For a fruity meal fit for a king take a ride up Linsen North Road to the Gloria Prince Hotel and enjoy a combination of sweet pulps, savory meats and fish -- including some rare and unusual items even the most experienced gourmand may not have tried before.
Once you are seated in the elegantly appointed dining room, with its gilded furniture and brightly polished chandeliers, settle down for what could be a two-hour plus gastronomic experience.
PHOTO: JULES QUARTLY, TAIPEI TIMES
There are nine items on the Fruit Set Menu, which was devised by head chef Peter Wu in June and has been continued because of its popularity. The winner of two consecutive cordon bleu contests in Taiwan, Wu hails from Hong Kong and specializes in Cantonese cooking, which he has internationalized for the local and high-end traveler set he services.
The only man to have been the head chef for two presidents on overseas trips (Lee Teng-hui (
The set menu begins with fiery dragon fruit canapes and ends with a mango ice crush. In between the highlights were some highly inventive dishes, only one of which did not succeed, in this reviewer's opinion. That was the seafood and apple with mayonnaise sauce, which looked good enough, but was slightly sickly with the combination of sweet apple and overbearingly rich mayo.
The rest was an adventure for the taste buds that was rewarded by some original and flavorsome combinations. The pumpkin with egg and fried shark's fin was a revelation. The scooped-out half-pumpkin, steamed and filled with lightly fried eggs and bean sprouts, set off the delicately prepared shark's fin. Usually, I find the taste of shark's fin unremarkable, but on this occasion it was a treat. The sharks used are farmed, apparently, so conservationists need not be upset. The dish came with one of the most delicious clear broths I have ever tried. Made from ham, chicken, pork ribs, pumpkin, dried scallops and spices (the chef refuses to disclose), it is boiled, reduced and strained for days to form a golden nectar that is strong, yet refined in taste.
Braised beef and mango went together surprisingly well, the scallop dishes were superb and the deep fried banana fruit rolls were impeccable.
However, the most remarkable dish, fittingly enough, came last. Hasma sweet soup in papaya sounds bland enough, but the reproductive glands of the snow frog, dried, rehydrated and double-boiled with rock sugar, is a unique culinary invention that was previously only eaten by emperors. The hermaphrodite snow frog's sperm and ova form a glutinous and opaque dessert after cooking. It sounds weird and feels like tapioca in the mouth, but with a slightly salty after taste. Yes, indeed, a funny experience.
This month the government ordered a one-year block of Xiaohongshu (小紅書) or Rednote, a Chinese social media platform with more than 3 million users in Taiwan. The government pointed to widespread fraud activity on the platform, along with cybersecurity failures. Officials said that they had reached out to the company and asked it to change. However, they received no response. The pro-China parties, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), immediately swung into action, denouncing the ban as an attack on free speech. This “free speech” claim was then echoed by the People’s Republic of China (PRC),
Exceptions to the rule are sometimes revealing. For a brief few years, there was an emerging ideological split between the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) that appeared to be pushing the DPP in a direction that would be considered more liberal, and the KMT more conservative. In the previous column, “The KMT-DPP’s bureaucrat-led developmental state” (Dec. 11, page 12), we examined how Taiwan’s democratic system developed, and how both the two main parties largely accepted a similar consensus on how Taiwan should be run domestically and did not split along the left-right lines more familiar in
Most heroes are remembered for the battles they fought. Taiwan’s Black Bat Squadron is remembered for flying into Chinese airspace 838 times between 1953 and 1967, and for the 148 men whose sacrifice bought the intelligence that kept Taiwan secure. Two-thirds of the squadron died carrying out missions most people wouldn’t learn about for another 40 years. The squadron lost 15 aircraft and 148 crew members over those 14 years, making it the deadliest unit in Taiwan’s military history by casualty rate. They flew at night, often at low altitudes, straight into some of the most heavily defended airspace in Asia.
Many people in Taiwan first learned about universal basic income (UBI) — the idea that the government should provide regular, no-strings-attached payments to each citizen — in 2019. While seeking the Democratic nomination for the 2020 US presidential election, Andrew Yang, a politician of Taiwanese descent, said that, if elected, he’d institute a UBI of US$1,000 per month to “get the economic boot off of people’s throats, allowing them to lift their heads up, breathe, and get excited for the future.” His campaign petered out, but the concept of UBI hasn’t gone away. Throughout the industrialized world, there are fears that
RSS