It is surprisingly difficult to get really good Cantonese food in Taipei, and the Grand Formosa Regent is attempting to step into the breach with the creation of its new Silks House (晶華軒) restaurant, which opened last month. It's taking over the premises of the Lan Ting (蘭亭) Shanghainese restaurant with very little modification to Hashimoto Yukie's calligraphy-inspired decor. The food, on the other hand, has made a considerable transition under the guidance of chef Wu Hong-chen (伍洪成), who's gained an international reputation as the chef of presidents, having been for many years the executive chef of choice to preside over state banquets.
One of Silks House's main attractions is the "dim sum" menu, those delightful Cantonese snacks most often served in a steaming basket and designed to be eaten with tea. These snacks can be coupled with one or two main dishes to make a meal that does not break the bank. For more lavish dinning, Silks House is not short of spectacular banquet dishes, either. Wu is renowned for his research into Cantonese cuisine's classic dishes and has added a number of rarely seen specialties to the menu.
Silks offers a wide range of high-quality teas priced between NT$60 and NT$120 per person, from the usual jasmine and pu'er to exotic, high-end brews for connoisseurs. The snacks, which range in price from NT$90 chicken's feet, in this instance jazzed up with XO sauce, to NT$280 for baked egg tarts with bird's nest (燕窩烤蛋塔). Silks has made a concerted effort to make its snacks exotic with the addition of high-priced ingredients, and while this works in some cases - the pan-fried turnip cake with dried scallop (瑤柱蘿蔔糕, NT$100) is refreshingly light and the scallops give it a really surprising taste - in other cases, as with the egg tarts, the benefits were negligible.
PHOTO COURTESY OF GRAND FORMOSA REGENT
Main dishes start at around NT$400 and feature a mixture of traditional favorites excellently made, such as stir-fried grouper with yellow chives (韭黃炒龍膽魚球, NT$480), to variations of tradition such as the roast duck Grand Formosa style (晶華片皮鴨, NT$2,000), which is sliced at table, served with unique oat pancakes, wrapped with an unusual mixture of sweet peppers and young ginger, and includes a soup made from the bones of the duck.
There is more than enough variety to keep even the most ardent foodie busy. The Silks brand will also be expanding, with the new Silks Palace scheduled to open in the grounds of the National Palace Museum mid-May.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby