A relatively new addition to the neighborhood that surrounds Yongkang Street (永康街) in Taipei, Caffe Libero (咖啡小自由) has become one of the hottest hangout spots in the capital, and for good reason. Renovated from a 40-year-old mansion, the establishment attempts to revive the building’s past glory by keeping its original Taiwan zelkova flooring, marble walls and engraved wood door and spicing up the space with vintage furnishing and embellishments.
The 50-ping (one ping equals 3.3m2) Caffe Libero is divided into three sections. Visitors will first be greeted by a cafe that offers a solid selection of brews made from an old manual, lever-operated espresso machine. House specialties include hot coffee with whisky (NT$250), iced coffee with Prucia plum liqueur (NT$250) and espresso corretto (NT$230).
The lounge in the back serves a variety of whiskeys from Japan and Scotland priced between NT$280 and NT$1,200 per glass. Located between the cafe and whiskey lounge, Le Petit Patissier (chefleslie.pixnet.net/blog) is a bakery within Caffe Libero that boasts a pleasing selection of pastries and sweets.
Caffe Libero is located at 1, Ln 243, Jinhua St, Taipei City (台北市金華街243巷1號). Tel: (02) 2356-7129. Shop opens Monday to Saturday from noon to midnight and Sunday from noon to 6pm.
Taiwan has next to no political engagement in Myanmar, either with the ruling military junta nor the dozens of armed groups who’ve in the last five years taken over around two-thirds of the nation’s territory in a sprawling, patchwork civil war. But early last month, the leader of one relatively minor Burmese revolutionary faction, General Nerdah Bomya, who is also an alleged war criminal, made a low key visit to Taipei, where he met with a member of President William Lai’s (賴清德) staff, a retired Taiwanese military official and several academics. “I feel like Taiwan is a good example of
March 2 to March 8 Gunfire rang out along the shore of the frontline island of Lieyu (烈嶼) on a foggy afternoon on March 7, 1987. By the time it was over, about 20 unarmed Vietnamese refugees — men, women, elderly and children — were dead. They were hastily buried, followed by decades of silence. Months later, opposition politicians and journalists tried to uncover what had happened, but conflicting accounts only deepened the confusion. One version suggested that government troops had mistakenly killed their own operatives attempting to return home from Vietnam. The military maintained that the
“M yeolgong jajangmyeon (anti-communism zhajiangmian, 滅共炸醬麵), let’s all shout together — myeolgong!” a chef at a Chinese restaurant in Dongtan, located about 35km south of Seoul, South Korea, calls out before serving a bowl of Korean-style zhajiangmian —black bean noodles. Diners repeat the phrase before tucking in. This political-themed restaurant, named Myeolgong Banjeom (滅共飯館, “anti-communism restaurant”), is operated by a single person and does not take reservations; therefore long queues form regularly outside, and most customers appear sympathetic to its political theme. Photos of conservative public figures hang on the walls, alongside political slogans and poems written in Chinese characters; South
Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) announced last week a city policy to get businesses to reduce working hours to seven hours per day for employees with children 12 and under at home. The city promised to subsidize 80 percent of the employees’ wage loss. Taipei can do this, since the Celestial Dragon Kingdom (天龍國), as it is sardonically known to the denizens of Taiwan’s less fortunate regions, has an outsize grip on the government budget. Like most subsidies, this will likely have little effect on Taiwan’s catastrophic birth rates, though it may be a relief to the shrinking number of
RSS