As the Sheraton Taipei's top-to-bottom renovation draws to a close, the hotel is gradually dismantling the scaffolding on a total of 12 restaurants serving food from every corner of the world. So far, the hotel has inaugurated its Kitchen 12 buffet on the ground floor, so named for the 12 food stations serving Western and Asian foods, a couple other eateries, and as of last week the Pizza Pub, serving exclusively Italian cuisine.
When it comes to pizza, the hotel starts with a distinct advantage, having one of the city's only wood-burning brick ovens. The domed brick oven cooks the pizzas evenly and gives them that trace of smoked wood flavoring that is so plainly lacking at most local pizzerias.
PHOTO: MAX WOODWORTH , TAIPEI TIMES
There are five types of pizzas on the menu to cover the standard combinations of meats, seafood, spices and vegetables, but choosy or creative diners who prefer, say, pineapple and anchovies together on a pizza, can build their own pie by selecting five from among the 18 toppings available. Frankly, though, 18 is not a huge number of toppings and most appetizing combinations are covered in the menu's five pre-determined pizzas.
The kitchen's head chef, who, like the brick oven, has been at the hotel for over 20 years, said Pizza Pub aims for a happy medium in providing authentic Italian flavors and catering to local taste buds. This explains the lack of peas and corn on the list of toppings, as well as the fairly bland cheese and the sweet tomato sauce used on the pizzas, which connoisseurs may find fatal shortcomings. Also absent from the list of toppings are gorgonzola, feta and blue cheeses, fresh garlic, arugula, zucchini and capers. So while the pizzas aren't eye-popping, they are exceptionally tasty thanks primarily to the homemade crust and that trusty brick oven.
Diners who enter this pizzeria, but suddenly decide against pizza need not panic. The menu is padded on both ends with a wide choice of antipasti, the stand-outs being the assorted antipasti platter and caesar salad, and entrees that cover all the bases of Italian cuisine.
There are a few seafood entrees, risotto and meats, but the pastas present the most variety. Diners choose from spaghetti, fettucine, penne and capellini noodles and 10 sauces. Again, the selections err on the side of caution, but one would be hard-pressed to find a better carbonara.
The deserts, however, throw caution to the wind and are quite faithful to what one might eat in Italy. The coffees, on the other hand, are Italian in their full flavor, but American in their enormous size, which might provide a nice excuse to draw out dinner on Sunday for Chinese Valentine's Day. On that night the restaurant will present couples with a "Passport for Lovers," which offers discounts at the hotel on upcoming holidays.
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