Odeon means "house of song" in Greek and is thus a popular name for cultural venues and restaurants that want to give off a classy, artsy vibe. It's the name of a cinema chain in the UK, an events center in Saskatoon, Canada, a restaurant on New York's Broadway Avenue and a student district cafe in Taiwan.
Though the Cafe Odeon opus II (now known as CO2) on Xinsheng Road probably doesn't have much on the US$20 entrees at The Odeon on Broadway, it does a respectable job of creating a culture-friendly atmosphere. The theme for both the food and the decor is European, with an emphasis on Belgium. Picture albums on a bookshelf by the door chronicle owner Arvin Cheng's (
The cafe's location in an alley across from National Taiwan University works well to heighten the sense of artsy academia CO2 strives for. Written in chalk on a blackboard sign by the door is an explanation of how Cheng chose the name Odeon: "Odeon is the name of a stop on the Paris subway in an area where the arts and humanities flourish ... we hope that Odeon can provide a similar cultural space."
PHOTO: MEREDITH DODGE , TAIPEI TIMES
But CO2 is better known for providing a wide selection of Belgian beer, and that is not a bad thing. From the light to the dark to the positively fruity, CO2's beer fridge has what you're looking for. After walking around in the hot sun I decided to order a Watou's witbier (Flemish for "white beer") -- refreshing with a hint of jasmine.
The meal I ordered to go with it, a stack of pork ribs with beer wurst, wasn't exactly refreshing, but it certainly was replenishing. The salad was an unnecessarily large pile of lettuce and a few tomatoes criss-crossed with thousand-island dressing -- I only ate about a quarter of it. That's because I was thoroughly engaged with the hunk of meat sitting next to it.
The rib meat was tender and juicy and accompanied with an appropriate layer of tasty fat. Though the steak knife they gave me cut the meat easily off the bone, I worked up a sweat eating the ribs. Luckily I had saved some witbier to quench my thirst. I say luckily because the lame salad and the bone-dry raisin toast (they could have at least given me some butter) did nothing to counteract the ultra-heavy meatiness of the ribs. Overally, however, CO2 is a great place for a beer and a chat
with friends. Food is served till late.
Desperate dads meet in car parks to exchange packets; exhausted parents slip it into their kids’ drinks; families wait months for prescriptions buy it “off label.” But is it worth the risk? “The first time I gave him a gummy, I thought, ‘Oh my God, have I killed him?’ He just passed out in front of the TV. That never happens.” Jen remembers giving her son, David, six, melatonin to help him sleep. She got them from a friend, a pediatrician who gave them to her own child. “It was sort of hilarious. She had half a tub of gummies,
The wide-screen spectacle of Formula One gets a gleaming, rip-roaring workout in Joseph Kosinski’s F1, a fine-tuned machine of a movie that, in its most riveting racing scenes, approaches a kind of high-speed splendor. Kosinski, who last endeavored to put moviegoers in the seat of a fighter jet in Top Gun: Maverick, has moved to the open cockpits of Formula One with much the same affection, if not outright need, for speed. A lot of the same team is back. Jerry Bruckheimer produces. Ehren Kruger, a co-writer on Maverick, takes sole credit here. Hans Zimmer, a co-composer previously, supplies the thumping
Swooping low over the banks of a Nile River tributary, an aid flight run by retired American military officers released a stream of food-stuffed sacks over a town emptied by fighting in South Sudan, a country wracked by conflict. Last week’s air drop was the latest in a controversial development — private contracting firms led by former US intelligence officers and military veterans delivering aid to some of the world’s deadliest conflict zones, in operations organized with governments that are combatants in the conflicts. The moves are roiling the global aid community, which warns of a more militarized, politicized and profit-seeking trend
No more elephant and monkey acts. No more death-defying motorbike stunts. No more singing or acting on stage. Several hundred spectators still clapped constantly when acrobats with Dongchoon Circus Troupe, South Korea’s last and 100-year-old circus, twirled on a long suspended fabric, juggled clubs on a large, rotating wheel and rode a unicycle on a tightrope under the big top. “As I recall the hardship that I’ve gone through, I think I’ve done something significant,” Park Sae-hwan, the head of the circus, said in a recent interview. “But I also feel heavy responsibility because if Dongchoon stops, our country’s circus, one genre