Hollywood Underground, at the Far Eastern Plaza Hotel, fits into the mold of Western pop culture theme restaurants pioneered by Planet Hollywood and Hard Rock Cafe, but runs circles around these two with the quality of its food.
One enters the restaurant through a corridor lined with portraits and posters of Hollywood stars like the one of Dustin Hoffman in drag in Tootsie or Wings performing in Europe. A touch of Asia is thrown in with the addition of Ang Lee (
Popular items include smoked chicken quesadillas in charred flour tortillas (
PHOTO: CHANG JU-PING, TAIPEI TIMES
Resident manager of the hotel Michael Hendler (
For those who prefer their beef grilled and cut with a knife, the rib eye steak topped with a herb and walnut crust is a supreme choice at the affordable price of NT$320. The topping renders a more fragrant and delicate taste than the usual mushroom sauce. This and other grilled beef courses come with rice and an assortment of vegetables.
Beside a la carte, there is also an express lunch that changes weekly and a buffet filled with appetizers, salads, soups and desserts. For a lighter pasta meal try the buffet on the B2 level. For NT$350 at lunch or NT$450 at dinner, the buffet offers a variety of cold and hot dishes.
Restaurant manger Allen Chen (陳其昌) reminds diners that the restaurant also has a fully stocked bar for those in need of a happy hour drink starting at 5:30pm. Moviegoers to the nearby Meihua Cinema can also exchange their movie tickets for a specialty cocktail.
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
“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
Institutions signalling a fresh beginning and new spirit often adopt new slogans, symbols and marketing materials, and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is no exception. Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文), soon after taking office as KMT chair, released a new slogan that plays on the party’s acronym: “Kind Mindfulness Team.” The party recently released a graphic prominently featuring the red, white and blue of the flag with a Chinese slogan “establishing peace, blessings and fortune marching forth” (締造和平,幸福前行). One part of the graphic also features two hands in blue and white grasping olive branches in a stylized shape of Taiwan. Bonus points for
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