Looking to explore Japanese food but don’t think you can settle on just one dish? Plan on eating with friends who have a hard time agreeing on what to order? Want to drink lots of alcohol and enjoy a good meal at the same time? This restaurant solves these dilemmas in one fell swoop.
Yabu Soba serves izakaya ryori (居酒屋料理), or pub-style food. Think of the rathskeller you visit for dinner, except this one serves Japanese dishes and you order a bunch of small but substantial courses to share with a group. There are tables in the back, with bamboo blinds and pictures of sumo wrestlers for decoration. In the evening things get lively and you can still eat at the bar, although this one offers a view of sake bottles and sushi preparation instead of whiskey and beer taps.
On a recent visit a party of seven shared seven delicious dishes and consumed several one-liter bottles of Kirin beer. The result was a satisfying meal and the tab came out at NT$450 per person. Impressively, staff offered to alter the portions of each dish to suit the size of our group.
PHOTO: RON BROWNLOW, TAIPEI TIMES
Memorable courses included the roast potato slices topped with mentaiko, or marinated roe, (NT$160, 烤馬鈴薯明太子), California rolls (NT$160, 加州酪梨捲) and beef tataki (NT$360, 日式生煎牛排), slices of raw steak that have been lightly seared on the outside and are to be dipped in a ponzu sauce. The sauce is what makes this dish. Stir in sliced ginger and scallions thoroughly before dipping the thinly sliced beef.
Staff also recommended the kimchee beef (NT$190, 韓國泡菜牛肉), chicken wings with mentaiko inside (NT$190, 烤雞翅包明太子), and the restaurant’s trademark soba noodles (NT$150, 日式蕎麥冷麵). There’s also a decent selection of vegetable and tofu dishes, such as fried tofu (NT$70, 炸豆腐) and spinach with egg (NT$130, 菠菜蛋); tell staff if you’re a vegetarian before ordering. This being an izakaya, there’s a drinks menu that features around a dozen brightly colored cocktails.
Yabu Soba moved from its old location on Linshen North Road four years ago. It’s now on Nanjing East Road next to the Emperor Hotel and three blocks east of the Zhongshan MRT station.
During lunchtime things are much more subdued and Yabu Soba looks more like a run-of-the-mill Taipei Japanese eatery, albeit one with an extensive and eclectic menu. Lunch prices run from NT$110 for soup noodles to NT$250 or more for a set meal with soup, salad and entree.
Taiwan has next to no political engagement in Myanmar, either with the ruling military junta nor the dozens of armed groups who’ve in the last five years taken over around two-thirds of the nation’s territory in a sprawling, patchwork civil war. But early last month, the leader of one relatively minor Burmese revolutionary faction, General Nerdah Bomya, who is also an alleged war criminal, made a low key visit to Taipei, where he met with a member of President William Lai’s (賴清德) staff, a retired Taiwanese military official and several academics. “I feel like Taiwan is a good example of
March 2 to March 8 Gunfire rang out along the shore of the frontline island of Lieyu (烈嶼) on a foggy afternoon on March 7, 1987. By the time it was over, about 20 unarmed Vietnamese refugees — men, women, elderly and children — were dead. They were hastily buried, followed by decades of silence. Months later, opposition politicians and journalists tried to uncover what had happened, but conflicting accounts only deepened the confusion. One version suggested that government troops had mistakenly killed their own operatives attempting to return home from Vietnam. The military maintained that the
“M yeolgong jajangmyeon (anti-communism zhajiangmian, 滅共炸醬麵), let’s all shout together — myeolgong!” a chef at a Chinese restaurant in Dongtan, located about 35km south of Seoul, South Korea, calls out before serving a bowl of Korean-style zhajiangmian —black bean noodles. Diners repeat the phrase before tucking in. This political-themed restaurant, named Myeolgong Banjeom (滅共飯館, “anti-communism restaurant”), is operated by a single person and does not take reservations; therefore long queues form regularly outside, and most customers appear sympathetic to its political theme. Photos of conservative public figures hang on the walls, alongside political slogans and poems written in Chinese characters; South
Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) announced last week a city policy to get businesses to reduce working hours to seven hours per day for employees with children 12 and under at home. The city promised to subsidize 80 percent of the employees’ wage loss. Taipei can do this, since the Celestial Dragon Kingdom (天龍國), as it is sardonically known to the denizens of Taiwan’s less fortunate regions, has an outsize grip on the government budget. Like most subsidies, this will likely have little effect on Taiwan’s catastrophic birth rates, though it may be a relief to the shrinking number of
RSS