If it's any testament to how well Isabelle Wen's fashionable new eatery above Renai Road is doing since its opening a few months ago, there wasn't a seat available at 8pm on Monday. Taipei's own design diva seems to have had no problem making the leap from haute couture to haute cuisine.
But haute cuisine doesn't exactly describe what comes from the kitchen into the chic dining room at Fifi. It's Shanghai and Szechuan cuisine, to be sure, but not like what you've come to expect at similar restaurants around the capital city.
You'll notice the difference from the appetizer page of the menu (NT$180 to NT$280), where stuffed green peppers, green beans with mustard, and bean curd stripped salad vie for your attention, on to Fifi's choices of "vegetables and eggs" (NT$220 to NT$280), as the menu lists them: Hunan double-cooked eggs, "mapao dofu" and other very interesting-sounding items.
PHOTO: DAVID MOMPHARD, TAIPEI TIMES
I chose the pumpkin with salty egg, having decided the "hairy gourd with silver fish" sounded too much like a still life painting. And I was glad that I did; the spice from the pumpkin and saltiness of the egg were nicely equalized by the dofu that found its way into each bite. I'd also ordered the stuffed green pepper, having heard from a source that it was one of the two best appetizers on the menu -- the other being the bean curd stripped salad with garlic, peanut sesame oil, cilantro and white-leaf lettuce. Alas, the stuffed peppers were sold out for the night and the bean curd salad was far more than a single person could put away.
Fifi's, it must be said, is best enjoyed with friends or family. Like so many other local restaurants, portions laid on the table are meant to be divvied up between eight to 10 people, making the ordering of as many items sumptuous but not sinful.
Not sinful until the meat comes to the table, at least. The source who told me about the bean curd salad also turned me onto Fifi's "don po pork" -- the one pictured above -- easily one of the better pork dishes I've had in a city stuffed with delicious pork dishes.
Finally, one of the better reasons to check out Fifi is the third-floor lounge that goes late on weeknights and even later on the weekends. DJ Edmund has just been confirmed as DJ for Wednesday nights.
Sept.16 to Sept. 22 The “anti-communist train” with then-president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) face plastered on the engine puffed along the “sugar railway” (糖業鐵路) in May 1955, drawing enthusiastic crowds at 103 stops covering nearly 1,200km. An estimated 1.58 million spectators were treated to propaganda films, plays and received free sugar products. By this time, the state-run Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台糖, Taisugar) had managed to connect the previously separate east-west lines established by Japanese-era sugar factories, allowing the anti-communist train to travel easily from Taichung to Pingtung’s Donggang Township (東港). Last Sunday’s feature (Taiwan in Time: The sugar express) covered the inauguration of the
The corruption cases surrounding former Taipei Mayor and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) head Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) are just one item in the endless cycle of noise and fuss obscuring Taiwan’s deep and urgent structural and social problems. Even the case itself, as James Baron observed in an excellent piece at the Diplomat last week, is only one manifestation of the greater problem of deep-rooted corruption in land development. Last week the government announced a program to permit 25,000 foreign university students, primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, to work in Taiwan after graduation for 2-4 years. That number is a
This year’s Michelin Gourmand Bib sported 16 new entries in the 126-strong Taiwan directory. The fight for the best braised pork rice and the crispiest scallion pancake painstakingly continued, but what stood out in the lineup this year? Pang Taqueria (胖塔可利亞); Taiwan’s first Michelin-recommended Mexican restaurant. Chef Charles Chen (陳治宇) is a self-confessed Americophile, earning his chef whites at a fine-dining Latin-American fusion restaurant. But what makes this Xinyi (信義) spot stand head and shoulders above Taipei’s existing Mexican offerings? The authenticity. The produce. The care. AUTHENTIC EATS In my time on the island, I have caved too many times to
In a stark demonstration of how award-winning breakthroughs can come from the most unlikely directions, researchers have won an Ig Nobel prize for discovering that mammals can breathe through their anuses. After a series of tests on mice, rats and pigs, Japanese scientists found the animals absorb oxygen delivered through the rectum, work that underpins a clinical trial to see whether the procedure can treat respiratory failure. The team is among 10 recognized in this year’s Ig Nobel awards (see below for more), the irreverent accolades given for achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.” They are not