Korea House Village (韓屋村)
Address: 3, Ln 105, Shida Rd, Taipei
(台北市師大路105巷3號)
PHOTO: NOAH BUCHAN, TAIPEI TIMES
Telephone: (02) 2364-1980
Open: Daily from noon to midnight
Average meal: NT$1,000 for two, plus 10 percent service charge
Details: Chinese and Korean menu (English menu coming soon)
Proprietors of Korean restaurants in Taiwan often say the food they serve has been changed to suit local palettes, whatever that means. It sounds like some feeble excuse not to put the proper amount of effort into making the pastes and sauces, for which any Korean will tell you is as important as the meat or seafood it's served with, or slicing the meat used for barbecue so thin that it could only grace a hot pot.
Not so with the recently opened Korea House Village. Proprietor Zhao Yi-xian (趙懿憲) is unwilling to compromise authenticity to suite local tastes. Instead, he transplants 10 years of experience operating a restaurant in South Korea, where his mother-in-law grew the peppers and soy beans that go into making the pastes and sauces, to Shida. Three years in the planning, the tableware, the tables and chairs, even the cutlery is imported from South Korea. The walls are lined with tastefully finished traditional Korean art and glass display cases containing expensive ginseng alcohol.
Authentic Korean restaurants are worth a visit if only to sample the free appetizer dishes they serve before the meal. Korea House Village serves up six, and on the day we were there included asparagus, kimchi, pickled eggplant, mackerel and white radish marinated in light soy sauce, tofu in a light soy and ginger sauce topped with green onions and green vegetables marinated in sesame oil. Zhao says that aside from kimchi, the dishes change with the season.
Other specialties on the menu include tempura (NT$250) — a selection of white fish, squash, green onion mini pancakes and kimchi mini-pancakes — that is served with red-pepper paste infused with fresh garlic, hints of ginger and green onions. The exterior of each was crispy with the pancakes chewy on the inside and the fish light in flavor. The octopus and fresh cucumber salad marinated in hot sauce and surrounded by eight noodle nests (NT$300) was zingy.
A good deal for two is the bulgogi (NT$500), or marinated barbecue beef. Served with tofu, noodles, vegetables and seafood on a large iron plate, the mixture is then pan-barbecued and eaten straight up or with fresh lettuce leaves. The menu also offers an extensive selection of grilled barbecue dishes.
It starts out as a heartwarming clip. A young girl, clearly delighted to be in Tokyo, beams as she makes a peace sign to the camera. Seconds later, she is shoved to the ground from behind by a woman wearing a surgical mask. The assailant doesn’t skip a beat, striding out of shot of the clip filmed by the girl’s mother. This was no accidental clash of shoulders in a crowded place, but one of the most visible examples of a spate of butsukari otoko — “bumping man” — shoving incidents in Japan that experts attribute to a combination of gender
The race for New Taipei City mayor is being keenly watched, and now with the nomination of former deputy mayor of Taipei Hammer Lee (李四川) as the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) candidate, the battle lines are drawn. All polling data on the tight race mentioned in this column is from the March 12 Formosa poll. On Christmas Day 2010, Taipei County merged into one mega-metropolis of four million people, making it the nation’s largest city. The same day, the winner of the mayoral race, Eric Chu (朱立倫) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), took office and insisted on the current
Last week the government announced that by year’s end Taiwan will have the highest density of anti-ship missiles in the world. Its inventory could exceed 1,400, or enough for the opening two hours of an invasion from the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Snark aside, it sounds impressive. But an important piece is missing. Lost in all the “dialogues” and “debates” and “discussions” whose sole purpose is simply to dawdle and delay is what the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) alternative special defense budget proposal means for the defense of Taiwan. It is a betrayal of both Taiwan and the US. IT’S
March 16 to March 22 Hidden for decades behind junk-filled metal shacks, trees and overgrowth, a small domed structure bearing a Buddhist swastika resurfaced last June in a Taichung alley. It was soon identified as a remnant of the 122-year-old Gokokuzan Taichuu-ji (Taichung Temple, 護國山台中寺), which was thought to have been demolished in the 1980s. In addition, a stone stele dedicated to monk Hoshu Ono, who served as abbot from 1914 to 1930, was discovered in the detritus. The temple was established in 1903 as the local center for the Soto school
RSS