Restaurants: Shintori (新都里)

Right in the heart of Taipei's fashionable Anhe Road, Shintori (新都里) is an upscale Japanese restaurant aimed at well-to-do customers with discernable tastes.

To attract customers, the restaurant spares no expense in fashioning its space with a highbrow gallery design that features granite walls and flooring and subtle lighting. The establishment has 132 seats in its public dinning area, 12 seats at the bar and 86 seats in 14 private dinning booths.

As a brand-name restaurant that targets young professionals, the joint specializes in nouveau Japanese food that blends traditional ingredients with innovative cooking techniques.

For any Japanese food lover, Shintori's assorted sashimi (綜合生魚片) is a must-try. The ultra-fresh, melt-in-your-mouth pieces of fish come on a carpet of ice to preserve the fish's freshness during its journey from kitchen to table.

The rock 'n' roll salad (搖滾沙拉) is named after its serving method. The dish is brought in by the waiter who pours the house dressing into a tall glass cylinder, adds the salad and then rocks and shakes the mixture, after which it is served in a wooden bowl. The ginger dressing is also one-of-a-kind and delivers just the right savory tinge to the salad dish.

Also highly recommended is the appetizer dish cubic appetizer (九宮前菜), which consists of nine ceramic cubes containing different appetizers chosen by the chef from the day's freshest ingredients.

As a nouveau-Japanese food joint, some of the restaurant's innovative dishes are bound to backfire. Shintori's seafood rice pizza (米飯披薩) is beautiful and the idea seems tantalizing, but it tastes like it came from a fast food store.

The service is impeccable as the waiters are extremely attentive in delivering and serving the food. When the water line in your teacup dips, the house policy is to replace it with a brand new cup of tea rather than refilling the old cup. This keeps the tea at just the right temperature and is just the attitude that discerning diners appreciate.