The VVG Bistro is a small French restaurant that can be difficult to find if you haven't been told its exact address. Although its entrance is half obscured by shrubbery, it has nevertheless generated a following and can get quite crowded on the weekends. The creative dishes provided solid fare that lives up to the restaurant's name: Very Very Good.
Upon entering the eatery, one is greeted by a wooden horse towing a wagon of fruits. The walls are lined with bottles, jars and cardboard artwork. The restaurant was designed by owner Grace Wang (汪麗琴) with the help of her friends. It has a Bohemian feel with its mismatched furniture and colorful water glasses. The staff are young and dedicated, but be prepared to wait a while before your food comes.
The kitchen takes up the center of the restaurant, where you can see the chefs always busy preparing dishes. This activity produces a lively atmosphere for conversation.
PHOTO: SUNG CHIH-HSIUNG, TAIPEI TIMES
The VVG Bistro offers French cuisine that is sometimes prepared in inventive ways. To start off, the watercress and coriander green soup, a consomme garnished with bacon, is served in a tall cocktail glass. Its thick flavor and interesting presentation makes up for the fact that it's a small portion.
The main courses range from NT$520 to NT$680. The fisherman's dream is a spicy seafood combination with prawns, squid, clams, oysters and tiny shrimps. It's well cooked and topped with savory fettuccini. The roasted chicken dome is a large fist-sized ball of tender meat on a bed of bell peppers and risotto. There is an accompanying chocolate sauce which provides an interesting taste combination.
Each main course comes with a plate of bread and for an additional NT$60 you can add a cup of homemade pesto sauce. The pesto achieves a balance in the strength of its garlic and olive oil that most pesto sauces do not. For less expensive fare, the linguine dishes in the pasta section are priced at NT$320 to NT$380 and are just as filling as the main courses.
While the main entrees are consistently good, the weekend brunch (NT$420, served from 11am to 4pm) is the most popular lunchtime order. It offers a full variety of breakfast items, including a refreshing chicken roulade, an amaretto pound cake, strawberries with homemade yogurt, and a choice between fruit champagne or a glass of cucumber juice. The brunch also includes tea or cafe au lait. The cafe au lait is an entertaining experience as it is served in generous amounts in a large soup bowl. VVG Bistro also has a wide range of other teas, coffees and alcoholic beverages, along with a selection of homemade desserts.
In the next few months tough decisions will need to be made by the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) and their pan-blue allies in the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). It will reveal just how real their alliance is with actual power at stake. Party founder Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) faced these tough questions, which we explored in part one of this series, “Ko Wen-je, the KMT’s prickly ally,” (Aug. 16, page 12). Ko was open to cooperation, but on his terms. He openly fretted about being “swallowed up” by the KMT, and was keenly aware of the experience of the People’s First Party
Aug. 25 to Aug. 31 Although Mr. Lin (林) had been married to his Japanese wife for a decade, their union was never legally recognized — and even their daughter was officially deemed illegitimate. During the first half of Japanese rule in Taiwan, only marriages between Japanese men and Taiwanese women were valid, unless the Taiwanese husband formally joined a Japanese household. In 1920, Lin took his frustrations directly to the Ministry of Home Affairs: “Since Japan took possession of Taiwan, we have obeyed the government’s directives and committed ourselves to breaking old Qing-era customs. Yet ... our marriages remain unrecognized,
Not long into Mistress Dispeller, a quietly jaw-dropping new documentary from director Elizabeth Lo, the film’s eponymous character lays out her thesis for ridding marriages of troublesome extra lovers. “When someone becomes a mistress,” she says, “it’s because they feel they don’t deserve complete love. She’s the one who needs our help the most.” Wang Zhenxi, a mistress dispeller based in north-central China’s Henan province, is one of a growing number of self-styled professionals who earn a living by intervening in people’s marriages — to “dispel” them of intruders. “I was looking for a love story set in China,” says Lo,
During the Metal Ages, prior to the arrival of the Dutch and Chinese, a great shift took place in indigenous material culture. Glass and agate beads, introduced after 400BC, completely replaced Taiwanese nephrite (jade) as the ornamental materials of choice, anthropologist Liu Jiun-Yu (劉俊昱) of the University of Washington wrote in a 2023 article. He added of the island’s modern indigenous peoples: “They are the descendants of prehistoric Formosans but have no nephrite-using cultures.” Moderns squint at that dynamic era of trade and cultural change through the mutually supporting lenses of later settler-colonialism and imperial power, which treated the indigenous as
RSS