For the last three years, Maryjane Pizza off Shida Road (師大路) has been serving satisfying thin-crust pizzas at extremely reasonable prices. So it's somewhat surprising how little attention the place has received from English-language media, blogs and other Web sites included.
This hasn't stopped the cozy little restaurant four lanes north of Grandma Nitti's from building a sizeable reputation among expats and foreign students as a good place to go for a couple of reasons.
It's a great place for lunch, when a 10-inch pepperoni or veggie pizza, a glass of iced tea and a salad will set you back a mere NT$180. It's also a great place for an inexpensive date. The atmosphere is welcoming and casual with good lighting and tasteful artwork hanging from the walls. A carafe of house wine is only NT$230 and beers are buy-one-get-one free in summer. There's even a shady deck.
PHOTO: RON BROWNLOW, TAIPEI TIMES
So how was the pizza? I visited Maryjane's four times over the past two months, ordering the pepperoni (NT$160), the artichoke (NT$180) and the Greek (NT$200) pizzas. Of these, my favorite was the pepperoni. As with most Taipei restaurants that serve good pizzas, the crust is slightly dry. This is not necessarily a bad thing, and it balances well with a topping like pepperoni.
Likewise with Maryjane's pesto chicken pizza (NT$250), which I have not tried — yet — but which several of my friends recommend. It's topped with chicken breast, feta cheese, sliced tomatoes and a homemade pesto sauce.
Another example of a good balance was the Greek pizza, with feta cheese, onions, black olives, mushrooms, green peppers and cherry tomatoes over the standard tomato and mozzarella crust. I would have preferred more than one variety of mushroom and more feta cheese, but otherwise was pleased with the vegetables, which were fresh and came in just the right quantity.
If you like artichokes, I recommend ordering them with another topping, as for me, a mozzarella and tomato pizza with just artichokes tastes a bit dry. Maryjane lets customers build their own pizza for NT$140, plus NT$20 or NT$30 for each of two-dozen toppings.
Note: Maryjane is popular and its pizzas are hand-made and baked in a stone-base oven, so customers visiting during peak dinner hours sometimes have to wait for seats. Check the Web site for free soup and desert coupons.
Growing up in a rural, religious community in western Canada, Kyle McCarthy loved hockey, but once he came out at 19, he quit, convinced being openly gay and an active player was untenable. So the 32-year-old says he is “very surprised” by the runaway success of Heated Rivalry, a Canadian-made series about the romance between two closeted gay players in a sport that has historically made gay men feel unwelcome. Ben Baby, the 43-year-old commissioner of the Toronto Gay Hockey Association (TGHA), calls the success of the show — which has catapulted its young lead actors to stardom -- “shocking,” and says
Inside an ordinary-looking townhouse on a narrow road in central Kaohsiung, Tsai A-li (蔡阿李) raised her three children alone for 15 years. As far as the children knew, their father was away working in the US. They were kept in the dark for as long as possible by their mother, for the truth was perhaps too sad and unjust for their young minds to bear. The family home of White Terror victim Ko Chi-hua (柯旗化) is now open to the public. Admission is free and it is just a short walk from the Kaohsiung train station. Walk two blocks south along Jhongshan
The 2018 nine-in-one local elections were a wild ride that no one saw coming. Entering that year, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) was demoralized and in disarray — and fearing an existential crisis. By the end of the year, the party was riding high and swept most of the country in a landslide, including toppling the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in their Kaohsiung stronghold. Could something like that happen again on the DPP side in this year’s nine-in-one elections? The short answer is not exactly; the conditions were very specific. However, it does illustrate how swiftly every assumption early in an
Snoop Dogg arrived at Intuit Dome hours before tipoff, long before most fans filled the arena and even before some players. Dressed in a gray suit and black turtleneck, a diamond-encrusted Peacock pendant resting on his chest and purple Chuck Taylor sneakers with gold laces nodding to his lifelong Los Angeles Lakers allegiance, Snoop didn’t rush. He didn’t posture. He waited for his moment to shine as an NBA analyst alongside Reggie Miller and Terry Gannon for Peacock’s recent Golden State Warriors at Los Angeles Clippers broadcast during the second half. With an AP reporter trailing him through the arena for an
RSS