Just across the street from Taipei 101, there is another monument to the joys of disposable income — the Japanese restaurant Peony.
At around NT$1,500 for an entry-level set dinner, Peony is guaranteed to help with that unsightly bulge in your hip pocket. Its innovative, elegant Japanese cuisine may also be the best meal you've had in a long time.
The set dinners — which nearly everyone orders — are simple on paper: salad, sashimi, grilled fish, soup, dessert. There are no choices to make except which price tier you buy into. The difference between the various meals lies primarily in the expense of the ingredients, all of which are top-notch in any case.
As is characteristic of Japanese cuisine, it is the ingredients themselves that are the focus of the cooking, says Liu Yao-rong (劉燿榮), who designed Peony's menu. The preparation isn't meant to create a new flavor, but to augment and enhance the original flavors.
My salad, for example, contained greens, fruit, and chilled shrimp, unified with a delicate but distinctly flavored dressing. Light wasabi powder reconciled the sweetness of the fruit with the drier Japanese dressing.
Presentation receives equal attention. The grilled Taiwanese carp (鯃魚), cooked with a type of teriyaki that has none of the smothering sweetness of the standard stuff, is served on a small sheet of juniper wood, which itself rests on a bed of hot pebbles that both keep the fish warm and cause the mild flavor of the wood to seep upward.
The sashimi selection — toro, shrimp, abalone and urchin — is presented on a model of a tropical island (less tacky than it sounds). The urchin comes perched on a glass sphere filled with dry ice.
Atmospherically speaking, floor-to-ceiling windows, lots of glass and spotlighting, and dark, comfortable furniture make Peony look in most respects like a typical comfortable upscale restaurant. What is unique is the subtle peony artwork and calligraphy that covers nearly every vertical surface, all of it commissioned from the artist Chi Wei-yi (戚維義). A single peony floats in a small glass vase at each table.
It was no surprise when one youngish diner stared wistfully at a dish that had just been placed in front of her, then looked up at her boyfriend and was overheard to say with a sigh, "This is why you need to get rich."
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