Two Agnes B. cafes opened in Taipei last week, one in Eslite’s (誠品) Xinyi District (信義) shopping center and the other in Breeze Center (微風廣場) in the East District (東區).
As a clothing label, Agnes B. is known for chic, slim clothing designs for men and women. Its cafes, however, seem designed to fatten you up with pastries, chocolates, quiches, creamy lattes and sandwiches filled with cheese (for calorie watchers, boxes of salad and bottles of Perrier are available). Many of the delicate, miniature patisseries are embellished with a tiny chocolate disk that has the Agnes B. logo printed on it, in case you forget where you are eating. Prices are surprisingly reasonable, however, ranging from NT$90 for a quiche to NT$120 for a sandwich or pastry. At NT$75 for a small piece, the chocolates are the priciest items.
The rampant use of logos and the fact that the Breeze Center cafe is located right next to an Agnes B. clothing store might make dessert lovers wonder if this is a case of style over substance. But the patisseries (NT$100 each) are actually quite good. The Charlene is a chocolate-covered dome filled with chestnut mousse between flaky layers of light and crunchy feuilletine. Cream liquor gives a grown-up touch to the fluffy chocolate sponge cake in the Danielle. The quiches and sandwiches, while not mind-blowing, offer the lunch crowd a satisfying alternative to food court fare.
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