Not all burgers are born equal. The gamut runs from chef Hubert Keller’s aristocratic FleurBurger 5000 (US$5,000), made with Kobe beef, foie gras and black truffle and served with Chateau Petrus 1990 at Las Vegas’ Fleur de Lys, to McDonald’s plebeian version, prepared with, among other ingredients, high fructose corn syrup and propylene glycol alginate.
So where on the spectrum does
The Burger Stop, a new venture opened three weeks ago by Californian David Liston on Yanji Street (延吉街), fall?
It’s advertised as the true American-style burger.
“I’m making the original burger that became famous in the 1950s, when the car hops started and you could drive up in your car and get a shake and burger,” Liston said. “The burgers they made back then weren’t the giant gourmet burgers you’ll find about town.”
That means patties made from USDA chuck steak ground up every morning, American yellow processed cheese added during the grilling process so it melts into a gooey mess that oozes down the side, crispy European-style bacon (add NT$15), soft buns, slices of beef tomato, which on a recent visit were slightly pulpy but in a salad yesterday were flavorful, crispy iceberg lettuce, pickle, onion and thousand island-type sauce. The patty is a 10 percent fat/90 percent meat mix, which is on the leaner side, said Liston, but juicy enough to leave fingers satisfyingly sticky.
Though several contributors to a local online forum found them too salty, the fries are what you’d expect, but the standout side is Burger Stop’s onion rings (NT$60, or with soda as a combo NT$70), which are coated in a light peppery batter whose flavor kicks in just as the onion’s sweetness begins to dissipate.
The menu, which can be found on Burger Stop’s Web site, is limited, with a small selection of burgers (beef NT$120 to NT$150, chicken NT$120, pork NT$130), shakes made with ice cream and milk (vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, NT$70), soft drinks (Coca-Cola, Sprite, Nestea, NT$40), coffee (NT$35), black tea (NT$35) and beer (Coors Light, Miller Chill and Budweiser, NT$90).
And for patrons unhinged enough not to order a burger, there’s garden salad (NT$90, add grilled chicken for NT$30), a mix of iceberg lettuce, black olives, croutons, grated Parmesan and slices of tomato and cucumber. The latter component came unpeeled, which added an unwelcome bitterness, though this was offset by the creamy savoriness of the Ranch dressing.
With black-and-white tiles that resemble a checkered flag and rosso corsa and white walls, sections of which are covered in corrugated steel, Burger Stop, which takes up two floors and seats about 40, reflects the classic American burger theme in its decor, which riffs on 1950s car racing culture.
“Most Taiwanese people think that an American burger is a McDonald’s burger or a Burger King burger, or it’s this giant, monstrous gourmet burger thing,” Liston said. “This is more of a classic burger.” And a tasty one at that.
First-time customers can receive a free portion of French fries or soda.
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