La Petite Cuisine Brasserie by JQ at the Evergreen Laurel Hotel, 63 Songjiang Road, Taipei City (台北市松江路63) has rolled out a home and corporate catering service.
The brainchild of Justin Quek (郭文秀), a member of
the Confrerie de la Chaine
des Rotisseurs who runs
French restaurants in
Shanghai, Taipei and his native Singapore, La Petite has
garnered rave reviews.
His Just In Bistro & Wine Bar on Zhongxiao East Road offers French comfort food with a few upscale twists.
The new service is available in the Taipei area for parties of six or more. Two weeks to one month advance notice is required, depending on the scale of the event. A range of seasonal set menus, desserts and buffets are available. A typical set lunch menu costs NT$2,000 per person, for a minimum of six guests, and for dinner, it’s NT$2,500 per person. For further information, call (02) 2509-0332.
Starbucks is going local. Well, ever so slightly. Taiwanese teas have debuted on the coffee empire’s menu here.
Oriental Beauty Tea (東方美人茶), an oolong variety unique to Taiwan that relies on green leaf cicadas which suck the plant’s sap before it is picked and fermented to impart the dried product with honey notes, Bi Luo Chun (碧螺春), a naturally sweet green tea, and Fancy Black Tea (蜜香紅茶), are available by the cup (NT$105), or in a packet of a dozen tea bags (NT$280).
Sept.16 to Sept. 22 The “anti-communist train” with then-president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) face plastered on the engine puffed along the “sugar railway” (糖業鐵路) in May 1955, drawing enthusiastic crowds at 103 stops covering nearly 1,200km. An estimated 1.58 million spectators were treated to propaganda films, plays and received free sugar products. By this time, the state-run Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台糖, Taisugar) had managed to connect the previously separate east-west lines established by Japanese-era sugar factories, allowing the anti-communist train to travel easily from Taichung to Pingtung’s Donggang Township (東港). Last Sunday’s feature (Taiwan in Time: The sugar express) covered the inauguration of the
The corruption cases surrounding former Taipei Mayor and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) head Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) are just one item in the endless cycle of noise and fuss obscuring Taiwan’s deep and urgent structural and social problems. Even the case itself, as James Baron observed in an excellent piece at the Diplomat last week, is only one manifestation of the greater problem of deep-rooted corruption in land development. Last week the government announced a program to permit 25,000 foreign university students, primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, to work in Taiwan after graduation for 2-4 years. That number is a
This year’s Michelin Gourmand Bib sported 16 new entries in the 126-strong Taiwan directory. The fight for the best braised pork rice and the crispiest scallion pancake painstakingly continued, but what stood out in the lineup this year? Pang Taqueria (胖塔可利亞); Taiwan’s first Michelin-recommended Mexican restaurant. Chef Charles Chen (陳治宇) is a self-confessed Americophile, earning his chef whites at a fine-dining Latin-American fusion restaurant. But what makes this Xinyi (信義) spot stand head and shoulders above Taipei’s existing Mexican offerings? The authenticity. The produce. The care. AUTHENTIC EATS In my time on the island, I have caved too many times to
In a stark demonstration of how award-winning breakthroughs can come from the most unlikely directions, researchers have won an Ig Nobel prize for discovering that mammals can breathe through their anuses. After a series of tests on mice, rats and pigs, Japanese scientists found the animals absorb oxygen delivered through the rectum, work that underpins a clinical trial to see whether the procedure can treat respiratory failure. The team is among 10 recognized in this year’s Ig Nobel awards (see below for more), the irreverent accolades given for achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.” They are not