Taipei's Liaoning Street night market has long been famous for its cuisine. For downtown office workers who know the area well, the tea houses and diners in the lanes off the main drag offer an even better option -- food that rivals the best from the stalls without the bustling crowds.
Hsi Huan, a newcomer in this area, has quickly established itself as a popular favorite.
PHOTO: VICO LEE, TAIPEI TIMES
"I bought the place because I liked its interior design. People come here because they like the atmosphere. I make dishes that I like myself. Customers come here again and again because they like the food. It's a place where everyone can find something they like, including myself," said Chiou Chun-chi (
Decked out in 1950s decor, Hsi Huan has a goldfish pond at the entrance which can be seen through a window framed with red wood. All the furniture and ceiling fans are in matching wood. Chinese calligraphy adorns one wall, while a delightful assortment of ancient vases and statuettes lends the interior a cosy feel.
The 29-year-old Chiou has been an enthusiastic cook since his college years, dabbling with a mini oven in his dormitory and inviting classmates over to judge his cakes. Having received plenty of encouragement, Chiou soon began to experiment with a wider range of cuisines with the help of recipe books. "Maybe because I've never studied cooking in a certain school, I see ingredients and materials as they are. I just cook them as I like," Chiou said.
Before setting up Hsi Huan five months ago, Chiou worked as a food correspondent for a Taiwanese magazine to broaden his horizons. Consequently, he is full of information about food in Taiwan, and his reputation as an inventor of creative dishes has caused food manufacturers here and in Hong Kong to hire him to make recipes for their products.
Cod in plum sauce is one of the most popular dishes in Hsi Huan, its slightly sweet seasoning with just a hint of sour goes surprisingly well with the tender fish.
Chicken leg in teriyaki sauce is another favorite. The sauce is not like the Japanese original, but lighter and saltier. Carnivores will find the generous serving of chicken very satisfying. All these dishes come in a set with rice, two side dishes, soup, snacks and one drink (NT$225).
Hsi Huan also has excellent cakes, with its chiffons (NT$50) available in a number of flavors. Their texture and taste place them among the best in the country. The melt-in-your-mouth cheese cakes (NT$50) are no less tasty, and you can wash all this down with a tasty cup of Darjeeling tea.
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