Cheers inside the Grand Hyatt has been feeding casual diners and irrigating business travelers for 16 years. That's an eternity in the life of a Taipei bar and restaurant; and the feel of this one had grown a bit dated, even if its location in a five-star hotel between the World Trade Center and Taipei 101 always guaranteed a steady stream of new faces.
So Cheers took a six-week vacation and emerged last Saturday with a new theme, a new look and a new menu. The aim was to change things just enough to appeal to a younger clientele without scaring away the old customers. The result was described in a press release handed to journalists at a preview lunch as “casual yet loungy, designed yet homey, contemporary yet classic” — and that's a fairly accurate assessment.
“We've been working on this for a long time. This was one of the final projects to accomplish the renovation of the (hotel's) food and beverage operation,” said Olivier Lenoir, food and beverage director at the Grand Hyatt Taipei. He felt “it came out really nice. Very fresh but not too modern.”
PHOTO COURTESY OF GRAND HYATT TAIPEI
The concept behind the redesign is “East meets West.” For the food this means a multicultural blend, not California-style fusion, with selections as diverse as Taiwanese beef noodle soup (NT$420) and Western sandwiches like the croque monsieur (NT$420) and steak sandwich “poor boy” on sourdough loaf (NT$460).
Asian elements predominate in the interior design, with maple and blood-wash finishes, red pillows on couches, and the use of rice paper in a textured arch behind the bar so that that it doesn't stand out during the daytime. Designer Celia Chu (朱怡芬) also made the bar narrower, she said, to encourage conversation between patrons and bartenders.
The changes are likely to disrupt the patterns of longtime guests only in a good way, as the layout and mood remain largely the same. In addition to sampling new items on the menu, other reasons to rediscover Cheers include plush booth seating along the walls and a new outdoor terrace.
Business travelers who find themselves disoriented by Cheers' new look will quickly find their bearings when presented with the drink menu, which now includes more than 40 single malts (NT$300 to NT$1,200 per glass). And smokers can still light up in Cheers, the only bar or restaurant inside the Grand Hyatt where this is still allowed.
Sept.16 to Sept. 22 The “anti-communist train” with then-president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) face plastered on the engine puffed along the “sugar railway” (糖業鐵路) in May 1955, drawing enthusiastic crowds at 103 stops covering nearly 1,200km. An estimated 1.58 million spectators were treated to propaganda films, plays and received free sugar products. By this time, the state-run Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台糖, Taisugar) had managed to connect the previously separate east-west lines established by Japanese-era sugar factories, allowing the anti-communist train to travel easily from Taichung to Pingtung’s Donggang Township (東港). Last Sunday’s feature (Taiwan in Time: The sugar express) covered the inauguration of the
The corruption cases surrounding former Taipei Mayor and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) head Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) are just one item in the endless cycle of noise and fuss obscuring Taiwan’s deep and urgent structural and social problems. Even the case itself, as James Baron observed in an excellent piece at the Diplomat last week, is only one manifestation of the greater problem of deep-rooted corruption in land development. Last week the government announced a program to permit 25,000 foreign university students, primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, to work in Taiwan after graduation for 2-4 years. That number is a
This year’s Michelin Gourmand Bib sported 16 new entries in the 126-strong Taiwan directory. The fight for the best braised pork rice and the crispiest scallion pancake painstakingly continued, but what stood out in the lineup this year? Pang Taqueria (胖塔可利亞); Taiwan’s first Michelin-recommended Mexican restaurant. Chef Charles Chen (陳治宇) is a self-confessed Americophile, earning his chef whites at a fine-dining Latin-American fusion restaurant. But what makes this Xinyi (信義) spot stand head and shoulders above Taipei’s existing Mexican offerings? The authenticity. The produce. The care. AUTHENTIC EATS In my time on the island, I have caved too many times to
In the aftermath of the 2020 general elections the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) was demoralized. The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) had crushed them in a second landslide in a row, with their presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) winning more votes than any in Taiwan’s history. The KMT did pick up three legislative seats, but the DPP retained an outright majority. To take responsibility for that catastrophic loss, as is customary, party chairman Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) resigned. This would mark the end of an era of how the party operated and the beginning of a new effort at reform, first under