Spaceman has landed.
The tiny Renai Road (仁愛路) pub run by Irishman Niall Clinton has moved to a more spacious address on Guangfu South Road (光復南路), taken a new name — and now serves delicious North American food.
Joining Clinton is co-owner Bill Allen, a Brooklynite who worked as a bartender at the River Club in Nyak, New York. Both taught English in Taipei and saw the need for a comfortable nightspot with a kitchen that remained open long enough to serve teachers working the late shift at buxibans, a situation made more urgent by the recent demise of DV8, where Clinton worked before opening Spaceman.
PHOTO: RON BROWNLOW, TAIPEI TIMES
Their search for a suitable location lasted nearly a year until December, when they found a restaurant near the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall (國父紀念館) MRT station that was looking to close its doors and transfer the lease. It was a good deal and the space was perfect — two floors, a working kitchen and a distinctive Mediterranean facade with a vestibule that keeps the noise coming out of the pub to a minimum.
Inside they added a long bar, wood frames on interior windows that look out to the vestibule, and red brick walls, a touch that for Allen evokes images of the quintessential New York bar. The windows give the feeling of extra space while the brick makes things cozy. One's first impression is that everything is clean and new, but the decor grows on you and after a drink or two On Tap feels like an old local you've been frequenting for years.
Then there's the food. Last week, On Tap started serving dishes ranging from entrees like spaghetti (NT$170), grilled steak (NT$300) and grilled BBQ chicken (NT$250), to sides like nachos (NT$180), chicken caesar salad (NT$200), and the best calamari (NT$160) this reviewer has tasted at a Western restaurant in Taipei.
Customers were raving: "A restaurant selling this after midnight?" proclaimed an approving South African as he tucked into a side of grilled BBQ Pork with mashed potato (NT$250). "Swensen's, bye bye!"
On tap at On Tap are Strongbow, Abbot Ale, Stella Artois and, coming soon, Taiwan Beer (NT$150 to NT$200). Of course, Guinness is also served and Clinton says that at NT$200 it is the cheapest Guinness in town. The bottled selection (NT$150 to NT$180) includes Heineken, Belgian beers and English ales.
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and
Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless
Approaching her mid-30s, Xiong Yidan reckons that most of her friends are on to their second or even third babies. But Xiong has more than a dozen. There is Lucky, the street dog from Bangkok who jumped into a taxi with her and never left. There is Sophie and Ben, sibling geese, who honk from morning to night. Boop and Pan, both goats, are romantically involved. Dumpling the hedgehog enjoys a belly rub from time to time. The list goes on. Xiong nurtures her brood from her 8,000 square meter farm in Chiang Dao, a mountainous district in northern Thailand’s