, the aisles are narrow, the teenyboppers walk around like they couldn't ever be in anyone's way, and the music is blasting and usually terrible). I also hate what they do to street life: walking down a lane crammed with boutiques, restaurants, cafes, tea shops and vendors is interesting. Walking by shopping malls, giant monolithic buildings and apartment complexes without street-level retail space is not interesting (even when they have street-level space it often lacks atmosphere and liveliness). For this reason Xinyi is my idea of Hell: wide roads full of cars and slow traffic lights racing between hulking shopping malls with almost nothing of interest going on at street level (I do not think the shops along the pedestrian walkways between the department store buildings are particularly interesting: I want to see local businesses, not Crocs and Krispy Kreme).

I do not like the mallification of Taipei.
I do not like it in any way.
I do not like it in a tree, I do not like it in Xinyi.
I do not like it on the road, I do not like it with a toad.
I do not like it in my hood, I do not like it, it's no good.

It's not just no good, it's destroying the city. If I wanted to flit between hideous monoliths crowded with teenagers playing terrible music, while the streets are dead to pedestrians, merely conveyances for cars and scooters, I'd have moved to fucking Beijing. YUCK.

And now Opa! is in one of those monstrosities. It is brightly lit, overly white, noisy and modern, and completely soulless. It sucks the joy out of the food. I didn't realize how much I valued being able to walk in from the street, open an actual door, maybe pass by a front garden with some plants or at least walk through a neighborhood with some liveliness to it to get to dinner in a comfortably lit, comfortably decorated space that isn't too hard-edged or bright and jarring...but I do care about these things.

Plus, if every restaurant is in a freakin' shopping mall, how are they going to have kitchens big enough to make quality food, and how are we supposed to enjoy eating outside on the few nice days we get in Taipei?

The Diner is in ATT 4 Fun too, though at least it has its own entrance. But I liked the Diner on Dunhua S. Road, where I had a shot at having brunch outsideand now it's closed, so I rarely go to the Diner anymore. (The one on Rui'an St. should still be there, but they once told me they didn't take reservations only for me to show up and be asked if I had a reservation, so screw them).

Anyway, enough of my rant. Yiamas is in a street-level space with moody lighting and a comfortable feel. It's not too bright, and it's not white at all. They have a full-sized, not mall-sized, kitchen. I don't feel like I'm a mannequin on display there, I feel like a person having a romantic birthday dinner with her husband. My glass of wine doesn't look like grape juice under the bright LEDs, it looks like delicious, murky wine. I want to eat the food there, because the atmosphere makes me want it.

So, in a head to head of the two Greek restaurants in Taipei...

Sorry Opa! - I really liked you once. Get a real location, not some ugly white box in a shopping mall, and I may like you again.

The match goes to Yiamas.

Eat Here: Tibet Kitchen

Tibet Kitchen
#217 Sec 2 Heping E. Road, Da'an District, Taipei
台北市大安區和平東路二段217號
MRT Technology Building
(02)2705-4770

Our tasty fried appetizer (I forget its name)

This was once the site of a pretty good Singaporean/Malaysian restaurant (I was a fan of their chicken rice and their laksa). I'm sad to see it go, but happy to see Tibet Kitchen - rather than some mediocre overpriced Chinese establishment - take its place (and for every delicious restaurant, stall, nook and cranny in Taipei is an overpriced mediocre Chinese restaurant - think of the one that replaced the old Yilan seafood place across from Zoca Pizza).

Samosas with chili sauce

The only thing that could have been better is if we could have both restaurants nearby, but I guess you can't always get what you want, huh?

Anyway, Tibet Kitchen succeeds where the only other Tibetan restaurant I've been to in Taipei failed: the Tibetan place in Shi-da, now closed thanks to terrible, terrible people whom I wish very bad luck on, was, to be honest, not great. The chicken was drenched in something I can only describe as American Sweet&Sour Sauce, and the macaroni dessert...thing was incomprehensible. It didn't taste very authentic (not that I'd know for sure) and it just didn't taste very good.

This place is different. I don't know who ran the Tibetan restaurant in Shi-da, but I do know that this place is run by Tibetans. It also doesn't appear very busy, which is a shame, because the food is delicious.

Beef slices and fried bread

We popped by for a late-ish lunch one weekday - maybe the reason why it wasn't busy - and got two appetizers and two entrees. Everything was yummy. And everything tasted as close to "Tibetan" as I'm aware of (I've been to a Tibetan community in southern India, and I've been to Nepal where the food is similar, but not Tibet yet). As one might expect, some food was Indian-influenced (you can get Indian milk tea, lassi and samosas, and they claim to have basic Indian fare too), some Chinese influenced and some right in the middle (like the sliced beef with peppers we enjoyed).
We got samosas (cooked more in the Chinese 'wrapped' style than the Indian battered-and-fried style) and deep fried beef "croquettes" (my word), which came with a different take on coriander chutney and a bowl of fresh ground red chili - the latter being a sauce I enjoyed often in Nepal. Both were delicious - the chili sauce imparts more heat than flavor, but as I see it that's OK: that's what it was like in Nepal, too.

For our appetizers, we got the beef slices - they were tender, perfectly cooked and absolutely delicious. To eat it with, we got some "deep fried bread" - think like a fried naan from India, or a very thick poori bread without too much air inside. It had just been cooked and was scalding hot - and therefore was absolutely fresh and delicious.

A plate of momos

We also a plate of momos, which tasted more or less like the ones I ate in the Tibetan community in southern India, and again in Nepal (I do realize I'm not the best person to comment on the authenticity of Tibetan food, but hey, I'm trying). We got more chili sauce for the momos, which brought me back to my days on a shoestring budget in Kathmandu.

To wash it all down we had sweet lassis, which were just standard lassis, but tasty (even the most normal lassi is delicious).

All in all we thoroughly enjoyed our meal and feel that this restaurant and its friendly proprietors deserve way more business. Go there! Enjoy! Stuff yourselves! You won't be sorry.

South Indian Food in Taipei: Take II (now with masala dosa!)

YES I DID EAT THIS IN TAIPEI. WHAT! WHAT!

Mayur Indian - Keelung Road (South Indian - idli only)

350-5, Keelung Rd Sec 1, Taipei City 
台北市基隆路一段350號之5 (above that part of Keelung Road that's underground just south of Ren'ai)

Mayur Indian - Xinsheng N. Road and Civic Boulevard (idli and masala dosa)

Xinsheng N. Road Sec 1 #38 - right where Xinsheng veers to the west after Civic Boulevard
台北市中山區新生北路一段38號


This will make it into my "Indian food in Taipei" post as an update in just a moment, but I feel it also deserves its own post. Remember when I last posted about south Indian food in Taipei, at the now-defunct, I-heard-its-moved-but-I-don't-care Exotic Masala House? The one that started off good, got really bad, got slightly better, and then disappeared? Well, it wasn't quite good enough to keep going back, so we didn't. No idea if idli is still on the menu or if they are even still in business.

Well, now there's another option: Mayur Indian on Keelung Rd. now offers idli (2pcs), and their Xinsheng Road location now offers idli, masala dosa, and an idli-dosa set.




It's pretty good - it's more like a paper dosa and less like the Udupi ghee dosas I like, but still very good. Great coriander chutney. Creamier sambar than I am used to - I think there are more lentils in there (yes, sambar can have lentils in it) - but I've had sambar that creamy in India so I'm fine with it. And pretty spicy - they will definitely make it so that it tastes like the real deal, not the dumbed-down "aaah spice! no!" versions of Indian food you often find in Taipei.

It comes quick, too. I'm not really sure how they do it so quickly.

Sadly, no coconut or tomato chutney, but hey, I takes what I can gets.

Mayur's fantastic because they've gone from "good basic curry" when they opened to offering regional specialties from around India. You can get passable chaat, Goan snacks, a tasty yoghurt curry (and malai kofta!) there, not just your usual "chicken, fish and mutton four different ways, and some vegetable curries" like at other Indian restaurants.

And they don't put that gross garlic butter spread on their naan like Out of India. Seriously, Out of India, you have to stop doing that. You have good naan. Don't destroy it with that disgusting spread. It's the main reason I don't go to your restaurant often (your curries are not bad otherwise).

My In-Laws' Culinary Tour of Taipei

The in-laws try Tiger Noodle (韓記老虎麵) on Jinhua Street 

I haven't had a lot of time to write about my in-laws visit or other things that have been on my mind recently - a busy work schedule has kept me consistently behind on blogging.

I thought, though, that this might be of some use, or at least interest, for anyone with visiting friends or relatives looking for places to take them for dinner. I should say straight out that I'm not a coddler: I'll try my best to find food I think people will like and will be sensitive to "I absolutely will not eat that" or "I really hate X" preferences, but I am absolutely not the sort to just cop out and take folks to Kiki, Ding Tai Fung and Gordon Biersch to avoid the possibility of them not liking something. 

And you know I'm a food freak, regularly writing and updating on the best eats in Taipei, even though I'm not really a "food blogger" (even if Forbes thinks differently, haha). Note that, despite being quoted in that article, Ding Tai Fung is one place I notably did not take my in-laws. Not because it's not good (it is great), but because it's overhyped, overtouristed and, honestly, too expensive for no good reason other than that they can get away with charging Japanese tourists such high prices. For your foreign visitors, unless they insist, you can do better in Taipei food-wise.

Fortunately, my in-laws aren't the sort who would want cop-out meals, nor are they the sort to say "I've never tried that, but I'm not interested in doing so", which is good (I can accommodate that sort of attitude, I'm not interested in forcing anyone to try something they absolutely do not want to try, but I don't have much respect for such an outlook). Even things that weren't on their list of favorites - things made of tofu, various seafood dishes, things that were spicy or unrecognizable or just weird, were all things they were still generally willing to try. Hooray!

For example:

Ginger tofu pudding （薑汁豆花), with taro and sweet potato QQ balls and boiled peanuts. I like hot tofu pudding, but not iced, and I *love* hot ginger tofu pudding - especially from Sanxia - but I knew it would be something novel, without much reference point for any other food, for the in-laws. The one we got wasn't that great - the stuff available in Sanxia is so much better - but fortunately they were game. Dad seemed to like it, Mom not so much.

Tangyuan (湯圓), in a meal that also included sweet potato leaves (地瓜葉), rice sausage (米腸) that pink fried pork with slivered ginger that foreigners tend to like and tofu was another novelty that went over slightly less well.  I like it, although it's not my all-time favorite, but it's so commonplace in Taiwan that I felt it was a good thing for them to try. We got this in Daxi, not Taipei, but really you can get it anywhere. The rice sausage also got a lukewarm reception (I love the stuff - like many Taiwanese, I have a thing for gooey foods).

What they really loved? The sweet potato leaves. They were a hit.

Another must on their culinary tour was traditional tea. We had this twice - once on Maokong and once in Jiufen. I would have loved to have taken them to Wistaria House but we didn't have time. Either way, if your visitors are at all interested in or even like tea, making sure they have a chance to try tea brewed the traditional way is a great introduction to one facet of Taiwanese culture (even if not many people actually brew this anymore). I do know how to make it, but it was easier to just let the attendant do it.

Tea at A-mei

Besides Wistaria House, I would recommend Mountain Tea House (山茶館) on Maokong - 2nd floor up, best place to sit is 3rd floor - it's to the left and past the first clutch of development from Maokong Station. It's also a good place for dinner, with tasty Lemon Diced Chicken (檸檬雞丁）, mountain pig （山豬肉） and other good food, and they have a good selection of tea snacks. The Taiwanese dried mango and walnut cakes were a hit, and I've always loved the slightly crumbly, melty green bean cakes - they remind me of the texture of very fresh maple candy.

In Jiufen I rather liked Amei Tea House (阿妹茶樓) down the stair street, although the 100NT per person water fee is quite high. Down the stairs even further is another similarly beautiful teahouse with a more open outdoor area that I've also been to and like. Try the fried taro - so good!

Fairly early on in their trip, they ended up at two of Taipei's best eateries: Celestial Kitchen and Hui Guan Ningxia Restaurant. I would have personally picked Rendezvous (Longdu) for Beijing Duck, but they could get in to Celestial without a reservation for lunch, and honestly, it's basically as good (I just like the dim sum available at Rendezvous and find the duck fattier, which I like). Celestial is fantastic, and the mustard/wasabi (it's something between those two things) covered Chinese celery from Celestial certainly left an impression!

If you don't have the time or Chinese ability to make reservations, but want to take people for Beijing Duck, Celestial for a weekday lunch is a strong bet.

While I do feel that Taiwan and China are absolutely not the same, I have to admit that there is a lot of good Beijing Duck on offer in Taipei, and it would be a shame for them to miss out. As long as there is also a variety of Taiwanese cuisine served up for the eatin' on your trip alongside the best of the mainland, I figure, if it's good food and in Taipei, it's worth it to go.

As for Hui Guan, well, you know it's one of my all-time favorites. They didn't have the spicy cold chicken or dong fen I usually like, but the sour vegetable and noodle salad, Central-Asian style bread with minced meat and lamb skewers were delicious as always. This is a kind of Chinese food that is not easily found in the US, especially in rural Maine, so being able to take them out to try the cuisine of oft-forgotten Ningxia, with its many Chinese Muslims and strong Central Asian influence, was a real treat for everyone. It's also a great place to try Chinese chili-pepper heat when it's mixed in a big cultural mortar and pestle with Middle Eastern spices.

Stinky Tofu Fried with Thousand Year Old Egg at Chia Chia

 I couldn't let my in-laws leave Taiwan for the second time without trying Hakka food, which is such a big part of food culture in this country. We weren't really able to go down to Hakka areas like Xinzhu or Miaoli just to eat (although with another free day we might have taken them to Beipu), so we just went for Chia Chia (家家客家）, widely regarded as the best Hakka food in Taipei.

Unsurprisingly, the hearty pork dish we ordered was popular, as was Hakka stir fry (客家小抄). The cuttlefish cooked in vinegar was a hit with everyone but my mother-in-law, who just doesn't do seafood.  We avoided the ginger intestine because I figured we'd hit our limit of "try this new thing!" dishes with the famous stinky tofu deep fried with thousand year old egg above.

Surprisingly, it was a huge hit. I loved it, and so did my father-in-law. Mom...not so much. Definitely a good place to take people. You could even surreptitiously order the ginger intestine...mwahahahaha.

Medium-spicy lamb with puffed rice at Tiger Noodle

My mother-in-law was keen to try different kinds of spice, even though she's generally not an eater of spicy food. Little did she know that the wasabi celery at Celestial was just the beginning! We took them  for a Trial By Fire to Han Chi Tiger Noodle and got Dad the medium hot, which we usually get, and Mom the "xiao la" or "mild"...as it were. Tiger Noodle's "mild" is still pretty damn hot. This was their introduction to spice including hua jiao, or flower pepper - which tingles the lips and numbs the tongue. A great choice, but only take people there if you know they can basically handle it. Basically. Mostly.  Crying might happen. I love that place.

Taipei Snow King

Eager to  put out the fire in their mouths and bellies, they were happy to hop on the 235 bus and head for Taipei Snow King on Wuchang Street - an old Taipei institution near Zhongshan Hall (along they way they got to see a good chunk of Ximen and the more attractive parts of Wanhua, including my favorite building in basically the entire city of Taipei:

...all before hopping into a taxi to Dihua Street (the distance between these two points is not great, but the transportation is tricky and it was just easier to take a cab).

We got chocolate and chocolate chip (the two normal ones), rose wine, wasabi, basil, egg (which tastes like the custard in Macau egg tarts) and mint (my favorite) - we'd gotten the Kaoliang before and didn't think the in-laws would take it well (we didn't take it well!), but if we could have eaten more I would have gone for ginger, honey, cinnamon or chili pepper.

Kung Pao Chicken at Tian Fu

Back to "best of Taipei, even if some of it originated in China", that night we were not kind to their digestion. We met some friends and all went to Tian Fu in Yonghe - hands-down the best Sichuanese in Taipei, if not all of Taiwan. Don't even bother with Kiki ever again: this place has it goin' on. If you've got visitors who want good food, and care about that more than fancy ambience, this is the place for you. I can't hawk it enough. I don't even want a commission: leading people to such great food is my reward for all of this free advertising they get, because it's just that good.

I was eager to take them here, not only for more hua jiao, but also as an example of what real Sichuanese food is...as opposed to very-different-but-good-in-its-own-way "Szechwan Palace Garden Gate Panda Buffet" from the USA. No General Tso's Chicken* here! We got them shui zhu niu (水煮牛 －beef in spicy broth), kung pao chicken, chili chicken, mouthwatering chicken (口水雞) deep fried bread (銀絲捲), ma po tofu (媽婆豆腐), green beans (四季豆), fish-scented eggplant (魚香茄子) and pork with sweet potato cooked under sticky millet (I've forgotten the Chinese name but it has 排骨 in it) as the token not spicy thing.

Oh, the fear that must have shadowed their hearts as the giant bowl of angry red broth full of tender sliced beef came out!

If you've got visitors who are OK with some spice but might be overwhelmed by Tiger Noodle, the selection at Tian Fu is varied enough that it's still a good choice.

"niu bang" and peppered salty pork at Auntie Xie's

Back to typical Taiwanese food:  the place to take your guests is, without a doubt, Auntie Xie's (#122 or thereabouts on Bo'ai Road). Afterwards you can buy them some pineapple cakes at Olympia across the street (#3 Bo'ai Road) and show them Shanghai Dispensary on Hengyang Road, Taiwan's most famous gray market pharmacy, where I get my Imigran semi-legally. A national treasure, that is! 

Auntie Xie's has no menu, is closed on Sunday and is always packed, and the hair-netted old ladies who work there will totally talk about you in Taiwanese as you're eating: but it's totally worth it and they don't really mean any harm by their "hey, white people!" gossip. You show up, pay NT 300 per person for lunch (might be more for dinner), and they bring out whatever they're cooking that day. There's always taro congee and thin noodles in thick broth as well as white rice available. We got a delicious fish, the above fried "niu bang" plant (not potato but had a potato-ey taste and texture) with peppered salty pork, cold chicken in a sour oily sauce (油雞), a green vegetable, some appetizer plates (小菜) and young bamboo with tree mushroom.

Basically, it's food you'd get if someone's Taiwanese grandmother invited you over for dinner. Home food. Simple but delicious. 

A lot of foreigners in Taiwan are unimpressed by the food in Taiwan (read the comments - and this is just one example post. Laowiseass has said similar things, but I can't find the link). I happen to like it: the flavors are light and clean, and yes, they can be hard to discern if your palate is swamped with my much-beloved hua jiao and chili oil, but they are there if you taste carefully.

So, I was really happy when both my in-laws had a positive reaction to Auntie Xie's: along with Hui Guan, the most positive reaction I saw regarding any restaurant we tried. Taiwanese food is good if you are discerning and willing to suss out those delicate, clean flavors and willing to seek it out in places like this where it's made right, and it's a whole different experience from the more famous night market snacks and stinky tofu.

I, too, love pungent food but find Auntie Xie's cooks up something entirely different, but just as delicious. 

cold chicken with cilantro at Harbin Dumpling King

                        

Last time they were here, we took the in-laws to Shilin Night Market - which is really not one of my favorites, but was convenient at the time. We did want to take them back to another market, but didn't really have any more space in our eatin' schedule for eating at one (and at this point even I was starting to get a woozy stomach from all the rich and luscious restaurant food we'd been enjoying. I don't eat out at actual restaurants quite so often as I did that week). But, a night market is a must-do, so we walked through Tonghua Night Market ("Linjiang Street Night Market") near our apartment and did some light shopping (I got a lobster claw lighter that, when you click to open the claw, it spits out flame from the middle. Awesome!).

On our final night we took them to Harbin Dumpling King - another kind of Chinese cuisine you're just not going to get in rural Maine, or basically most of the USA. The food isn't really "Harbin" food - it's pan-Chinese, from Xinjiang to Sichuan to the northeast - but has that distinctive flavor that northern Chinese, especially Beijing, food takes on, regardless of where the recipes originated. It is one of my favorites. I'd been hearing about it ever since I attended a house party in my first few months in Taiwan and a bunch of guys (one of them a formerly prominent Taiwan blogger) were talking about going. It was years before I actually went myself, but I'm sure glad I did.

Apparently it is also a favorite of Wu Bai (伍伯) - yes, that is him above my eyeball. Not joking. Not someone who looks like him - that's Wubai and he wouldn't take a picture with us. Which is fine; I'm not out to pester rock stars!

We got cold chicken with cilantro, slivered meat with onion, the delicious and famous spicy lamb skewers - another thing you can get across Taiwan in different restaurants - Hui Guan, Harbin Dumpling King, Xinjiang lamb skewer stalls in night markets, Shao Shao Ke - and each is delicious in its own amazing way. We got Q-bing, which comes with  plum sauce and cucumber and is wrapped not unlike Beijing Duck, two kinds of dumplings (green bean chicken and fennel beef - I highly recommend the fennel beef. Yum!), glass noodles with cucumber and pig's ear, more flower pepper chicken (辣子雞), some really good eggplant...and probably some other delicious things as well. I forget. I was so stuffed and excited to have spotted Wubai, who has very good taste in food!

(Of course my in-laws were all "Who's Wubai?")

This was a good place for some not-so-spicy dishes, but also to try more lamb seasoned with hot pepper powder and cumin, which provide a kind of earthy heat when mixed together, and to get a taste for real northern Chinese fare.

三個台灣美女

One thing about the restaurants I've been mentioning is that they're generally better with larger groups - because you can order more types of food. This was an excellent opportunity for my in-laws to get to know our friends in Taiwan, both local and foreign. This is me with two of my closest Taiwanese friends, Cathy and Sasha, at Harbin Dumpling King!

At Wendell's Tianmu

With all of our Chinese and Taiwanese food exploits, the in-laws also wanted to try some of what Taipei has on offer in terms of "ethnic food" (hey, in Taipei, "German" counts as "ethnic"). We took them to Wendell's - although Cafe Goethe is just as good for many dishes - and Calcutta Indian food, which is reliably delicious. At Wendell's, enjoy the great bread, and don't miss out on the exquisite beef tartare (ask for extra bread to eat it with, trust me). At Calcutta,  make sure to get lamb samosas and butter chicken, and the garlic naan is wonderful. This was another kind of spice to try - Indian spices, fried in ghee, and slow-cooked with a gravy and meat or vegetable to produce a much more rounded spice that settles in your gut and then seemingly spreads through your veins to create a sort of happy, ethereal, "high on spice" feeling (you can get a similar feeling by eating a massive amount of red chili peppers). These, along with Zoca Pizza and The Diner, are all reliable choices for non-Chinese/Taiwanese food in Taipei.

*********

Shrimp Roll Rice on Dihua Street

Of course, there are places we didn't get to enjoy. We didn't eat my favorite shrimp roll rice on Dihua Street, even though we did go there for fabric shopping, because my mother -in-law just would not have been able to do the seafood. I don't think it would have appealed to them.

We didn't make it to Shao Shao Ke, with its Shaanxi food featuring a cross between the Central Asian influenced spices of northwest China and hua jia and chili spices of Sichuan, but next time they visit, we certainly will (and we'll call ahead to pre-order some of their specialties that they need notice to prepare).

They didn't get to try Zoca, because the restaurant was closed for an extended break while they were here. That was really sad, because it's literally a few minutes' walk from my apartment.

We didn't get to Nan Chuan, which has great noodles and an amazing cold chili sauce chicken xiao cai that you absolutely have to try.

*As for that General Tso's Chicken, there's a restaurant run by the son of one of Chiang Ching-kuo's chefs, known as the "inventor of General Tso's Chicken". I can't find a link now but will update with it when I do: I would have definitely taken them there, just for kicks, if we'd had time.

And finally, sadly, we missed out on aboriginal food, which I see as a mainstay of good Taiwanese cuisine.

Needless to say, there's still enough great uncharted food territory for my in-laws when they come back, and plenty of options for friends I'm hoping will visit...which are also options for your friends and relatives who visit, too!

Chicken in Bok & Beer and The Shi-da Controversy

Chicken in Bok & Beer

台北市大安區浦城街13巷4號

With the controversy still roiling regarding overcrowding in Shi-da night market and the nearby "Exotic Cuisine Street" (Pucheng Street Lane 31), I figured I'd go ahead and review one of the restaurants on that street.

This place serves exactly what you think - fried stuff and beer. Mostly chicken, but you can also get fries, onion rings and fried tteokbokki as well as soft drinks and beer. It claims to be original Korean fried chicken.

The verdict?

Well, I didn't get to try to garlic chicken but the consensus regarding what we did get was that the sauce-less original flavor (above) was good enough but not fantastic - I found it a smidgen dry and lacking sufficient salt - but the ones in sauce (also above), both the "sweet" and "spicy" varieties, were awesome. I would totally go back for the spicy sauce crispy chicken. It's got a real kick of spice, it's not just sweet-and-sour sauce (although yes, I realize that that's what it looks like) and yet does retain some level of crispiness.

The fries are good by Taiwan standards, but they won't blow your mind.  The draft beer appears to be Tsingtao, which is unexpected. I've developed a taste for Taiwan Draft Beer (台灣生啤酒) but I'll take Tsingtao. As long as they don't give me Coors or Hite I'm generally OK. Draft beer is NT$100 a glass, and the glasses are fairly large.

 

A half chicken - which is one large serving - is NT $230-$260 or so. A full chicken is roughly double that.

Each order comes with a free "salad" - I ate it more out of pity for its continued existence, than anything. I considered it humane euthanasia to put that sad, limping salad out of its misery. It's basically shredded iceberg lettuce, a few corn kernels and thousand island dressing. Don't let it put you off, get it out of the way before the actual food comes. It's sad but it is not an omen as to the quality of the chicken.

Final verdict: pretty good, didn't tilt the world on its axis, would go back but only for the spicy sauce chicken.

If you want some really good Korean fried chicken, by the way, try the guy near the far end (far from Keelung Rd) of Tonghua Night Market who shares space with the Taiwanese meatball people. Portions are small but cheap, and his Korean fried chicken is great. He's actually Korean, by the way.

About that Shi-da dust-up. 

I don't have an opinion about the controversy itself - both the residents and the restaurants have good points - but I do agree that the government has handled it very poorly. Can't expect much better from Muppet-in-Chief Hao Lung-bin. (No, seriously, the guy looks like a muppet, and is about as smart as one). 

If I had to come down on one side, I'd side with the restaurants, even the ones I don't like (more on that below). They've been allowed to be there for ages, been officially inspected, have operated openly and have been given no reason to believe that what they were doing was illegal (even if it technically was). Sending a form letter does not equate to "communication" on the government end and I don't believe the government is trying even remotely hard enough to solve the issue.

While I do feel for the residents - I know how noise can impact quality of life - the apartments in that neighborhood can go for quite a lot of money. If I lived there, I'd rent mine out to students (who don't care as much, in my experience, and will love living so centrally) and use the rent money to rent myself a nearby apartment in a quieter lane. Or, I'd move. My issue would be roaches from all the food and crowds, though.

I know, I know, nobody should feel they have to move, but then that also goes for the stores and restaurants which have been operating with government blessings for years, and have even been promoted.

I also feel that while I still enjoy Shi-da, I don't like it as much as I used to. On Exotic Cuisine Street, Exotic Masala House has gone way downhill, I stopped eating at Out of India when they once served me garlic naan swathed not in fresh butter and mincedgarlic, but that nasty margarine-based "garlic butter" you get on toast in middling cafes. Seriously, as though I wouldn't notice. They must not think much of their clients that, if they'd run out of butter and garlic they couldnt've sent someone to the nearby Wellcome. That was years ago, maybe they've reverted back to real garlic and butter, but I'm scarred for life. I've never been a fan of the Tibetan restaurant, and I didn't think the famous Korean one was all that authentic (Korean Village closer to Roosevelt in a lane on the other side of Shi-da Road is worlds better).

I'd hate to see My Sweetie Pie go out of business, though, and while there is better Western food on offer in Taipei than Grandma Nitti's, I *heart* their caring for animals and their American Diner-style coffee.

I guess what I'd like to see are some genuinely good restaurants open up in this lane or nearby - I don't eat here often because I'm genuinely not that enthused by what's on offer.

                             

The main part of the market, the one that's so crowded you can barely walk, isn't much better. I used to enjoy it, now the crowds make it not worth it. Most of my favorite places (like the store with cats that sold interesting Chinese-style "vintage" looking gifts, jewelry, clothes, home decor items and postcards) are gone, I don't think the food is as good as Raohe, Ningxia or Tonghua Night Markets, and I'm not interested in the new stores popping up selling low-quality size-negative-two teenybopper clothes and gold tone jewelry.

I still stop by the guy who sells enamel Chinese-style earrings though. I'm buying him out before he disappears forever. 

Updated: The Best Pizza in Taipei

I've updated my post on The Best Pizza in Taipei to include Zoca on Linjiang Street (near Anhe Road, north of the biggest nightspot area). Really good stuff! Also, I can walk there. Bonus!

I know I should probably actually rank these, but you can't rank something as ineffable as good pizza.    I can try to make some order out of the chaos, though.

All pizza places I list below are in the post linked above.

I would say the two absolute best pizza stops in Taipei are now Faust and Zoca - Zoca's great but rather than unseating Faust, it has made it to the great height of rivaling it. For very different reasons, of course: Faust offers low-oil, super thin crispy crust delight with a big focus on the toppings (like the bleu cheese that sends me into rapturous bliss). They only do pizza and beer and I appreciate the minimalist approach.

Zoca  is right up there with Faust, but the actual pizza on offer is quite different - softer, slightly thicker crust, tangy sauce, more oil (but in a good way). The beer on the menu is not as good as Faust's one-label offering, but they have some nice desserts going and homemade limoncello. The pumpkin soup was good but not to die for. We didn't try anything else (I'm afraid to get salad at a pizza place anywhere that is not Amore).

Amore Pizza on Xinhai Road is not a step down, it's just very different. So different that you can't even really judge it by the same criteria. Where Faust and Zoca make good, arguably gourmet, pizza, Amore makes New Jersey pizza.  You aren't going to find capers, sundried tomatoes, pesto, grilled zucchini or any of that at Amore. You're going to find the pizza I grew up with (I'm from the tri-state area, close enough), with those glass jars in the swirly pattern and metal tops with parmesan, oregano and  dried red chili and metal napkin dispensers. You know the jars I mean. If you're from that part of the country, anyway. Plus they make their Caesar salad dressing from scratch, with real ground anchovy. The one place in Taipei where it's worth it to get a salad with your pie.

Just a slight step down from those dizzying heights, but still very good, are So Free and Fifteen. I still heartily recommend either, but for very different reasons, again: Fifteen is the sort of place where you can get pizza with caviar on it and Belgian beer. So Free is bare-bones thin crust vegetarian pizza with just a few choices, a small space with very little seating and generally healthy drinks.

Still good - as in better than Domino's and not a bad choice if you're looking for some decent slice action are Alley Cat (which I used to love and now merely like) and Maryjane's. Alley Cat, to its credit, seemed to be the driving force that brought good pizza to Taipei. I am fairly sure that the other places opened after it did, or around when it did. It's still good, with excellent tiramisu, but I never quite forgave them for screwing up the check a number of times at their Huashan location and I do find that the toppings you get are a bit skimpy (Zoca, Faust and Fifteen are quite generous with their toppings). Maryjane's is sturdy, decent pizza but I wasn't thrown to the heights of rapture with it: their feta cheese was not nearly pungent enough (I was actually not even sure they'd used real feta on my pizza), the cheese was workmanlike and the crust good but not memorable.

On some weird other level, there's Bollywood Indian Pizza. The thing is, I don't include it in "pizza" because it's not pizza, really. It's more like a flat naan with curry spread on it and some cheese, to approximate pizza but really be curry in a different form. It's good. It's not pizza, but it's good.

I still have to try Pizzeria Oggi in Tianmu. I just rarely make it to Tianmu, is all - not my preferred haunt and a bit inconvenient to get to (for me anyway). We'll see if they stack up.

Tastes of Childhood: Making Lahmacun in Taipei

OH YUMMY

I've mentioned before that my mom's side of the family is Armenian from Musa Dagh, Turkey and that this is one of the reasons why we chose Turkey as our next travel destination: to seek out my homeland (or rather, one of my homelands - I'm also Polish, Swiss and generic British/Irish). Of all my many threads of ancestry, my Armenian heritage has always been the most vibrant and the biggest part of my life - I do believe that's because that side of the family came to the USA the most recently, and also because that branch of the family has been the most tenacious in terms of keeping heritage and memories alive. That tends to happen when your family lives through a genocide. When one's great grandfather (in my case, Mehran Renjilian) was a freedom fighter (the Turks would say "terrorist" but they're wrong) in the Armenian resistance...later turned minister. When one's family arrives in the USA after being forced to leave not one, but two countries - the second being Greece as the Nazis closed in.

So, after many years of regaling friends with homecooked Indian food, various appetizers and organizing outings to restaurants, I decided that on the eve of the trip that will mark my generation's first return to Musa Dagh, that I will cook some of the best-loved and most familiar dishes of my childhood.

The party will be in two weeks. I can make some of these dishes in my sleep, quite literally: I've had dreams where I have made hummus from scratch and upon waking up realized that even in my dream I followed exactly the right recipe. I have to admit, though, that there are others that I've eaten plenty of but never attempted to make (such as "fish cookies" which are flavored not with fish but with honey, and derive their name from the herringbone pattern cut across the top), and still others that I've attempted once before, failed at miserably, and never tried again...such as lahmacun.

The last time I made lahmacun, or tried to, I was too scared to attempt the dough, being terrified of trying something that included yeast. Instead I put the tasty topping on soft pita. The pita burned. I took the smoking mess of charred bread and raw meat laid out in a glass casserole out of the oven and plopped it on the counter, where the glass instantly shattered.

You can imagine my trepidation at deciding to not only attempt lahmacun again, but to do so with my tiny electric oven and with real dough made with actual yeast (I'm a great baker of cakes, muffins and such but not so experienced with bread products).

So this weekend was the test run.

My beloved husband helps out in the kitchen as I prepare the lahmacun dough.

I mostly followed this recipe, with a few changes to reflect the flavors I remember from childhood. I would never use ground beef - only lamb will do. Beef is a cop-out. I also added extra garlic, black pepper and allspice to the recipe. The "Armenian spice" I grew up with is made of cumin, paprika, cayenne pepper, black pepper and allspice and that's the combination I created and added.

Ground allspice in my tiny marble mortar&pestle.

 Fortunately, I have a wonderful husband who, while not exactly a kitchen god in his own right, is very good at helping out in the kitchen - chopping, grinding, peeling, mixing, stirring - whatever I may need when my two hands and one brain just aren't enough.

Lahmacun is not just flavored with dry spices and lamb - it also includes the pungent flavors of onion, parsley, mint, tomato, lemon and garlic (and, of course, salt).

Mint and lemon - yum!

 My mom once wrote a short story of her experiences making lahmacun, lamenting that Nana - her grandmother - could always turn out perfect dough circles but hers were eternally lumpy and lopsided.

I have to say that I take after my mother, but it doesn't matter: I care about taste, not looks.

Sorry, Nana. I hope as you look down on me from heaven (despite my not being religious) I hope you will forgive my horrifically uneven dough rounds).

Creating this dish in Taipei was - and will be, when I make it again in two weeks - a collision of memories. My life in Taipei with our assortment of friends here, our decrepit apartment that we'll soon be moving out of for better digs, our insane cat, Chinese class, evenings enjoying Belgian beer at various Da'an cafes or going out for some of the best food I've ever had from around China and the world... and commingled with childhood holidays where we'd serve typical American food - turkey or ham, gratin potatoes, green beans, tossed salad, apple pie - alongside hummus, Armenian string cheese, cheoreg (my mom wrote that recipe!), babaghanoush, pilaf, fish cookies, olives and lahmacun. We'd eat scrambled eggs with string cheese, bacon and cheoreg the next morning sitting around Grandma and Grandpa's kitchen table in their suburban house that is so typically American that I once saw their living room in a TV commercial (except it wasn't theirs - it just happened to be the same pre-fab living room). Running around the backyard with my cousins, all much younger than myself and helping Grandma make deviled eggs - it took years for her to realize that I was, in fact, capable of cooking much more than that.

Those flavors - mahlab (a spice made from the ground pits of a certain cherry), tahini, aromatic lamb, tangy lemon, earthy cumin, pungent mint and parsley, fiery cayenne - are the sensory receptacles of my childhood and going back from there, of my heritage. Despite sweating in a kitchen in Taiwan over a plastic table covered in parchment paper, whereas my great grandmother would have done this first on a rough kitchen counter in rural Turkey and later in Athens, and later still in Troy, New York, I did feel a connection to the feisty woman who passed away when I was 9 and who never did quite become fluent in English. It was also meaningful to me to share this first batch of lahmacun - the food of my childhood - with my ever-amazing husband:

...who, you know, certainly appreciates good food. We ate it as I always have, topped with fresh vegetables (onion, cucumber, tomato, bell pepper, all will do) and a squeeze of lemon.

And it means a lot to me to be able to share this food with my friends in Taipei in just a few short weeks, before we say goodbye until October.

Oh yes, and I made a cucumber yoghurt mint salad, too!

Three Good Restaurants in Southern Taipei

Little Thailand Restaurant - 泰國小館

台北市汀州路糝段號
#219 Dingzhou Street Sec 3, Taipei
(02)2367-0739

This has to be the best Thai restaurant in Gongguan, right up there with Yangon Burmese restaurant (which is basically Thai, but "technically" Burmese). It looks like a small Southeast Asian supermarket on the outside, chock full of snacks for sale, but once you go in it's clearly a restaurant that happens to also sell packaged snacks and other items from SE Asia.

The food is really quite good - very much the same in flavor as I enjoyed during my brief excursion to Thailand years ago (I keep telling myself I'll go back, but there are so many other places to see, too!) - and they don't pull punches on the spice! The pork with green beans and papaya salad were fiery, and the other dishes were at a respectable spice level. They have the usual selection of beer, are always bustling, the walls are covered with pictures and textiles from Thailand, and I love the cheap day-market plastic clock with the picture of the King of Thailand and his many dogs ("he loves dogs and raises rescued strays," the owner told us. "Our King is so good") on the clock face.

We didn't get dessert, but they seemed to have a wider selection than is usually available.

Oh, and do get the shrimp pancake (月亮蝦餅) - it's the best I've had outside of SE Asia.


Weitzuman
台北市文山區景興路118號
#118 Jingxing Road, Wenshan, Taipei City (MRT Jingmei)

Taipei Times reviewed it before I had a chance to - although I may have mentioned it before - but we live very close to this place - maybe a ten minute walk, if that - and I have long been a devotee. It's a dirty-walled, Taiwanese-talkin', good-sake-servin' izakaya in a decidedly unpretentious neighborhood (ie, our neighborhood) with some really spectacular Japanese food and Japanese-style sunken tables.  I still have dreams about the yakitori (although the ones from Dako, above, provide good competition) and I love that this place just plain does good food, it doesn't try to be all hip, and for Japanese food it's quite affordable.

The Taipei Times said it better than I could, so I'll leave it there, but this place gets my stamp of approval!

Super Healthy Veggie Packed Fried Rice

I made this tasty, vegetable-packed dish today as a different take on the usual greasy, starchy fried rice. It's still got oil (olive) and rice (brown, whole grain) but with this many veggies, healthier fats and grains, flaxseed and optional protein, it's a tasty and colorful alternative to the usual stick-to-your-butt-no-matter-how-often-you-bike options in restaurants in Taipei.

It turned out fantastic - both flavor-wise and appearance-wise, with a lot of colorful veggies including pumpkin, red and yellow bell pepper, carrot and purple and green beetroot leaves. It was like a harvest-time reinterpretation of the fried rice genre!

1 cup brown rice

olive oil - need not be extra virgin or fancy (the flavor of extra virgin would get lost in cooking)

a pat of butter (optional)

1 whole bell pepper (or 1/2 each of two different colors of bell pepper)

2 cups of beetroot leaves (they're the ones in the market that are purple on one side and dark green on the other)

1/2 large carrot

1/2 small pumpkin (the gourd-like ones sold in Taiwanese day markets)

1/2 small sweet onion

To taste (optional): Thai fried shallots, black bean sauce, Lao Gan Ma, huajiao "flower pepper", salt, black pepper, fresh red chilis, sesame oil, soy sauce, paprika, vinegar, lemon juice, de-stemmed chopped cilantro, chopped fresh garlic, pulverized fresh ginger

three tbsp ground flaxseed (optional but really good for you)

a small amount of extra virgin olive oil and sesame oil to taste (optional)

Begin the long process to cook brown rice (it takes quite a while), adding a bit of salt, pepper and paprika to the water. Remember that brown rice requires more water (about 50% more), more heat, more steam and more time than white rice.

Set some water to boil to cook the pumpkin (if you want to be super-cool, cook the pumpkin chunks, including peeled skin, first, take out the skin and throw it away, set the cooked pumpkin aside and use the water to cook the rice to give it more nutrients and more flavor).

Wash and chop the onion and bell pepper, set aside

Wash, de-stem and chop beetroot leaves, set aside

Wash and grate or julienne carrot, including skin, add to beetroot leaves, set aside

Use a peeler to de-skin the small pumpkin, scoop out seeds, cut into chunks and boil until just cooked.

Wipe down a wok with just enough olive oil to comfortably cook, add chopped and powdered spices/salt to taste (no liquids yet, but you can add black bean paste, Lao Gan Ma etc). Cook on low/medium until it smells good. Immediately add bell peppers and onions and stir in thoroughly. Add soy sauce, vinegar, lemon juice to taste. Raise to medium heat.

When that is almost but not quite cooked, add beetroot leaves and grated carrot and cook until the leaves go a bit soft (not too soft). Add pumpkin. Mix well on medium (adding a bit of water if it gets a bit dry and threatens to burn).

Add cooked brown rice (ideally you prepared the rice well in advance as brown rice takes forever). Mix well and add flaxseed, stir in.

Add pat of butter and/or any flavoring oils at the end and stir well until it melts evenly into the mix.

The pumpkin should disintegrate somewhat and provide some consistency to the fried rice, but if you like the kind of rice that can be shaped into a dome, mix in one egg and mix well until thoroughly cooked in.

You can also add 1/3 cup cooked yellow lentils and/or walnuts, almonds or cashews if you want some protein (you can also add meat for that matter)!

Note: you can substitute or add vegetables - mushrooms would be great, as would small chunks of cauliflower or sweet potato leaves in lieu of beetroot. You could add tomatoes, bok choi, corn...really whatever you want.

Serve hot.

Updated Post - Indian Food in Taipei

I've gone ahead and updated - with links! - my long-ago post on where to find good Indian food in Taipei, with short personal reviews and links to other reviews.

The general trends?

1.) I seem to be pickier than most, perhaps because I have lived in India. Taipei Times and Hungry Girl give good reviews to places I won't look at twice.

2.) If you want truly Indian levels of spice, you need to specifically request it at most restaurants. Otherwise your food will be toned down to Taiwanese tastes and that is a damn shame.

3.) Avoid all Indian restaurants in food courts.

Johnny Cucina Italiana

Johnny Cucina Italiana
#125 Zhongyang Road
Xindian, Taipei County
MRT Xiaobitan, Exit 2, turn right and walk a short distance
(yeah I know it's technically "Xindian District, New Taipei City" but you know what, screw that)

Five words to describe this place: yum yum yum yum yum.

Taiwan is overrun with Italian restaurants, and to be honest, most of them are a special kind of awful (including "We Make It Different" - yes, you certainly do make it "different", but by that you clearly mean like when you're 12 and decide to try your hand at fashion design and show your mom your hand-sewn frock and she says "Um, wow...it's so unique and different").

Johnny Cucina Italiana is refreshingly different - in the good sense - from the other places which are merely "different". Run by an actual Italian chef who makes his own pasta noodles and pays close attention to flavor and detail, we enjoyed every moment of our meal there.

I haven't seen this place on any of the usual food review outlets popular with foreigners (including the Taipei Times reviews and Hungry Girl) - it was recommended by a student who studied in Belgium and knows his European fare, after mentioning in class how impossible it is to find good Italian in Taipei.

The meal started slow - honestly the "Salami" (typical cheese, meat and vegetable selection antipasto) appetizer was a bit of a let-down, but someone from the kitchen came out to explain that they didn't have a lot of the things usually served with it due to import issues (I gather that they import a lot of their vegetables from Australia which has suffered from all sorts of problems these days) and couldn't get the promised Parma ham, either. The items available - delicious, rich but not greasy salami and three kinds of high quality cheese were delicious. I did wish that by "olives" (in the menu description) that they'd meant real Mediterranean olives - my mom still observes the rich culinary traditions of Mousa Dagh on the Mediterranean coast so I know my olives, dammit, and "black and pimento" are not olives. They're posers.

However, we did get a free extra artichoke salad (the house dressing is lovely) as a result of them not having the entirety of the appetizer on hand, and a few items on the house with dessert, which made up for it. My advice? When ordering an appetizer, ask what's fresh and available and what's recommended and get that, instead of ordering blind. The staff will recommend something that they can serve fresh, and I can guarantee it will be tasty. If you order something that presents an issue, they will do their best to make it up to you. The server had suggested the salmon salad appetizer, and we would have been wise to follow her recommendation (but the salami and cheese were really good - that's worth remembering).

We also started with a glass of house red each - Brusco dei Barbi, a Tuscan wine. I know that one is "supposed" to drink white with pasta, but whatevs. We prefer red, so red is what we drank. My feelings on wine are "drink what you like and eat what you like", rather than listen to some expert tell you what you should and shouldn't pair with wine. Wine is about socializing, warmth and good times, not about "a full flavor of graphite, salmon roe, zesty minerals, elderberry liqueur and dark chocolate ganache" or whatever BS people make up about it.

Brusco dei Barbi is a light, dry but slightly fruity wine (without being syrupy or sweet in the least). It goes down easily without the slight burn of most dry reds, and manages a complex flavor without being too heavy. It is exceptionally balanced and frighteningly easy to drink.

For entrees, I ordered the Pasta con i Ricci - pasta made with sea urchin paste, cream, olive oil, white wine and other flavors, served with crabmeat. See, I always have to go for the richest, creamiest, most oddball-ingredient-intensive, umami-dense thing on any menu. It's just how I roll, baby. That, and I love sea urchin. I've been known to take the train to Keelung to the night market stand that has four different kinds of urchin and order it sashimi-style for $10 a pop, just to get my urchin fix. Sea urchin, for the uninitiated, is a taste extravaganza.

Brendan ordered the pasta parmagiane, figuring that it's such a basic dish that the chef's skills would really show through in the combination of simple ingredients.

Also on offer are pizzas, various pastas and a page of meat-based dishes including steak and duck leg. We intend to return to try one of the pizzas for my upcoming post on the best pizza in Taipei.

The pasta made up for whatever was lacking in the appetizer: the serving size appears initially small but I assure you it is not. The pasta dishes are deeper than they appear at first, and the servings more generous than the small amount of pasta visible when the dish arrives. My creamy sea urchin pasta was a bright yellow-orange and so rich and flavorful that my tongue might have exploded if I'd had even one more bite than what I was served. The flavors blended perfectly so that there were no distinct overtones of wine, garlic, onion, cream, olive oil or sea urchin, but they all sang in harmony to create a gorgeous, new flavor not unlike the blend of a high-quality perfume might blend several scents to create a unified new fragrance. For all its creaminess and depth of flavor, though, it was not heavy or overpowering, and the crabmeat was light and fresh.

For all the richness of my pasta, Brendan's was tart and springy in flavor. With a popping parmesan cheese (the real kind, not the scary powdered stuff from a cardboard tube) and a fresh, almost lemony tomato sauce, it was simple but delicious. It came encased in a "shell" of four ovals of perfectly roasted eggplant that looked so good I almost wanted to reach over and steal one. I practically had to slap my own hand to stop myself. Bad Jenna. Bad!

It is worth noting that both pastas were quite fresh and served perfectly al dente, and went well with more red wine - like I said, forget those people who say that pasta goes with white. Drink what you like and be proud.

For dessert, we got the flavor combo - a tiramisu and a brownie, with a cheesecake on the house (and some grappa). All three were ridiculously good - I felt like we could come and have a full meal just by ordering every dessert. The tiramisu was light, not too sugary, and soaked with liqueur as a good tiramisu should be. The cheesecake was rich and creamy, as cheesecake should be, with a crunchy but pliant chocolate crust. The Italian-style brownie was hands-down one of the best chocolate desserts I've had in Taiwan, ranking right up there with La Boheme's hot chocolate (note, the La Boheme I go to on Wenzhou St. is not the same as this La Boheme, which I've never been to). Heavy but not thick, with a crispy crust and deep chocolatey inside, and topped with real ganache, it's a delectable chocolate treat not to be missed.

All in all, great stuff. Stick with server recommendations on appetizers and you'll have an amazing meal at Johnny Cucina Italiana!

Persian food! In Taipei! Yum!

Persian Heaven
Corner of Nanjing and Guangfu Roads (southeast side)

Taipei

We ate at Persian Heaven today, after both of us passed it on buses (at two different times) and made a note to the effect of "we have to eat there!" (Only later did I realize it was reviewed by the Taipei Times in 2010). Persian food in Taipei? I'm there!

As someone of Armenian descent alongside the Polish, the food of my mother's family resembles Iranian food in a lot of important ways - especially where kebabs are concerned (my mother's family also used to apparently have a house in Iran before they got kicked out of Turkey in 1915-1922 - we're not sure whatever happened to that).

With this culinary knowledge, I used to cook all sorts of delicacies with my friend M. back home (name shortened because it's unique enough that if you search for just her first name, you only get two posts, and she's a lawyer so she can't have random stuff about her bopping about the Internet) - while we were in college we'd make ghorme sabze, kebabs, babaghanoush, hummus, lahmajoun, tabbouleh, dolma (most people know it as stuffed grape leaves, I know dolma as stuffed vegetables), sarma (stuffed grape leaves), pomegranate salad, feta with mint sauce, kofta, mint tea, yoghurt, cucumber-tomato salad...and pick up a pint of milk, saffron or rose Iranian kulfi (ice cream) to finish it off.

We'd douse it all with the right blend of citrus, salt and sumac (yes, sumac like the plant - the powder made from it is actually quite tasty and used as a seasoning in the Near and Middle East) Then we'd invite all our friends to my apartment or the rooftop deck of her dorm to eat the lot of it, and they'd be forever in our debt.

I'm used to having to cook Armenian and Iranian food in Taipei stuff by myself - I usually stick with the easy stuff - the salads, the mint tea, the hummus and babaghanoush. I haven't tried to make a full on shishkebab, lahmajoun, dolma or ghorme sabze in years. Some things are just too hard to do right in a Taiwanese kitchen. I'm sorry, but it's true.

So imagine my delight when I noticed this restaurant. We had to eat there. We just had to.

My short, personal review? Delicious. I had the korbideh kebab set with yoghurt soup (delish), the chicken roll (really nice, though I don't quite get why there was a maraschino cherry on top), the feta salad (loved the tangy herbal dressing) and the halwa. Brendan had a stew with lamb and eggplant, the tomato-cucumber salad (just right), the yoghurt soup and the rice pudding.

The lot of it was awesome. The only let-down was the bread, but I prefer my kebabs with bread, so whatreyagonnado?

I did rather like the Iranian techno music playing, and the place looks like it turns into a hookah bar after hours, so we'll definitely check that out (no, we don't smoke hookahs normally - once every five years or so, to be honest - but it is something of my heritage and I've been really getting into family culture these days). There have been hookah bars that have come and gone in Taipei - a rather horrid place in Ximen, The Bed2 (now out of business) and a place that no longer exists in Shi-da. This place seems like your best bet if you're into good Iranian fare and a nice nargileh.

The color-changing neon disco lights under the bar made me feel like the place was run by these guys:

(from South Park Studios - the Persians take over in South Park's parody of 300)

OK, OK that wasn't nice, but dude, check out the disco light under the bar. That's all I'm sayin'.

By the way, for all of you who want to know how to make that deliciously simple tomato cucumber salad?

Easy.

Peel and dice one large cucumber and 3-5 mid-size very ripe tomatoes (make sure to cut out the entirety of the tough part around the stem). Try to make the cubes small and equal in size. Sliver half an onion into very small slivers and add that. Douse in lemon juice and salt and a touch of black pepper. You can add some finely chopped fresh mint *or* (not and - or) parsley, too. Allow to sit for an hour or so to let the flavors mingle. Done. I've been making that salad since I was 12.