One year in the kitchen of a Hsintien restaurant did for an ex-con what four years in prison couldn't.
Lin Rui-ta (
"I learned a lot working here," Lin said. "My personality and way of thinking have totally changed."
PHOTOS COURTESY OF MIRACLE CAFE
Miracle Cafe, which celebrated its first anniversary last week, is in the business of saving souls, not making money, and the customer benefits from this arrangement. Dishes were served promptly and professionally by waiters who were attentive but not pushy. The food was, on the whole, excellent for the price. A four-course dinner plus soup and tea cost NT$700 and was more than enough for two people.
We tried the scallops in XO sauce (NT$200), stir-fried beef and asparagus (NT$200), clams with bitter melon (NT$150) and an order of eight steamed beef dumplings (NT$120).
The scallops, which were fresh and melted in the mouth, were stir-fried with chopped onions, and red, yellow and green peppers, which were cooked just right and still slightly crispy. XO sauce gave the whole ensemble a mildly spicy kick.
The beef was cooked to perfection, its texture nicely offset by the asparagus, which was crisp and tender, and leeks. The clams, cooked in a soup with not-too bitter melon, were also excellent. Only the steamed dumplings disappointed, lacking somewhat in flavor.
Although Miracle Cafe lacks an English menu, the manager, He Cheng-chuan (
For those who are bothered by such things, there were no pictures of Jesus or other advertisements for evangelical Christianity, and the staff made no attempt to proselytize to us or any other customers.
Indeed, the only signs we saw that Miracle Cafe was more than just a restaurant were its name and the friendliness of the wait staff, all of whom seemed dedicated to making the most of this rare opportunity for a second chance.
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
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
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
Peter Brighton was amazed when he found the giant jackfruit. He had been watching it grow on his farm in far north Queensland, and when it came time to pick it from the tree, it was so heavy it needed two people to do the job. “I was surprised when we cut it off and felt how heavy it was,” he says. “I grabbed it and my wife cut it — couldn’t do it by myself, it took two of us.” Weighing in at 45 kilograms, it is the heaviest jackfruit that Brighton has ever grown on his tropical fruit farm, located