Address: 91 Ta-an Rd., Taipei (台北市大安路91號)
PHOTO: IAN BARTHOLOMEW
Telephone: (02)2721-3182
Open: 11:30am -10pm seven days a week
Average meal: NT$500 per person.
Details: English menu. Credit cards accepted.
Over the last year or so, Italian restaurants have mushroomed all over Taipei, but Giovanni Alberto Zambotti is not too worried. His small restaurant Vino & Chianti Gelato is easily lost amid the press of stores in the crowd of colorful shops in Taipei's prime shopping district, but he says he serves "a niche market." By that, Zambotti means people who are willing to pay a little bit more for outstanding food with character.
Browsing through the simple menu, which focuses on pasta and pizza, Zambotti said that most of the dishes are "things that my mother would cook." The home-style minestrone soup comes particularly high on the list of recommendations. Nevertheless, a few minor concessions have been made to local tastes, with a pesto chicken pasta that he says has been very popular. "Chicken is not used much in Italian food," he said, "but Taiwanese really like eating chicken, so we created this dish." He said he tested the dish on Italian friends first, because he insists that he wants all the dishes to stay true to the "spirit of Italian cooking," even if not all the recipes are found in an Italian cookbook.
For all that, authenticity is a big part of what Zambotti has to offer. This can be seen in his tiramisu, a dish that has undergone all kinds of transformations at the hands of various "Italian" confectioners in Taiwan. Despite the greater labor involved, the tiramisu at Chianti uses sponge fingers soaked in coffee and spirits and real mascarpone. The pasta caprese, a penne dish using lots of black olives and eggplant is pure Naples, and is recommended for people familiar with Italian food.
With prices for set menus at about NT$400, Chianti is certainly not the cheapest place to eat a bowl of pasta, but the quality makes the food worth the extra money. In addition, Zambotti is often there, acting as maitre d' to create "an extremely good feeling," for both food and atmosphere.
Particularly refreshing for summer is the range of homemade gelati and sorbets, in which Zambotti has mixed traditional styles such as chocolate and hazelnut (the ingredients imported from Italy) with plum wine or mango sorbet. "The range of fruits is even better here," he said.
To cater to the shopping crowd, Zambotti offers an afternoon tea, including a beverage, slice of cake and ice cream for NT$250. Alberto began to import quality Italian wines five years ago, and offers wine lovers a number of good alternatives to the common labels available on the market.
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