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Restaurant of the week - Vanilla 香草

By Yu Sen-lun
STAFF REPOrTER
Friday, Jul 20, 2001, Page 10

The coffee cardinal is a must when visiting Vanilla in Taoyuan City. PHOTO: COURTESY OF VANILLA

A cozy cafe where one can spend a lazy afternoon is not easy to find in Taoyuan. But Chin Yi-ming (金一鳴) set out to establish just such a place four years ago with Vanilla. He designed the interior himself, installed the tiles on the wall and made the pendant lamps.

Vanilla is a rare find in Taoyuan, with its Mediterranean-style white walls, small arcades and simple wooden floors. Unlike the town's factories, nothing is hurried here. People take their time over the cafe's popular pasta carbonara, sandwiches or a slice of Chin's own cakes.

Chin was a cooking fanatic in the eyes of his friends at college, where he majored in political science, an admittedly far cry from preparation for the restaurant business. Chin eventually dropped his major and then later his job to learn cake-baking from scratch. His best friend recalled, "Whenever we went for a long trip down south, Chin would always carry homemade sandwiches and prepare delicious food for us."

Upon graduation, Chin and his college friends agreed to buy a house together and Chin later decided to run a cake shop out of its first floor to generate some income to pay off the loan on the house.

"What a good cake needs most are high-quality, fresh ingredients, ample baking skills and some decoration. It's very simple," Chin said. Vanilla now offers 20 kinds of fresh cakes every day.

Diners keep coming back for the coffee cardinal, which is an egg white-based cake sandwiched with rum flavored coffee cream. It's soft and fluffy and tastes a bit like marshmallow. Another favorite is the black biscuit, which is made of white chocolate mousse mixed with Oreo cookie crumbs and covered with hot chocolate. The raspberry crumb tart is an orange peel-flavored cream cheese tart stuffed with fresh raspberries, and topped with pastry crumbs.

Vanilla will soon begin to sell low-fat desserts with herbal flavors, such as lavender mousse and rose-flavor scones.

The breads for sandwiches at Vanilla are also a bit different. The store offers either pita bread or Italian focaccia stuffed with beef, chicken or tuna.

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