SICHUAN FOOD THROWDOWN SPECTACULARRR!

Actually I just want to compare four Sichuanese restaurants I've been to recently or really just love, because Sichuanese food is kind of a passion of mine.

Tianfu 天府川菜



#5 Ren'ai Road, Yonghe (MRT Dingxi)

I know I am always referencing this place on my blog, but it deserves it. It's just SO GOOD. The boss is an old Sichuanese chef, a master really. It's a small place, easy to miss, and you wouldn't know it was so good unless someone told you (it just looks like a basic restaurant next to a fruit stand on an inconspicuous street in Yonghe).

So far, I feel that their spicy beef (水煮牛), spicy green beans, mouthwatering chicken, pork rib cooked with sweet potato and spicy tofu (麻婆豆腐) are the best in Taiwan. You really can't do better. Once - just once - the spicy tofu missed the mark. We ordered late and I think they were low on ground pork, so they just made what they could. Otherwise it's always been to a high standard of excellence.

Go early - they open at 5:30 and won't take orders after about 7:15pm (and they want you out by 8:30) - there's only one chef, and he sets the hours. If he's tired he closes up early. If he's in a good mood he might cook for you as late as 7:30! With any other restaurant I'd just not go back, but it's so damn good that I'm willing to put up with it.

Lao Sichuan 老四川



Chang'an Road between Songjiang and Jianguo (MRT Songjiang Nanjing, or the area is served by many buses) - I tried to get their address off their website but this is the best I could do (I did get lazy, though).

This is a Chongqing Hotpot restaurant, not a typical "Chengdu dishes" Sichuanese restaurant. It's "famous" in the Taiwanese sense (i.e. very well known and popular) - so famous that in Taipei it's hard to get reservations. I know people who have driven down to Zhubei to eat at the branch there! A friend of ours made the reservation, so we had the chance to go. The hotpot is spectacular, especially the spicy side. I've never been a big fan of the herbal side, at any restaurant. Definitely get their "famous" signature appetizer, which is noodles in a delicious spicy sauce. The edamame are great, too.

The hotpot here reminded me of when I had hotpot in Chongqing itself, and the hotpot I've had in Guizhou (just south of Chongqing) as well. It's the real deal.

I can't "compare" it to the two other restaurants because what they do is different, but it's definitely worth braving their tough reservation competition to go.

Some photos:






Spicy and herbal divided hot pot. You can ask for it with no blood. Look at those fresh sesame seeds!

Fuhua Sichuan 福華川菜



Xizang Road＃228, Wanhua (a longish walk from MRT Longshan Temple, a few buses pass nearby including 307, or just take a cab)
台北市萬華區西藏路228號

This is a place my student recommended in Wanhua. She said "it's cheaper and better than Tianfu". I found it to be roughly the same price - a little cheaper - but not necessarily better.

The spicy beef - above - was very good, with tons of chili, fresh cilantro (Tianfu doesn't give you fresh cilantro) and very high quality tender meat, a bit fatty (a sign of quality in Chinese cooking). It was served on a sterno warmer, which Tianfu doesn't do. It was fantastic, although I would have added an extra handful of huajiao (花椒 - mouth-tingling Sichuan pepper). It also wasn't as complex as Tianfu in flavoring, but really it just needed more huajiao.

Rating: tied with Tianfu

These clams are not really Sichuanese, we just happen to like them.



The green beans were excellent - with more garlic and less black bean than Tianfu, and expertly seasoned and cooked (if you eat the beans without the topping they seem to need salt, but add the topping and the problem goes away).

Rating: as good as Tianfu



The kung pao chicken was AMAZING - cooked to perfection, not overcooked but not rare (rare chicken is, of course, gross and unsafe). It was glazed just so.

But...it needed hua jiao.

Rating: as good as Tianfu, would be better if it just had hua jiao.

The problems came later, with the eggplant (魚香茄子) and spicy tofu. The eggplant and tofu both lacked hua jiao totally. The eggplant was too sweet and didn't have enough pork. The tofu was low quality, not savory enough and not NEARLY spicy enough.

Rating:

Eggplant - not as good as Tianfu

Ma Po Tofu - we almost sent it back. I was not pleased. I wonder when I told them specifically to add hua jiao and make it spicy, if the chef misheard the server (the server didn't mishear me, she'd confirmed it) or just decided there's no way foreigners would want that so I must have meant not spicy. I don't know, but either way it wasn't very good.

Han Chi Tiger Noodle



#203 Jinhua Street (金華街203號)

I can't really compare this place, which mostly does basic noodles and puffed rice soups in spicy Sichuan broth, with the others. I just wanted to include it because daaayum, these guys know how to add spice to a complex and well-flavored broth. They don't skimp on the hua jiao, that's for sure.

It's also the easiest to get to, the cheapest, and does not require a reservation.

Just A Few Delightful Things

Eat here: 台灣原味滷味， 新北市中和區景平路493－5號 / 捷運景安站

Original Taiwan Flavor Lu Wei (braised & boiled things) Zhonghe, Jinping Road #493-5, MRT Jing'an, fastest to grab a 262 next to Sushi Express and take it to Zhonghe District Office (中和區公所) and it's across the street and up a short walk further next to Five Flower Horse (五花馬), which is also pretty good.

First, I have finally discovered the joy of eating pig's feet. I never liked it when I got a big bowl of nothin' but pig foot - kinda gross, actually, it just looks visually unappealing - but I have found when it's sliced up into tender pieces of meat and trotter, that mixed in with rice it's really quite delicious.

I discovered I liked it, after all these years of being too unimpressed with the look of the stuff to take a bite, when I passed the place listed above and this unholy delicious smell enveloped me and I had to try their food that very instant. So I pointed to what some other people were eating, not aware that it was pig's foot with rice (豬腳飯), and ordered that. It comes with tender bamboo shoots, a piece of braised tofu and a braised hard-boiled egg. I also got Taiwanese tempura (甜不辣) - their tempura sauce is also delicious. So good I poured the remainder on my rice.

So that was a good discovery.

Also, this News In Brief feature is just full of gems:

Taiwan News Quick Take

I mean, first there's "Canada Warning Issued", which is the best headline ever. We all should be warned about Canada more often.

Then there's the entire paragraph detailing the state of President Ma Ying-jiu's butthole. It's really more than I ever needed to know about President Ma's ass, but there ya go.

I guess he needs to keep it in good condition so it can be reamed by China. (BAM!)

Finally, there's this website:科技心，醫師情.

It seems on the surface to be just a dating/matchmaking website for Taiwanese professionals, and in a sense that's exactly what it is. The application page (no, I'm not going to apply, obviously, I was just curious) says that not only are engineers and doctors welcome, but that all sorts of professionals, from teachers to entrepreneurs ("anyone with a proper job", to quote it, but I think that comes across a little less offensively in Chinese, more like "any employed professional") may apply.

A student of mine (female, doctor, married) said, however, that their real market niche is setting up single male engineers, who are often (not always!) too overworked, too shy and too socially awkward to go out and date easily, with female doctors, who are too overworked and not in a good place in society* to find a life partner if they didn't marry a classmate (apparently male doctors who didn't marry a classmate are more interested in nurses, and both these women and men generally prefer that a man be on an equal footing, career-wise, to his wife**). Another student, who is a fairly high profile person (tech industry, male, married), said that they called him to ask if he'd be interested in signing up (me: "you could've said 'just a second, let me ask my wife. Hey honey, am I available to sign up for this dating website?'").

I personally think it's brilliant. If female doctors really want men who are at approximately their level professionally (although some engineers in Taiwan might disagree that they are) or acceptably close enough, engineers fit the bill. And while the older generation of Taiwanese men, including engineers, might have preferred a stay-at-home wife (or a wife to help run the family business), the younger crop of single thirtysomething male engineers, observed from my interaction with them as a teacher, seem far more willing to have a wife with a demanding career and the high level of education that goes with it. They wouldn't necessarily be scared off by a female doctor (some would, but I'm speaking in generalities).

Two segments of society that often have a hard time dating, being specifically matched up because they wouldn't have many chances to meet each other normally (it's not like all the single female doctors and all the single male engineers go to the same bars after work) is pure genius. I wish I'd thought of it.

*which is totally sexist bullshit, I know, as it is in any society, but this is a legitimate issue single female doctors face in Taiwan

**I don't care for that opinion either. In the US I'd call it sexist bullshit so I'll call it sexist bullshit in Taiwan, too.

The Best Deer Penis Wine in Taipei

Deer Penis Wine (鹿鞭酒)
Huanhe Road north of Guangzhou Street, right side (past all the old appliances and the cool old temple, just past and across the street from Old Lin's Mutton Emporium, just walk to the end of Guangzhou to where the aboriginal market is, don't cross Huanhe, turn right and keep going).

Continue on from there and you'll find another guy with deer meat and, I think, wines, as well as snake and turtle.

First of all, I got new totally hipsteriffic glasses. So the first thing I did was put on my hipster earrings and take a selfie, because I'm totally not concerned about looking cool. At all. Really. I mean it.

Also, our honeymoon (a monthlong backpacking trip around Central America), submitted ages ago, was just featured on Offbeat Home. Go check it out!

Now that that important announcement is out of the way, we also decided (well, I decided and Brendan gamely went along) to finally try some things we hadn't tried in 7 years in Taipei. One of these is Chinese medicinal wine, which is usually made as an herbal tincture with deer parts.

Wanhua, especially the area outside of the Guangzhou Street/Huaxi Street Night Market (also called Snake Alley), has a lot of this sort of traditional stuff - you just have to leave the night market to find it, or head to a different, less touristy part of the market (Wuzhou Street is a branch off of this market that has consistently good food...and a lot of brothels). This is the sort of area where an obasan will sit minding her shop packed floor to rafters with giant colorful dildos, right next to her granddaughter sitting in that shop doing her homework, and maybe there'll be a small poodle, too.

So if you're going to find interesting traditional medicinal wines, Wanhua is the place.

The most common are deer antler (also available at Wellcome and 7-11 - this one is dead easy to find), deer blood (not safe if not made correctly) and deer penis (much harder to track down - PUN INTENDED).



Mmmm, delicious tincture of deer penis.

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but from what I've read, deer blood wine is, I believe, supposed to help with circulation and as a good iron supplement, and is good for bones. Deer antler is good for muscles and joints, and deer penis is good for, well, virility (but can be also good for joints, aches and other weak areas). From what I've read, although it's usually drunk by men as a natural Viagra, it can be drunk by women.

So, here goes.



It was surprisingly good. Like a slightly savory Jagermeister (for the herbal flavor - I know Jager doesn't actually have any deer in it). Think of it as the Jagermeister from an alternate universe in which all the urban legends are true. I'm not even joking.

The deer blood and penis, which might be gray market if not entirely illegal, is not labeled. You have to ask for it. 50 kuai for a glass as big as the one you see me drinking above. So if you want to try deer penis wine, you've just gotta know where to get it. And now you do!

Brendan and our friend Joseph tried some too, but I ended up drinking most of it. The owner wasn't too bothered about serving women his Viagra wine - he said nothing but his smile and body language said "Chhhhh...foreigners. Whatever."



You can also get venison kebab and various foods cooked in medicine, like snails and shrimp - and the chicken sausage (雞肉卷) is quite good. For every serving (two sticks) of venison you order, you get a free small glass of medicinal wine that is just herbs - no penis, no blood, no antler. We drank that too.



This stuff doesn't have any penis in it. Boo.



Afterwards, I felt pretty good. Brendan and Joseph were all like 'eh'...so I guess the stuff really does work just as well, if not better, on women!



The best part was the dude at the end of the stall with his own bottle of deer blood wine, getting completely toasted. I am not sure how one could get toasted on medicinal wine (I felt great but too much of the stuff can't be good for you), but he was managing that.

Happy deer penis drinking!

Postcards from Hamasen

 After several months of being too busy and lazy (and just plain lacking the energy thanks to work problems and worries over family illness), in the past few weeks I've started trying to rejuvenate and recoup my old zeal for going places and trying new things.

I know that sounds horribly cliche, but really, I had been in a slump of not doing much, not going out much, for the first half of the year - punctuated only by our trip to Sri Lanka.

I've begun to lift myself out of it - which is why you're seeing so many posts (some of them backlogged from weeks past) on doing stuff in, around and outside of Taipei.

A few weeks ago, when I had a free HSR ticket to Kaohsiung for work, I wrote a post about spending the night in a Batman-themed room at a love motel. Well, the next day we stuck around Kaohsiung, and I feel like our ramblings around the older part of the city - Hamasen (now called Xiziwan or 西子灣, the last stop on the east-west MRT) and then up Chaishan - were also worth a picture-based blog post.



 First of all, Hamasen may retain its traditional architecture, but it's actually changed a lot in the past decade or so. It's become a favorite spot for a day trip - second only to Pier 2 in local and tourist popularity (and of course there's always the Love River, Dome of Light, Qijin Island, Lotus Lake and the 85 Building and the overrated Sanduo Shopping District) - with "famous" shaved ice shops, restaurants and cafes near the waterfront and ferry terminal. There's even a giant, hideous Hello Kitty store (like really hideous, like so horrible that Brendan said if I went in - and I didn't - he would wait outside. Across the street. Possibly around the corner).

I just liked this guy's orange cowboy hat.

I have a student from Hamasen - he grew up in a house very close to the ferry terminal. "Damn tourists," he always says. "It used to be a quiet fishing village. Now it's like Danshui."

This guy's tempura was great. In fact, usually this kind of tempura is better in southern Taiwan than in Taipei. I can't tell you where his stand is (but it's on the road somewhere between the MRT station and the ferry terminal)...if you see him, however, go ahead and get his tempura. I highly recommend it.

My student: "Damn tourists! There used to be really good, famous food stands. They were famous because their food was so delicious. Now, I went back to those places, and they weren't as good, because the tourists don't know. Damn tourists!"




I like this photo because it's of a building that I think most people - especially expats - dismiss as an eyesore. I don't see it that way - I like the curve, and the style is retro. I think it's a cool reminder of midcentury Taiwan, decades past.



Chen Chu is the enormously popular mayor of Kaohsiung. Most Taiwanese politicians have a cartoon avatar, but her cartoon is by far the most famous, possibly even more than Ma Ying-jiu's (which is kind of terrifying). Even Chiang Kai-shek has one, which makes him look like a benevolent bobblehead.

Every Chinese New Year, Chen Chu's people give out spring scrolls - the red calligraphy scrolls you see on doors that call for good luck, health and prosperity in the coming year - adorned with her avatar doing something cute vis-a-vis that year's Chinese Zodiac animal. This year's is snake, as you can see. I try to collect them and hang them up in Taipei to annoy my neighbors a little (my immediate neighbors think she's great, though, which I like).





Old Japanese era shophouses give Hamasen its distinctive character, especially as they haven't yet been turned into shops on an Old Street selling the same old toys and food (although I like the toys and food, I have to admit). Hamasen as you see it today was mostly built up by the Japanese, and as such the buildings, road planning and infrastructure has a vaguely Japanese feel about it. In fact, Kaohsiung's entire layout, with its wider roads and often vintage buildings, have something of the stamp of Japan on them.






Hamasen's famous shaved ice shops - at the one pictured at top (which features, prominently, the Chinese word for fuck) you can get shaved ice bowls big enough for up to 5-6 people, depending on your appetite.

My student: "Damn shaved ice restaurants. All the tourists go there, then they take the ferry and create traffic problems with the crowds. I hate it. Damn tourists!"

At all of the shops, you can ask for markers and write on the walls - or bring your own colored markers or white-out pens. All of the shops are about the same, although some are more "famous" than others. I recommend in-season fruit ices, and matcha tofu ice (the shop pictured immediately above has a matcha tofu with mango and condensed milk ice that is delicious).



We also had very good cold Korean noodles. I strongly recommend the place - 韓月冷麵王 on 濱海一路57號, a short walk from the ferry terminal and shaved ice shops.

We passed these two women, as well - one was clearly amused by the foreigners. Wish I'd gotten a clearer photo.



Here's another building people may be wont to dismiss, but I like. It's plain, but there's clearly some history there, and it's more attractive than a lot of modern buildings. Could stand a lick of paint, maybe (but not to be tiled over)!






...just a few random things you may see hanging from windows and doors.

Then we made our way to the British Consulate (英國領事館, or 打狗領事館, Dagou being the old name for Kaohsiung). You can easily take Bus #99 to the entrance, which is not far at all - if you wanted to you could probably even walk it. Great views across the harbor, but you'll have to walk up several flights of stairs. Once there, you get a splendid view of Kaohsiung harbor, the old consulate building, a lighthouse on a rock enscarpment and the bay.

Tickets cost NT30 each, but you get the money back as a discount if you buy anything at the coffeeshop or gift shops - it's a way to generate revenue at the shops, I suppose.



There's a BigTom coffeeshop up here with a shaded courtyard and great views (the best views have no shade though). We saw a cute lizard as we sipped iced coffee under the trees after the hot climb. In fact, it was our first stop, before we even explored the consulate. To be fair, we'd been there before several years ago.






My student: "I know that view! When I was a boy, the consulate was not open. It was just some old building. Nobody cared about that. Actually, it was closed, but if you are a local you know the ways to go up there. So I would go up there, and I used to take a pee from that side. It was very nice! I had a nice view, sunny day, a nice breeze, taking a nice pee on the hill. I could even see all the ships coming and going in Kaohsiung Harbor. It was very refreshing. You can imagine!"

Other student: "Maybe you could wave to the ships and say 'Welcome to Taiwan'!"

Me: "Well, I can't take a nice pee like that, so I can't imagine. But maybe you could have a contest with your friends to see if you can hit the ships."

Student: "Yes, we would do that!"

Check out these "Chinese People" as imagined by Dutch colonists.

There is a small temple just near the consulate.

Windows in the consulate have been changed to colored glass for
pretty light effects.

From the consulate we took a taxi up Chaishan, past National Sun Yat-Sen University (中大). Chaishan is famous for its views over the bay, rocky shore and monkeys!

Monkeys are my favorite animal - well, monkeys and cats, and I like dogs too, and foxes are cool, and I also quite like birds that can talk and weird-looking fish - I like to joke it's because my Chinese Zodiac sign is monkey (so is Brendan's). So whenever there's a chance to see monkeys, I take it!

The taxi stopped so we could see a few monkeys, and then dropped us off at a famous coffeeshop on the shore.

No, he's not jumping off.

You wouldn't know that Chaishan Road - the main road up the mountain - is full of cafes taking advantage of the ocean views, if you didn't know the area pretty well.

We went to Hai Jiao (Cape) Coffee & Tea - 海角咖啡 at #103 Chaishan Road, which has basic juices, coffees, teas and smoothies, and a small array of food. We had Thai lemon fish for dinner, which was pretty good. The calamansi lemon juice is nice and sour. The view is great if you can get a good seat, and you can watch the sunset from the rocks just beyond the parking lot.

It's down a steep hill - best to drive, but you can take Bus #99 to get close enough, or take a taxi, get his card and call him to pick you up later.

Another friend recommended 海岸咖啡, a cafe at #31 Chaishan Road, famous for its big mugs of ramen. Also worth checking out.





Then we watched the sun set over the bay, had our dinner and called the taxi to come take us back to the MRT, from which we returned to HSR Zuoying Station and Taipei.

We were sad to go - one day is too short to cavort around Kaohsiung, even if you've already been. A couple of beers on Love River and a good local dinner would've been nice, or a nightcap somewhere with a good view, but we had to head back to our hectic lives in cloudy, rainy Taipei.

Too bad.

Next time I guess.

Cool MRT Art (For Once)

I know that's a little unfair - I do kind of like the art at NTU Hospital Station, after all, especially the weird entwined-fingers-and-palms bench.

But otherwise, the MRT seems to be a repository for weird hanging things, fiberglass primary color sculptures without much hidden meaning, sometimes-good, sometimes-not art from winners of local contests, terribly-photoshopped advertisements, and occasional poetry (again from some local contest), most of which I don't particularly care for.

I passed one small bit of public art, though, at Zhongxiao Fuxing Station on the mezzanine above the blue line, that I really liked. 

It's a cartoonish MRT train (eh), but in each window is a lovely diorama depicting different scenes of life in Taipei, with both modern and historical street scenes - in some cases intertwined. There's a night market:



A school building rife with Chiang Kai-shek iconography:



A Dihua-like Old Street:



A shadowbox of evolution from mom-and-pop midcentury store to convenience store:

 

...and more.

I often lament that the East District, which feels like it's slowly taking over Taipei with its shiny storefronts and air-conditioned department stores, has little of interest. Little to no good public art, few if any historical buildings, and a lot of expensive crap I don't want or need (and a lot of expensive bars I don't care for). I've always preferred looking westward in Taipei - West of Xinsheng/Songjiang and I may like it, east of Xinsheng and I probably don't.

This little smidge of public art proved that it's not all doom and gloom - there are still occasionally bits of actual culture as you head east. It's not all Sogos and Luxys.