Fu Pa Wang means "rich king" in Chinese, but maybe it's more appropriate to call this restaurant the "rich king of pork." It specializes in stewed pork, particularly pig's knuckle and pig's feet. Walking in the vicinity, you can smell the pork cooking long before you reach the restaurant.
It is necessary to arrive at the restaurant at the right time in order to get the restaurant's most popular dish -- pork shank -- which sells rapidly after lunch or dinner service begins. Because of the small size of the restaurant, (just nine tables), it is always full and queuing is almost inevitable. More than 120kg of pork is consumed in this small restaurant every day.
At the front of the restaurant, almost extending into the street, there are two giant pots in which meat is constantly stewing, stimulating your appetite even before you enter.
PHOTO: YU SEN-LUN, TAIPEI TIMES
According to owner Hsieh Tiao-lung (謝調龍), the pork needs to be stewed for four hours. And when serving, the sliced meat or knuckle is placed on small plates, garnished with sauce and chopped garlic shoots. The shoots are less spicy than garlic cloves but give out a light spicy fragrance that compliments the juicy meat and smooth fat and tendon.
The stewed pork is divided into three categories. The most popular, and the quickest to sell out, is pork shank (NT$80), which contains mainly lean meat with a minimum of fat and bone. The second is the knuckle (NT$50). This part has a higher proportion of tendon, making it smoother and more gelatinous. The third kind of meat is a challenge for gluttons, because it's the pure pig feet (NT$50), largely made up of tendon and fat, but for pig's feet lovers, this is the best stuff.
The restaurant offers many side dishes including stewed bamboo shoots, bean curd, egg and bitter melon all stewed in a soy-based thick sauce. An order for one vegetable side dish with pork and a bowl of rice or soup will come to around NT$100.
"My original idea was to recreate the old-time Taiwanese taste I remember from when I was small," Hsieh said. The intention to preserve the old Taiwanese feeling is also reflected in the decor, with wooden tables, long benches, and pottery decorations on the wall. The down side is you can't really sit around and ruminate on the delicious food, for there will always be people waiting for your seat.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby