Wasabi may be a fashionable hangout for Taipei's fashion and entertainment circles, but it also manages to maintain a reasonably comfortable atmosphere and serve good food.
The restaurant was opened a year and two months ago by Chen Chao-wen (
PHOTO: DAVID FRAZIER, TAIPEI TIMES
Since leaving the music industry, Chen has gone into business with Chang on a skate shop in Tienmu, Kream, and tossed around ideas of creating various types of magazines or brands. He sees Wasabi, his first restaurant, as another step in this ever-evolving chain. His goal for the place was to make a sort of stylish lunchroom cafe with an international menu, a never-ending supply of good music and all the latest magazines to read.
That said, he's pretty much done it. The design concept is sort of white box (not unlike that of the cafe, 2.31), but the motif isn't so severe that the space becomes antiseptic or uncomfortable. Ceiling-length glass windows at the front also create the kind of fishbowl effect, but fortunately not to such a ridiculously narcissistic degree as in "be seen" bars like Tickle My Fantasy.
The restaurant is located just south of the park on Yungkang St., an area already dense with some of Taipei's best dining. Wasabi's menu is concise, filling only one tall folding card, but includes a fair variety and tends toward the gourmet.
It is anchored around curries, like the mango curry chicken (NT$280), which like Japanese-style curries is breaded, deep fried and served with rice under a thick yellow-orange curry sauce. Pasta dishes run around NT$300 to NT$350. Topping the menu in terms of price, there is a hodgepodge of hybrid international recipes, including German honey-mustard pigs' feet (NT$420), steak filets, lamb dishes and Thai-style roasted French spring chicken (NT$550). Portions tend to be a little bigger than average, which means they are filling. Also, certain entrees are rotated every two months.
For those wishing to use Wasabi as a cafe -- and many do -- the drink menu lacks little. Coffee drinks and teas are served in glass teacups, and the drink menu offers a few gems like macha milk tea (NT$150), which is made from frothy Japanese green tea.
As Chen is an aficionado of the grape, there is also a small but respectable list of wines and champagnes that run from NT$1200 to NT$2800 a bottle. An eclectic array of beers (the most easily identifiable being the Belgian brew Delerium Tremens) are priced between NT$200 and NT$400.
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