Bottles of liquor you can sign your name on and finish the next time you come. A karaoke machine on wheels. A real-lfe Sichuanese boss: Chuanwazi (川娃子) seems to have it all.
Nestled in an alley on the border of the Combat Zone, this small, 35-seat restaurant caters to a late-night clientele who come to shout across the tables at each other, belt out the latest Taiwanese hits and - whether they realize it or not - enjoy some of Taipei's best Sichuanese home-style cooking.
Chongqing-born Cheng Zunlian (程尊蓮) moved to Taipei nine years ago and opened shop in 2000, using cooking techniques she says most local Sichuan places have either forgotten or never knew.
PHOTO: BLAKE CARTER, TAIPEI TIMES
"A lot of Taiwanese restaurants offer Sichuan dishes, but they don't get the proportions right," Cheng says. "And it's not just that they don't use enough chilies. They put in too much of something or too little of something else … . It often comes out tasting too bitter."
Chuanwazi's menu isn't particularly unique: kungpao chicken (宮保雞丁, NT$150), dry-fried green beans (乾煸四季豆, NT$150) and hot pot (麻辣鴛鴦鍋, NT$300 for a set meal) are customer favorites.
But there are also dishes that aren't available at other places, such as shuizhu roupian (水煮肉片, NT$200), or boiled pork slices with vegetables. The name sounds deceptively bland, but this can be one of the most fiery, flavorful dishes invented in the region.
Like most of her cooking, Cheng uses a varying dose of Sichuan peppercorn (花椒) and white pepper to give shuizhu roupian a balanced taste whether it's ordered spicy or not. From top to bottom, a bowl contains a layer each of spices, oil, pork strips and greens that can be plucked so as to give each bite more or less of whatever ingredient is preferred.
Mediocre versions of shuizhu niurou (水煮牛肉) - the same dish but with beef - can be found elsewhere in Taipei but are often nothing more than bland boiled meat and cabbage plopped in a bowl of oil.
"Our Sichuan style is mala," Cheng says, stressing the importance of both ma (麻), or numbing, and la (辣), or spicy qualities. "In Taiwan, it's just la, la, la, la, la."
The ma commonly missing in bastardized Sichuan cuisine comes from the Sichuan peppercorn, which contains a mild anesthetic. Until 2005, the spice was banned in the US because the plant it comes from is known to carry a bacterial disease deemed a threat to the US citrus crop, though not harmful to humans.
In Taiwan, where Sichuan peppercorn is available at your corner supermarket, omitting this distinct anise-lemony flavored spice is like cooking Italian food without garlic.
As for the la half of mala, ordering at Chuanwazi can present one of the same problems encountered at other restaurants. Cheng has adapted her food to local tastes, and diners craving seriously hot dishes should make it clear they want them "Chongqing style."
Despite its small size, reservations aren't usually necessary. Chuanwazi's unpretentious style and sometimes raucous atmosphere have not made it a particularly popular with the kind of people who crowd the city's trendy chain restaurants.
Those who prefer to take their meals without sitting next to a table of karaoke-crooning, Mild Seven-puffing ruffians, need not worry. Business is reliably slow in the early evening. And there's always takeout.- BLAKE CARTER
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