Among the ubiquitous South Korean and Japanese barbecue restaurants in the nation's capital, Kimichan Beer Bar remains popular five years after it opened; no small feat given the competition.
The Japanese barbecue restaurant is decorated in a simple, cozy style and is staffed by courteous and attentive servers.
If grilling your own food on the charcoal fire in the summertime sounds too much like hard work, the wait staff is more than happy to help you pick an ice-cold tipple from the joint's long list of sake, beer, plum wine, soda and fresh juice.
PHOTO: HO YI, TAIPEI TIMES
The meat is exceedingly fresh and dressed simply with salt, pepper and white sesame seeds. The magic comes from the restaurant's selection of sauces that includes green onion with pepper and salt, miso and spicy soy bean sauce with fruit.
Recommended dishes include chicken leg, pig intestine and plum-blossom pork.
The restaurant uses beef marbled with fat, which prevents the meat from drying out when cooked.
Pig neck is another dish not to be missed; it has an unusual texture that is initially crisp but which softens to melt on the tongue and ooze meat juices.
Though squeamish diners may at first balk at cow's tongue, Kimichan Beer Bar's version is grilled and comes to the table served with lemon juice and saute onion, and is a taste sensation.
Seafood options include fish, shrimp, squid and clams with prices raging from NT$120 to NT$190 per dish. The restaurant offers an assorted seafood platter that is well suited for sharing.
Codfish liver and raw beef prepared in Japanese and South Korean styles are the current menu specials.
An extensive selection of fresh vegetables and salads are on offer to provide a bit of roughage. Pumpkin, potato and mountain yam are staple fillers, and the vinegar seaweed salad and seaweed-soup rice bowl are two popular light dishes for the ladies.
After the meal, a plate of lemon slices is served to freshen up the palate. If the lemon is too sour for you, a saucer of brown sugar is on hand.
Indulgence takes many forms, and on many foodies' lists is ice-cream, which is homemade at Kimichan and includes green tea, pumpkin and peanut favors.
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