Fusing Township, located in the hills bordering Taipei County and Taoyuan County, is famous for its scenic beauty. The Swiss Village Garden restaurant, located just off the Northern Cross-Island Highway (北部橫貫公路), does its best to capitalize on this fact. Perhaps it’s the cool mountain air and wide vistas that suggest a Swiss alpine environment, but this tenuous link is about as close to Switzerland as this restaurant gets.
The food is best described as scenic restaurant international, with “international” connoting the negative quality of being nowhere in particular. A main course, mostly Western in inspiration, is coupled with a salad with a Japanese style dressing and served with a Chinese hot pot of mixed cooked vegetables, which also provides the base for a soup. There is an undercurrent of health-conscious cuisine running through the menu, highlighted by organic coffee, purple rice and herb-infused dishes inspired by the restaurant’s own garden.
There was nothing intrinsically wrong with this hodgepodge of concepts other than the set menus failing to come together as a meal. They had the impression of being seemingly put together with whatever was on hand.
I selected the plebeian Thai-style spicy chicken (NT$390, 椒麻雞). Neither grilled nor pan-fried, this spicy chicken had been deep-fried in batter and resembled a NT$45 chicken cutlet found at most night markets.
The hot pot of mixed vegetables provided a splash of color, but the contents seemed to have been selected at random. An intriguing addition was the rice cake, which added a gooey, cohesive quality to the veg and a certain thickness to the soup.
Even the grilled mountain trout (NT$460, 大蒜鹽烤活鱒魚) failed to escape the suspicion of being tarted up fast food. Various surf and turf dishes, such as the salmon, sirloin and shrimp combo (NT$550), provided bulk and hinted at gastronomic luxury, while two children’s menus — deep-fried chicken and cheese and a fried fish cutlet (NT$290) — catered to an important segment of the weekend crowd.
Perhaps Swiss Village Garden’s most alluring facet is its delightful garden. Despite the fine winter weather when I visited, the staff tried their utmost to dissuade me from making use of the spacious outdoor dinning area, extolling the virtues of the better facilities available in the air-conditioned interior. Once established outside, staff brought the food out with good grace; but service, like the food, went little further than simply busing the dishes to the table and leaving customers to their own devices.
A shop out front sells homemade cakes, fruit vinegars and boutique hygiene products, underlining the back-to-nature theme at Swiss Village Garden. The extensive drinks menu also offers a wide range of high-end herbal teas (starting at NT$180).
As with many such establishments, the location accounts for 80 percent of the restaurant’s appeal. To sit in the garden for an hour or two, read, chat or gaze into the middle distance, makes a visit to Swiss Village Garden worthwhile.
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