A half-rind of legendary Raclette cheese sits on a table In Hanabatake Ranch, the latest Japanese import to Taiwan launched in June at ATT4Fun. When someone orders a dish that contains the Hokkaido-based ranch’s signature product, a server turns on the metallic heat lamp and slices off generous globs directly onto the plate as the gooey goodness melts.
Run by Japanese TV host and celebrity Tanaka Yoshitake, the ranch’s Raclette was named Japan’s best cheese in 2011 at the All Japan Natural Cheese Contest. The variety has its origins in Switzerland and is used mostly as a melting cheese. The way it is served at the restaurant harkens back to the old days where Swiss cow herders would place the cheese next to the campfire and scrape off the softened parts to spread on bread or potatoes.
It’s a pleasant atmosphere with a polite and helpful staff, modern and colorful with a touch of Japanese cuteness (fairytale-like houses and animal decorations). The storefront sells a variety of snacks from the ranch, including milk chocolate potato chips and strawberry candy.
Photo: Han Cheung, Taipei Times
The menu is typical Japanese-style Western food, with burgers, pastas, pizzas, steak and the like. The “must-order” item here is the triple cheese pasta (NT$260), which is plain spaghetti in a Camembert and Gouda cheese sauce topped with the Raclette — and nothing else. Don’t spend too much time taking pictures of your food here — the cheese hardens quickly.
For starters, we ordered the Raclette warm salad (NT$280), which consisted of sliced carrots, potatoes, asparagus, broccoli and corn, drizzled with cream sauce and topped with thick, melted slices of Raclette. It’s probably a fancier variation of what the Swiss cow herders ate around the campfire.
The cheese has a strong creamy aroma that can be sensed from several feet away. It melts at a similar consistency with Provolone, but the taste falls on the sharper and saltier side, flavorful but not too pungent. It’s a balanced product that is enjoyable, but not especially memorable. It complements the sweeter and milder sauce well.
Photo: Han Cheung, Taipei Times
The vegetables were simply boiled without flavor, and were a bit too soggy, the water mixing with the cheese when taking a bite. Maybe roasting them would have been a better idea.
Each main dish comes with a set meal at an additional charge. The basic set (NT$120) consists of bread, soup and a drink. The deluxe set (NT$180) is the same as the basic set plus a dessert under NT$120. As the vegetable soup and bread did not stand out, one may be better off ordering the desserts a la carte — as the ranch is also famous for its sweets.
The triple cheese pasta also filled the air with a rich, mouth-watering aroma upon arrival. The noodles are first cooked in the Camembert, then the Gouda is added. The sauce is rich and fondue-like with a bit of Japanese dairy product-style sweetness that balances out the sharper Raclette, which gradually melts into a soft stringiness that works well with the thinner sauce. The lack of toppings makes the dish a bit monotonous, though, and perhaps they could offer the customer some options (for the last few bites I took my friend’s diced bell peppers).
Photo: Han Cheung, Taipei Times
If you are sharing food, for the third dish you probably should order something that’s not creamy and without the cheese, as all the dairy is getting too much at this point. A burger (between NT$260 and NT$320) or Hokkaido pork rice bowl (NT$180) would be a good choice.
However, with our minds full of cheese when we walked in, we ordered the cream risotto (NT$240) instead, which came with okra and diced bell peppers. The sauce is milder than the previous pasta, but still flavorful, although the rice was slightly undercooked. The okra’s sliminess meshes surprisingly well with the rice and crunchy peppers, and the meat is tender but flavorless.
After all the richness, the Hokkaido egg tart (NT$120 a la carte) was pleasantly not too sweet, and its consistency right between fluffy and chewy. Paired with a crisp and flaky crust, it made a fitting ending to the meal. The plate comes with caramel sauce if you prefer it sweeter.
Photo: Han Cheung, Taipei Times
Like the cheese, the experience as a whole was maybe too well-balanced — enjoyable, but somehow just not very memorable.
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
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
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
A fossil jawbone found by a British girl and her father on a beach in Somerset, England belongs to a gigantic marine reptile dating to 202 million years ago that appears to have been among the largest animals ever on Earth. Researchers said on Wednesday the bone, called a surangular, was from a type of ocean-going reptile called an ichthyosaur. Based on its dimensions compared to the same bone in closely related ichthyosaurs, the researchers estimated that the Triassic Period creature, which they named Ichthyotitan severnensis, was between 22-26 meters long. That would make it perhaps the largest-known marine reptile and would