Ala-din Indian & Pakistani Kitchen (阿拉丁) is in the middle of the crowded Raohe Street night market, and if your stomach is growling it might be hard to resist the temptation to sate yourself on the rows and rows of finger food and fried desserts you pass as you wend your way to the restaurant. But if you hold out long enough, Ala-din’s roti rolls will satisfy your hungry belly and its spicy curries will have your forehead beading with sweat.
The restaurant’s grill is out in front to entice browsers with kebabs and vegetables cooking on skewers; a plain and narrow but neat dining room stretches behind. With the exception of a famous oamisua shop at 49 Raohe St (饒河街49號), you’d be hard-pressed to find a better snack (or light meal) in this night market than Ala-din’s roti rolls (NT$80): the chapatti is made right before your eyes from dough that’s twirled then heated on a dry tava, and the portions of meat and vegetables come hot off the grill and are not to be scoffed at.
Because of their extensive menu and customizable set meals, Ala-din’s ordering system for sit-down diners might seem somewhat Byzantine — but, to be honest, the only reason the process was complicated was the two waitresses who hovered around our table and recited a list of options several times despite our insistence that we wanted to take our time with the menu. Perhaps the staff is used to dealing with customers who lack basic familiarity with South Asian cuisine, in which case such over-attentive service might be a plus.
In the end, we picked a beef masala set meal (牛肉濃汁瑪沙拉, NT$650) for two, as well as a plate of beef kebab (牛肉巴比Q, NT$260). Another order for channa masala, or chickpeas cooked in curry, was never delivered, but that ended up being a good thing because of the amount of food in the set meal: the beef masala, a bountiful heap of basmati rice, naan, a plate of vegetables, bowls of tomato and vegetable soup, Indian tea and lemon honey juice.
Diners have the options of having their curries prepared slightly spicy, medium spicy or very spicy. Our beef masala was slightly spicy, but still hotter than curries at other popular Indian and Pakistani restaurants in Taipei, while the chunks of beef were reasonably tender. The vegetables, however, which included squash, peas and cabbage, were a tad overcooked and soggy and both drinks were forgettable, but the basmati rice, soup and naan were delicious. The latter, a flatbread baked in a tandoori oven, was particularly good: chewy and dense enough to scoop up plenty of curry with. The extra order of beef kebab outshone the beef masala. It was tender, savory and moist.
Taiwan has next to no political engagement in Myanmar, either with the ruling military junta nor the dozens of armed groups who’ve in the last five years taken over around two-thirds of the nation’s territory in a sprawling, patchwork civil war. But early last month, the leader of one relatively minor Burmese revolutionary faction, General Nerdah Bomya, who is also an alleged war criminal, made a low key visit to Taipei, where he met with a member of President William Lai’s (賴清德) staff, a retired Taiwanese military official and several academics. “I feel like Taiwan is a good example of
March 2 to March 8 Gunfire rang out along the shore of the frontline island of Lieyu (烈嶼) on a foggy afternoon on March 7, 1987. By the time it was over, about 20 unarmed Vietnamese refugees — men, women, elderly and children — were dead. They were hastily buried, followed by decades of silence. Months later, opposition politicians and journalists tried to uncover what had happened, but conflicting accounts only deepened the confusion. One version suggested that government troops had mistakenly killed their own operatives attempting to return home from Vietnam. The military maintained that the
Before the last section of the round-the-island railway was electrified, one old blue train still chugged back and forth between Pingtung County’s Fangliao (枋寮) and Taitung (台東) stations once a day. It was so slow, was so hot (it had no air conditioning) and covered such a short distance, that the low fare still failed to attract many riders. This relic of the past was finally retired when the South Link Line was fully electrified on Dec. 23, 2020. A wave of nostalgia surrounded the termination of the Ordinary Train service, as these train carriages had been in use for decades
Lori Sepich smoked for years and sometimes skipped taking her blood pressure medicine. But she never thought she’d have a heart attack. The possibility “just wasn’t registering with me,” said the 64-year-old from Memphis, Tennessee, who suffered two of them 13 years apart. She’s far from alone. More than 60 million women in the US live with cardiovascular disease, which includes heart disease as well as stroke, heart failure and atrial fibrillation. And despite the myth that heart attacks mostly strike men, women are vulnerable too. Overall in the US, 1 in 5 women dies of cardiovascular disease each year, 37,000 of them
RSS