When it comes to choosing a Chinese restaurant, the common opinion is that the longer the history, the better the quality. Not the case with the relatively young Ji Yuan. Since its inception in 2005, the restaurant has built up a broad clientele ranging from gourmands to local politicians to neighborhood families.
Service is efficient and the well-kept interior is warmly lit and embellished with red lanterns and Chinese brush paintings.
The menu of Jiangzhe cuisine (江浙菜) is extensive, but what makes Ji Yuan special is the unassuming vegetable called shepherd’s purse, or jicai
(薺菜), which is used as the key ingredient in the establishment’s feature dishes and is hardly found anywhere else in the city.
Jicai is commonly used as food in Shanghai and neighboring areas. The plant’s healing qualities have long been touted in China, Japan and Korea.
Grown in cold climates, jicai has a short harvest season during the springtime. To ensure a year-round supply of the vegetable, proprietor Cheng Wan-hua (程萬華) works with local farmers who grow the plant at high altitudes and makes his stock by first boiling the greens before preserving them in a freezer.
Jicai novices can’t go wrong with the restaurant’s Ji Yuan tofu (薺元招牌豆腐, NT$200). The vegetables deliver a distinct grassy tang, while the scallops lend the pot a fresh, oceanic aroma. It’s a simple dish that packs a burst of flavors, one this reviewer wonders if she will ever tire of.
The jicai pork dumplings
(薺菜上肉水餃, NT$100 for 10) are a luscious mix of succulent pork and vegetables. Other popular choices include jicai fried with rice cake (薺肉炒糕, NT$150) and jicai with bamboo shoots (薺菜燴筍, NT$200), a savory must-try for vegetarians.
Baby peas with chicken slices (豆米雞絲, NT$350) are a signature Jiangzhe dish. Using clear chicken broth to add a light, sweet taste, Ji Yuan’s version is almost on par with that of the famed Hsiu Lan
(秀蘭小館) restaurant.
Another signature plate is the san cha yueh (招牌三叉月, NT$350) or braised beef tendon. The protein-rich collagen has a velvety, almost fat-like texture and is paired with a sweet brown sauce condensed from cooking wine, sugar and soy sauce.
One should never start a meal at Ji Yuan without sampling its pen tou dishes (盆頭菜), or appetizers in Jiangzhe cuisine. Highlights include green chili stuffed with meat (青椒鑲肉), osmanthus-flavored duck tongue (桂花鴨舌) and the highly recommended braised crucian carp with scallion (蔥燒鯽魚). The restaurant serves more than a dozen pen tou dishes a day priced between NT$60 to NT$180.
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
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
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