Winter is the best season to savor oysters, a staple in refined Western cuisine, and Grand Formosa’s renowned steakhouse — Robin’s Grill, is presenting an oyster feast featuring Belon, Cabanon Special, and Gillardeau oysters from France, which are complemented with two wines from Australia’s Penfolds winery to provide the perfect balance of flavor and taste. Grand Formosa has also crafted a special lunch and dinner oyster feast that includes Canadian oysters (baked with cheese or baked with spinach and cheese). The oyster promotion lasts until Jan. 31.
Tel: (02) 2523-8000 X3930
For those thinking ahead to next month and the upcoming Lunar New Year, major hotels around the country have begun to release the details of their special food hampers for the festive season. Shangri-La’s Far Eastern Plaza Hotel, Taipei is offering a variety of take-out Lunar New Year gifts. An assortment of Lunar New Year cakes costs NT$650. Hampers priced from NT$1,780 contain XO sauce, Chinese sausages, preserved Chinese meat, Chinese tea and chocolate raisins.
Tel: (02) 2378-8888 X5867
The Caesar Park Hotel, Taipei is offering take-out meals, including its Dragon Flies and Tiger Leaps menu, a six-course set menu that serves six to eight people (NT$3,980) and includes a mixed platter, smoked pork ribs, deep-fried pomfret with garlic, steamed fresh shrimp with boxthorn, glutinous rice in lily leaf and taro cake. Tel: (02) 2311-5150.
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
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
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