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Restaurant: Tsia Wan Hsin 蔡萬興老店

By Derek Lee
STAFF REPORTER
Friday, Mar 03, 2006, Page 15

Soup in a clay pot and drunken chicken are some of the favored dishes on offer at Tsai Wan Hsin. PHOTO: DEREK LEE, TAIPEI TIMES

With the fast-changing eating habits of people in Taipei, a good Ningpo (寧波) restaurant is difficult to find nowadays. Tsai Wan Hsin Restaurant, however, long ago established a good reputation for offering Jiangzhe cuisine (江浙菜) and has

survived the keen competition from other fancy-looking eateries in the neighborhood.

The restaurant, opened in 1953, is old-fashioned, small and can only accommodate around 35 persons at one time.

The interior decoration is anything but extravagant. Yet, throughout the years, the place has built up a loyal client base. Telephone reservations are not accepted and many patrons turn up to book tables an hour in advance or to have take-out orders. Several middle-aged habitues of the restaurant said they have been eating at the joint for 20 years or so.

Lu Li-li (陸麗莉), the restaurant's second-generation owner, learned most of the trade from her parents. She set up a factory in nearby Chungho City (中和市) that processes the food which the restaurant prepares.

She has single-handedly improved the quality and taste of food cooked at the restaurant. When asked what made her restaurant stand out from the crowd of competitors Lu replied, "I put more heart and mind into my business than others do."

The restaurant started out selling nian gao (年糕), a cake made of glutinous rice flour and today its fermented glutinous rice dumplings (酒釀湯圓) are regarded highly.

The soup tastes slightly sweet and each dumpling is filled with finely ground black sesame seeds. Drunken chicken (醉雞) is a popular dish made from chicken marinated in Shaoxing rice wine.

The Yan-Du-Xian clay pot (醃篤鮮砂鍋) is Lu's signature dish. She fills the pot with high-quality aged Chinese ham, fresh pork, bamboo shoots, Chinese mustard leaves and several other kinds of vegetables, which are then cooked in the additive-free, milk-white broth.

The restaurant's fried pork chop served with vegetable and white rice (排骨菜飯) has drawn a lot of media attention lately. The reason is simple: Lu does not add flour or corn starch to the chops when they are deep fried -- a cooking method which deviates wildly from the normal modus operandi in Taiwan.
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