It's difficult to find a place that serves authentic Sichuan cuisine. Most local restaurants either manage to nauseate their customers with excessive greasy food, or have attempted to destroy their taste buds by adding too much spice. True, Sichuan food is known for its tongue-numbing and highly flavored dishes, but spicy food that dissolves your stomach is pushing it.
IR China, a Sichuan restaurant on the fourth floor of the Taipei 101 building, knows where to draw the line. I went as part of a group of four and we ordered the set meal, which gave us a taste of everything for around NT$2,500. The set meal includes six signature dishes, a soup, and a dessert of choice.
In summary, the steamed codfish was average, the stewed crab "huang" with bean curd was interesting, and the deep fried shrimp balls with pineapple was exquisite, if one can stomach Taiwanese mayonnaise.
PHOTO: GAVIN PHIPPS, TAIPEI TIMES
The South China pan offered some more exotic tastes, as it included southern Chinese sausage, pig skin, and sliced beef gizzard.
But what truly distinguished the place were the deep fried spare ribs with garlic sauce and the diced chicken with paprika. The ribs were ridiculously tender and many would agree, after having eaten in most of the Sichuan places in Taipei, IR China makes the best kung pao chicken in town.
Dessert was an interesting affair. We had a choice of braised black glue rice, and something that sounded much worse. In the end, some of us gulped down a bowl of dessert that was translated as braised white fungus. It tastes better than its name would suggest.
IR China also offers more than 10 kinds of tea to go with your meal, an assortment of tropical fruit drinks, and alcoholic beverages (mostly beer). In addition to the exceptional food and pleasant service is the location of the restaurant, which has a pleasant atmosphere and competent wait staff. Making a reservation before the meal is strongly advised, so that you can secure a table by the window. The tables near the exit are located right beside the walkway, where shoppers can pass by and look in on your meal. The view from the window is not great, but the food will more than compensate for that.
So if you're shopping near 101 and are looking for tasty Chinese food at a reasonable price, then be sure to stop at IR China. My only criticism is that the restaurant needs better English translations on their menus to go with their great food.
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
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist