La Boheme got its name from the Italian opera by Puccini. A passage describing how a flower can receive warm sunlight despite growing in an attic, says proprietor Hu Chia-yuan (
Unlike most coffee houses, La Boheme does not rely much on passing trade. But despite its out of the way location on Changan West Road, the cafe is building up a steadily clientele of genuine coffee lovers and enthusiasts of Italian cuisine. Some of them liked La Boheme's food and coffee so much that they've taken classes taught by Hu and subsequently opened their own cafes. There are also an increasing number of other establishment who simply purchase Hu's ready-made sauces and roasted coffee beans.
PHOTO: VICO LEE, TAIPEI TIMES
So that even if you've never been to La Boheme, you may have unknowingly tasted its products in other restaurants.
Hu also provides instruction on coffee making and is currently busy setting up a small factory to meet increased demand for his roasted coffee beans.
According to Hu, the secret of La Boheme's success lies in his pharmaceutical training. Although he never had any formal training as a chef, Hu experimented with many ingrediants, using the chemical properties as his guide. This knowledge helped him to bring out the best in his materials.
Salmon with clavier sauce is a popular summer dish. Like other dishes at La Boheme, it comes as a set (NT$180), with side dishes and soup. It's well worth the price as the salmon is uncommonly delicious -- hand-picked to ensure freshness and quality. To get this dish, you want to arrive early, as it sells out quickly.
The beef rib eye (NT$180 a set) is served in a northern Italian style in a strongly flavored sauce that is a blend of basamic vingar, blueberry, cheese and olive oil.
No visit to La Boheme is complete without tasting its coffee. The cafe's long coffee list has some rare blends along with the popular favorites.
Ristretto (NT$90), a kind of lightly roasted espresso bean, is just such a special variation. According to Hu, the light roasting allows the bean to retain some of the flavors -- or chemical elements, as Hu would say -- that are otherwise destroyed by heavier roasting.
May 11 to May 18 The original Taichung Railway Station was long thought to have been completely razed. Opening on May 15, 1905, the one-story wooden structure soon outgrew its purpose and was replaced in 1917 by a grandiose, Western-style station. During construction on the third-generation station in 2017, workers discovered the service pit for the original station’s locomotive depot. A year later, a small wooden building on site was determined by historians to be the first stationmaster’s office, built around 1908. With these findings, the Taichung Railway Station Cultural Park now boasts that it has
The latest Formosa poll released at the end of last month shows confidence in President William Lai (賴清德) plunged 8.1 percent, while satisfaction with the Lai administration fared worse with a drop of 8.5 percent. Those lacking confidence in Lai jumped by 6 percent and dissatisfaction in his administration spiked up 6.7 percent. Confidence in Lai is still strong at 48.6 percent, compared to 43 percent lacking confidence — but this is his worst result overall since he took office. For the first time, dissatisfaction with his administration surpassed satisfaction, 47.3 to 47.1 percent. Though statistically a tie, for most
In February of this year the Taipei Times reported on the visit of Lienchiang County Commissioner Wang Chung-ming (王忠銘) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and a delegation to a lantern festival in Fuzhou’s Mawei District in Fujian Province. “Today, Mawei and Matsu jointly marked the lantern festival,” Wang was quoted as saying, adding that both sides “being of one people,” is a cause for joy. Wang was passing around a common claim of officials of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the PRC’s allies and supporters in Taiwan — KMT and the Taiwan People’s Party — and elsewhere: Taiwan and
Six weeks before I embarked on a research mission in Kyoto, I was sitting alone at a bar counter in Melbourne. Next to me, a woman was bragging loudly to a friend: She, too, was heading to Kyoto, I quickly discerned. Except her trip was in four months. And she’d just pulled an all-nighter booking restaurant reservations. As I snooped on the conversation, I broke out in a sweat, panicking because I’d yet to secure a single table. Then I remembered: Eating well in Japan is absolutely not something to lose sleep over. It’s true that the best-known institutions book up faster
RSS