Barry Smit from Amsterdam landed in Taipei with a girlfriend and a mission: to open a bar. In partnership with his girlfriend's uncle, Barry set up Chocolate and Love which quickly honed a name for itself on the nightlife circuit with impromptu jams, late night parties and generally an air of joviality.
The joint morphed into a restaurant when chef Nathan Garrod set up in the kitchen, cooking up treats such as bangers and mash. The romance didn't work out but Chocolate and Love lived on, until unforeseen problems with the uncle came to a head.
After redecorating, the joint reopened earlier this month under the name of Bliss, with a new chef -- poached from the Cantonese restaurant next door -- and new partners. The antique Chinese bed upstairs is gone, the bathroom downstairs has been upgraded and a mural of cityscapes fills the wall opposite the bar. But the atmosphere remains convivial.
The chef has turned his hand to Western food, pub grub that is, and also cooks up Cantonese dishes. The Cantonese menu is simple: Roasted peanuts with chillies and small fish, is just what the menu says it is, and so is the fried tofu. The Western food menu has an emphasis on the humble burger, which ticks all the right boxes -- a fat juicy patty in a lightly toasted bun, with tomato, lettuce, onion served up with dill pickle. Other options include poutine, Caesar salad and beef quesadilla. Choosing a beer to accompany your burger is a more complex affair. Erdinger, Chimay, Satan's Gold, Golden Draak and Negro Modello are all represented. This place is a work-in-progress, ?but this doesn't detract from the dining experience.
For decadent diners there is the Absinthe option. The drink that inspired, and inebriated Pablo Picasso, Oscar Wilde and Edgar Allen Poe among other artists, comes in a variety of concoctions, but served the traditional way is prepared by dipping a cube of sugar into the Absinthe and igniting it. Cold water is poured over the cube, which dilutes the Absinthe and mixes in the sugar.
Live bands, that run the gamut from rock to jazz are lined up for entertainment as are speed-dating nights organized by Reese Richards, one of Bliss' directors. The place has a wireless Internet connection. Many an hour could be whiled away here, eating, drinking, surfing the net, listening to music and chatting up a prospective date.
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