Located opposite National Chengchi University's Center for Public and Business Administration Education (國立政治大學公企中心) in Taipei's Da-an District (大安區), Hong Kong Hsin Hua Tea House (香港鑫華茶餐廳) could easily be overlooked as just another greasy spoon that caters to students.
That would be a mistake.
Hsin Hua Tea House retains the atmosphere of a family restaurant while serving a young and restless clientele of students and office workers. The wait staff favors shorts, T-shirts and flip-flops, and service is briskly efficient, but the Hong Kong-style noodle and rice dishes here are uniformly of high quality.
The Hong Kong fried noodles (港式炒麵, NT$120), one of more than 15 noodle dishes, are crisp but not undercooked, laden with plentiful bits of seafood and vegetables, and topped with a light and flavorful sauce. Among the more than 20 rice dishes are various styles of fried rice, as well as rice with different toppings. The salted fish and chicken fried rice (鹹魚雞粒炒飯, NT$120) proves that, despite their rough-and-ready style of cooking, the chefs at Hsin Hua Tea House can delicately handle dishes that require a degree of finesse. There are also several daily specials, including the unusual but interesting salt fish and steamed mince pork with rice (鹹魚蒸肉餅飯, NT$90).
Hsin Hua Tea House's breakfast menu is ideal for a nostalgic fix of old Asia, with its choice of French toast (法蘭西多士, NT$50), lunch meat-and-egg sandwiches (餐肉蛋三文治, NT$50), and delicious iced milk tea (招牌奶茶, NT$60). These show a commendable disregard for healthy eating: the toast is moist with melted spread, the bread is soft and overprocessed, and the tea is sweetened with condensed milk.
The restaurant shows a cosmopolitan side with options such as the Malaysian fried vermicelli (馬來炒米粉, NT$100) and Vietnamese beef soup noodles (越式肥牛湯河粉, NT$120). These are not authentic Vietnamese or Malaysian food, but a Hong Kong interpretation of these dishes. Other selections include Thai-style fried vegetables (泰式醬炒時菜, NT$100) and sweet-and-sour fish (咕咾魚片, NT$220).
Hsin Hua Tea House is definitely not about fine dining, but its wide selection, generous portions, high quality fare and efficient service make it ideal both for the lone diner and large groups with diverse requirements.
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
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
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist
A fossil jawbone found by a British girl and her father on a beach in Somerset, England belongs to a gigantic marine reptile dating to 202 million years ago that appears to have been among the largest animals ever on Earth. Researchers said on Wednesday the bone, called a surangular, was from a type of ocean-going reptile called an ichthyosaur. Based on its dimensions compared to the same bone in closely related ichthyosaurs, the researchers estimated that the Triassic Period creature, which they named Ichthyotitan severnensis, was between 22-26 meters long. That would make it perhaps the largest-known marine reptile and would