“No Diet Coke, no skim milk, no low fat cheese, no credit cards,” reads the menu at Toasteria (吐司利亞), which is devoted to one thing: grilled cheese sandwiches.
The concept behind this sandwich bar is simplicity, but its charm lies in the opportunity to indulge in comfort. On offer are nearly 20 different kinds of sandwiches, cooked on small panini-style grills, and made with five kinds of cheeses, fresh vegetables, light meats, and spreads.
Grilled cheese is “the perfect meal” to proprietor Tomer Feldman, who created the menus at Citizen Cain (國民) and the Sababa (沙巴巴) restaurants. Although he studied culinary arts and worked as a chef in New York City for over 10 years, the Israeli native knew that he would return to “his roots” — the sandwich.
PHOTO: DAVID CHEN, TAIPEI TIMES
“[With this place I wanted to offer] simple things that make people happy,” he says.
Toasteria, which lies on an alley off of Zhongxiao East Road (忠孝東路), is basically a bar squeezed into a four-ping (13m²) storefront. But Feldman uses the space well and manages to create a warm and welcoming vibe. Soft lighting illuminates the copper-top bar, which is already forming a nice, weathered patina. Bar stools are padded with soft vinyl cushions. In front of the bar, there is a small deck area with two sets of tables and chairs.
Sitting at the bar, I smelled coffee and the savory scent of butter and cheese cooking. At times, the music (vintage jazz and blues the day I went) blared just above conversational level, but it did block out the din of cars and scooters outside.
I had the feta pesto (NT$95) sandwich, which had feta cheese, roasted red peppers, shitake mushrooms, and a pesto sauce with a generous amount of garlic. The flavors were well-balanced, with nothing overpowering, and the bread was just right — not too sweet, as is often the case in Taiwan. Each sandwich comes with a small dish of pickles and green olives, soaked in an oil and vinegar recipe from Feldman’s family.
Among Toasteria’s other sandwich selections: classic grilled cheese (NT$70) and smoked salmon tapenade (NT$105), which has feta, roasted peppers and tapenade, an olive paste. Diners looking for something different can try the grapa (NT$105), which is made from gouda, red-wine onion jam, roasted garlic and fresh basil.
Fries and simple salads are also available, and there is a modest selection of beverages: espresso, soft drinks, teas, Kirin beer and red wine.
To get there on the MRT, go to Zhongxiao-Dunhua Station (blue line), leave the station at Exit No. 3, and walk straight ahead along Zhongxiao East. Turn right at Lane 248, just before Yanji Street (延吉街).
Ajay Verma, a consultant gastroenterologist at Kettering general hospital in Northamptonshire, says our gut is a “complex machine.” “It is constantly providing us with the nutrition we need, initially to grow and develop, and then for us to survive, thrive and repair from injury and illness.” How can we keep it functioning well? Put simply: “Make sure what you put into it is balanced, and that you clear out its waste products adequately,” Verma says. “In a general gastroenterology clinic, the most common conditions we see are irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), gastroesophageal reflux disease, inflammatory bowel disease and constipation,” says Nisha
And so, in the wake of US President Donald Trump’s trip to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), all the experts on the Strait of Hormuz suddenly became experts on US-China-Taiwan relations. The Internet has certainly expanded human knowledge. Lots of these sudden experts made noise this week about Trump’s words after the meeting with PRC dictator Xi Jin-ping (習近平). Trump is going to sell out Taiwan! Longtime Taiwan commentator J. Michael Cole summed the situation up neatly in the Guardian: “We need to keep in mind that he has a tendency to say many things — sometimes contradicting himself within
Last week US President Donald Trump was asked by a reporter whether he would speak on the phone to the President of Taiwan. “l’ll speak to him. I speak to everybody. We have that situation very well in hand,” Trump said. This marked the second time in a couple of weeks he had said he would talk to the President of Taiwan. In 2016 he famously took a call from then-president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), when he was president-elect. Despite warnings that the apocalypse was nigh because of a phone call, the world quickly forgot about the conversation between two democratically-elected presidents.
May 25 to May 31 Few believed that apples could be cultivated on a commercial scale in Taiwan’s high mountains. When horticulturalist Cheng Chao-hsiung (程兆熊) first proposed the idea in 1955, both American and Taiwanese colleagues dismissed it as implausible, arguing that temperate fruit could not be reliably grown on a subtropical island, especially on rugged terrain. However, it was this terrain in the Central Mountain Range where many Chinese Civil War veterans were resettled in the late 1950s. With limited job prospects and no family in Taiwan, they were placed on cooperative farms aimed toward self-sufficiency. Some say the conditions
RSS