Restaurant: Lungfeng 圓環龍風號

By Yu Sen-lun
STAFF REPORTER
Friday, Feb 28, 2003, Page 19

Pork rolls, rice with meat sauce and pig intestine soup are three of the seven dishes served at Lungfeng. PHOTO: YU SEN-LUN, TAIPEI TIMES

In Taiwan, dishes like thick pork soup (肉羹湯), meat sauce rice (魯肉飯) and pork rolls never go out of style. If you haven't tasted these typical Taiwanese dishes then you're missing out on an important part of Taiwanese culture.

No one knows where exactly Taiwanese pork soup came from, but Lungfeng is quite certainly one of the oldest establishments to feature this dish in Taipei, starting out 70 years ago as a street stall at the roundabout on Nanking West Road. Preferring quality to novelty, the establishment's owners have never changed the menu. The seven dishes you see listed on the wall are the same seven that they've always served.

Owner Liu Mu-yuan (劉木元) remembers when the Nanking West Road roundabout used to be home to a night market with hundreds of food stands. "In the old days when Taipei had few restaurants, the roundabout was the most popular place for eating out. And we were one of those early eateries," said Liu, the second-generation owner of Lungfeng who has been making soup there for more than 30 years.

The pork soup here remains faithful to an old and now rarely seen recipe which calls for adding pork tendon to the stew. "It's a painstaking procedure. You first take the tendons from pigs feet and deep fry them, then soak them in the water, and finally stew them in the soup." As this procedure adds NT$40 to the price of a bowl of soup, it is rarely used in restaurants today. But Lungfeng House insists on doing things the old-fashioned way. The result is a rich, thick soup with a large portion of tender pork leg, bamboo shoots, mushroom and chewy pork tendon. The restaurant suggests adding black vinegar to enhance the soup's flavor.

Another attraction at Lungfeng is the house's trademark, crispy and meaty pork rolls (五香肉捲, NT$50), some 300 of which are sold on busy days. The rolls are made of pork that is mixed with onions and cabbage and then marinated in red vinegar and wine. The minced stuffing is then wrapped with tofu skin before being deep fried in oil and topped with a few fresh cucumber slices as a finishing touch.

After these two appetizers, you need a bowl of rice with meat sauce to complete your meal. Noting that his restaurant's meat sauce is stewed with high quality soy sauce for long hours, Liu said: "I guarantee you'll want a second bowl."

Among the other traditional specialties served at Lungfeng are two that are known for their healthful qualities -- mushroom soup with pig intestine (草菇豬肚湯) and pearl barley soup with pig intestine (四神豬腸湯) both of which are said to increase one's vitality.