Crispy Peking duck on a bed of pan-fried duck liver and fresh mangoes. Fresh trout stuffed with Shiitake mushrooms and Chinese cabbage. Slivers of fresh lobster and asparagus bathed in aspic.
Taiwan may be suffering its worst economic crisis in years, but Taiwanese and Chinese chefs shrugged off the downturn at an annual food festival on Thursday, whipping up some of their finest dishes that blend traditional and Western flavors.
"No matter how bad the economy, we Taiwanese still have to eat well. Food is religion," said Johnny Liao, the 55-year old master chef of the Grand Hyatt hotel, while showing a group of students his new dishes of cold lamb terrine and sauteed pork kidneys.
Liao said that many hotels and restaurants were suffering their most severe crisis with a 20 percent downturn in guests in the last three months. But even during the Asian financial crisis in 1997, business was brisk enough to keep chefs busy, he said.
By midday Thursday, over a thousand of Taiwan's foodies had bought tickets for the four-day festival's opening. Last year, over 150,000 people visitors attended the festival, organizers said.
One of the most popular booths was a special display of a traditional Chinese banquet from China's northeastern Liaoning province, whose chefs claim that the original recipes using mountain ferns and wild animals dated back to the T'ang Dynasty (AD 618-907).
"We used to cook with wild spotted deer and bear paws, but now we'll go to jail for it. So we try to imitate the flavor with beef and pork," said Chinese chef Zhang Benteng, poking a dish of boiled ox tongue wrapped in crunchy pig's ears.
Crowds of Taiwanese jostled one another at Zhang's booth, snapping photos of dishes prepared by the Chinese chefs: deep fried yellow croaker in rice wine, shrimp-filled dumplings shaped into marshmallow-sized crabs and a chicken and pork terrine dusted with chili.
Many visitors sniffed appreciatively at traditional Taiwanese snacks, such as thick soups made with clams and the leaves of a local hemp, small sea shrimps marinated live in salt and fried with scallions and sticky rice cakes boiled with pig's blood.
A steady queue of camera-toting cooking students snaked through a section for Taiwan's local tribes, taking down recipes for fish and pork-filled glutinous rice cakes wrapped in palm leaves and bamboo tubes.
About 150 restaurants, schools, food producers and vegetable farms have joined this year's event, and organizers say the turnout every year has been consistent regardless of how the economy is faring.
Chou Ming-ming, a 50-year old, former restaurant owner, said the slumping stock market, rising unemployment and soaring prices "were things on everyone's mind," but that most Taiwanese shrugged those off when it came to spending on good food.
"For the Chinese people, they really don't pay attention to this. We just love to eat," said Chou, as she watched a pair of masked bartenders spin gin bottles and metal shakers to the music of Little Richard.
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