Many bars around town, and especially those in five star hotels, have set up screens for the World Cup. The Front Page Bar at the Imperial Hotel (
Front Page's international style is that of an up-market British pub, and offers an elegant, cheerful and pleasant environment in which to sit and relax with friends or have a drink at the bar. The low ceiling gives it an intimate feel, and the selection of flags around the room hints at the inter-national crowd that passes through.
Although the Imperial Hotel has been around for the last 30 years, Front Page has been open for just two years.
PHOTO COURTESY OF FRONT PAGE BAR
The hotel's proximity to Taipei's Zhongshan Soccer Stadium makes it a favorite with visiting athletes, including local sports icon, Wang Chien-ming (王建民), who plays for the New York Yankees. The bar displays a baseball shirt with his autograph, among much other sporting paraphernalia.
Bar manager Liao Yu-hwei (廖裕輝), has done his bit for national sports; he was formerly on Taiwan's soft tennis team.
Head chef of the Front Page Bar Tony Chen (陳進男) said that a variety of international dishes are offered to appeal to guests from many different countries. Dutch deep-fried beef meatballs with tomato sauce (NT$480) is recommended, and was selected to represent the hotel at the Taipei International Food Show last week.
For avid sports fans who don't want to take their eyes off the television, Brazilian grilled beef skewers (NT$480) are popular as they are easy to handle. The French grilled ham and cheese sandwich (NT$360), provides a big meal, even if it tastes a bit ordinary for the price.
Other dishes include German pig knuckle (NT$480), Italian carbonara (NT$380), Mexican beef fried rice with hot chili (NT$360) and English deep-fried fish burger (NT$380).
Cocktails cost around NT$270 and the bar stocks a wide range of beers and spirits, starting at NT$220 per glass.
The bar has a private suite for three to eight people. There is no minimum charge for this, although a reservation is necessary. Internet access is a cinch with WiFi access.
A few weeks ago I found myself at a Family Mart talking with the morning shift worker there, who has become my coffee guy. Both of us were in a funk over the “unseasonable” warm weather, a state of mind known as “solastalgia” — distress produced by environmental change. In fact, the weather was not that out of the ordinary in boiling Central Taiwan, and likely cooler than the temperatures we will experience in the near-future. According to the Taiwan Adaptation Platform, between 1957 and 2006, summer lengthened by 27.8 days, while winter shrunk by 29.7 days. Winter is not
Taiwan’s post-World War II architecture, “practical, cheap and temporary,” not to mention “rather forgettable.” This was a characterization recently given by Taiwan-based historian John Ross on his Formosa Files podcast. Yet the 1960s and 1970s were, in fact, the period of Taiwan’s foundational building boom, which, to a great extent, defined the look of Taiwan’s cities, determining the way denizens live today. During this period, functionalist concrete blocks and Chinese nostalgia gave way to new interpretations of modernism, large planned communities and high-rise skyscrapers. It is currently the subject of a new exhibition at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Modern
March 25 to March 31 A 56-year-old Wu Li Yu-ke (吳李玉哥) was straightening out her artist son’s piles of drawings when she inadvertently flipped one over, revealing the blank backside of the paper. Absent-mindedly, she picked up a pencil and recalled how she used to sketch embroidery designs for her clothing business. Without clients and budget or labor constraints to worry about, Wu Li drew freely whatever image came to her mind. With much more free time now that her son had found a job, she found herself missing her home village in China, where she
In recent years, Slovakia has been seen as a highly democratic and Western-oriented Central European country. This image was reinforced by the election of the country’s first female president in 2019, efforts to provide extensive assistance to Ukraine and the strengthening of relations with Taiwan, all of which strengthened Slovakia’s position within the European Union. However, the latest developments in the country suggest that the situation is changing rapidly. As such, the presidential elections to be held on March 23 will be an indicator of whether Slovakia remains in the Western sphere of influence or moves eastward, notably towards Russia and