The choice of location came easy for Sally Song (宋友齡) when she opened Heritage Bakery & Cafe on Hankou Street (漢口街) in western Taipei last month.
“All of my neighbors asked me, ‘but why here?’” the San Francisco native laughs.
The only eatery on a street selling cameras, the establishment is a modern rustic addition in an area of town that is reminiscent of another era. Surrounding the narrow five-story bakery are vertical signboards advertising Sony, Nikon and Canon — jutting out from drab buildings that evoke a lost charm.
Photo: Dana Ter, Taipei Times
In 1950, Song’s grandfather finished constructing the building that now houses the bakery. The following year, the family moved into the upper three floors, renting out the first two floors to a business selling — what else — cameras. Before moving to Taipei, Song worked at the kitchenware retail company Williams-Sonoma in San Francisco. Opening her own bakery was a way to reconnect with her family’s history.
The interior is furnished with antique trunks, cabinets and suitcases — all of which belonged to Song’s grandparents. Old floor fans are painted over in gray paint, while the original red brick walls are left exposed. Tiny potted plants sit on the window sill, which offers diners a cozy area to peer out at life on the streets. On the morning I visit, there’s a lady giving an old woman a haircut on a makeshift stool on the sidewalk. I can’t help but smile — this is not something I would see in my buzzing neighborhood of Xinyi.
Song’s greatest pride is the “antique wall” — an assemblage of old drawers, picture frames and window grilles refurbished and glossed over with white paint. They were all “odds and ends,” she says, things she had “no idea what to do with.”
Photo: Dana Ter, Taipei Times
Though it was Song’s intention to create an ambiance that fuses both old and new Taipei, she was adamant about one thing when it came to the actual pastries: they were to be American-style desserts.
“It’s kind of hard to explain to people here what American pastries are,” Song tells me.
While Taipei has quite a few French and Japanese bakeries — and an absurd number of cafes selling over-the-top sweet desserts, a good portion of which are also furnished in faux European decor — the American pastries which Song missed and yearned for are few and far between. She insisted on not adding a lot of a sugar to cater to local palates. The menu is scattered with savory options and even the sweeter-sounding choices rely on the natural sweetness of the ingredients.
Photo: Dana Ter, Taipei Times
Take, for example, the pineapple pie (NT$180). Inside is a generous amount of sliced pineapple (all sourced from Taiwan), which gives the pie a natural sweetness. This is complemented with a warm, crusty pastry shell. The dried pineapple on top is a nice touch as it gives you something to nibble on in between spoonfuls of pie.
For an American classic, try the cream cheese brownie (NT$80). The flavor is reminiscent of dark chocolate — complex, enticing, a little bitter, though this is offset by small dollops of cream cheese.
I recommend the bacon and mushroom potato pie (NT$180) for a savory treat. It’s evocative of chowder: creamy, frothy and runny. The bits of sauteed mushrooms and crispy bacon add a delightful touch to the potato base, complementing the crisp, slightly charred crust.
Photo: Dana Ter, Taipei Times
Another savory favorite is the blueberry cheese tart (NT$180). I’m not a big fan of tarts, finding them thick and filling, but this is creamy, runny and pleasant, and the cheese isn’t overpowering. The shell being soft and crumbly certainly helps, though the stand-out ingredient here is the homemade blueberry jam, which adds a tinge of sophisticated sweetness. I appreciated the topping of blueberries as well. It’s the little details that count.
Before I leave I notice tiny gemstones tucked in between cracks in the brick wall. In a sweet-toothed city that’s home to way too many faux European-themed cafes, Heritage Bakery is a gem, one that makes patrons feel truly at home.
Photo: Dana Ter, Taipei Times
On April 26, The Lancet published a letter from two doctors at Taichung-based China Medical University Hospital (CMUH) warning that “Taiwan’s Health Care System is on the Brink of Collapse.” The authors said that “Years of policy inaction and mismanagement of resources have led to the National Health Insurance system operating under unsustainable conditions.” The pushback was immediate. Errors in the paper were quickly identified and publicized, to discredit the authors (the hospital apologized). CNA reported that CMUH said the letter described Taiwan in 2021 as having 62 nurses per 10,000 people, when the correct number was 78 nurses per 10,000
As we live longer, our risk of cognitive impairment is increasing. How can we delay the onset of symptoms? Do we have to give up every indulgence or can small changes make a difference? We asked neurologists for tips on how to keep our brains healthy for life. TAKE CARE OF YOUR HEALTH “All of the sensible things that apply to bodily health apply to brain health,” says Suzanne O’Sullivan, a consultant in neurology at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London, and the author of The Age of Diagnosis. “When you’re 20, you can get away with absolute
May 5 to May 11 What started out as friction between Taiwanese students at Taichung First High School and a Japanese head cook escalated dramatically over the first two weeks of May 1927. It began on April 30 when the cook’s wife knew that lotus starch used in that night’s dinner had rat feces in it, but failed to inform staff until the meal was already prepared. The students believed that her silence was intentional, and filed a complaint. The school’s Japanese administrators sided with the cook’s family, dismissing the students as troublemakers and clamping down on their freedoms — with
As Donald Trump’s executive order in March led to the shuttering of Voice of America (VOA) — the global broadcaster whose roots date back to the fight against Nazi propaganda — he quickly attracted support from figures not used to aligning themselves with any US administration. Trump had ordered the US Agency for Global Media, the federal agency that funds VOA and other groups promoting independent journalism overseas, to be “eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.” The decision suddenly halted programming in 49 languages to more than 425 million people. In Moscow, Margarita Simonyan, the hardline editor-in-chief of the
RSS