The shaved ice shop formerly known as Ice Monster (and now known as Yongkang 15) reopened with great fanfare last month — but the dessert landmark already has new competition.
Smoothie King
(思慕昔) recently opened a two-level store just a block away from Yongkang 15 on Yongkang Street. It may lack the hordes of camera-toting tourists, but it offers an air-conditioned alternative and a larger, slightly cheaper menu of icy treats. Items include fruit smoothies (NT$65 for a medium cup, NT$85 for a large cup) and snowflake ices, or creamy frozen milk shaved into paper-thin sheets that melt on the tongue (NT$150). And, of course, there are mounds of shaved ice topped with mango and other fruit (NT$120).
How does Smoothie King’s mango ice compare to the one served by its famous neighbor? The mound of shaved ice is about the same size, but the serving of fruit is smaller than the overflowing toppings at Yongkang 15, where walking away with sticky hands seems designed to be part of the customer experience. The fruit was equally tasty, however, and covered with just enough condensed milk and syrup to keep the ice sweet even after all the toppings were gone. Yongkang 15 is still the best place to take out-of-town visitors after a meal at Din Tai Fung (鼎泰豐), but Smoothie King is good for locals who want to cool off without a crowd.
Address: 9 Yongkang St, Taipei City
(台北市永康街9號). Tel: (02) 2395-8770. On the Net: www.smoothie.com.tw.
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