Most old-timers in Taipei are familiar with the Hotel Royal Taipei (
Built 22 years ago, the hotel has become one of Japan Airline's international chain stores and its restaurant -- Nakayama -- on the second floor emphasizes its authentic Japanese connections to woo its Japanese clientele.
The chef, not surprisingly, is Japanese and is assisted by a Taiwanese deputy chef Hong Ching-biao (
PHOTO: DEREK LEE, TAIPEI TIMES
The restaurant is to the right of the elevator, or can be reached by stairs from the first floor. It has a sushi bar, comfortable tables, three private rooms and one large banquet room.
Hong proudly said all the seasonings, even the soy sauce, are imported from Japan. Fresh food cooked in a genuine Japanese way are the founding principles of the restaurant. It is therefore no wonder that lovers of Japanese food such as Lin Huai-min (林懷民) and Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) are the restaurant's regular patrons. Even President Chen Shui-bian (
The restaurant adjusts its menu according to the season. According to Hong, in the winter the restaurant offers king crabs imported from Hokkaido and served in a hot pot as its main course. The emphasis in the spring is usually Japanese vegetables and salad courses. Samba fish, shellfish and sea urchin dishes are best during the summer season. Toro-tuna sashimi is an unbeatable gourmet dish in the fall.
For the first timer, Hong strongly recommends a set meal combination served with sushi-rice and miso soup, called the "seafood special" (Hirashi). The dish is served with nine to 12 different kinds of seafood and is a good way to get to know the seafood served at the restaurant.
Since the Japanese and local Japanese food lovers are often very picky about the rice used to make sushi, the chef uses only a particular kind of rice, called Yue-Guang rice (越光米), produced in Erlin (二林), Zhanghua County (彰化縣). Each grain of the Yue-Guang rice looks round and solid and has a stickier texture than standard rice. It mixes well with Japanese vinegar made from white chrysanthemum flowers used to make sushi and produces a refined taste.
As to the beverages, a wide selection of Japanese rice wine (Sake) is available to diners.
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