There are perhaps only a handful of beef noodle restaurants in Taipei that are worth driving across town for, and Lao Shan Dong is one of them. The restaurant is buried in an alley behind Hsimenting's Ambassador
Unlike many watered down variations of Shandong cooking across Taipei, Lao Shan Dong has maintained its pedigree. The restaurant was founded 53 years ago by a Mr Kan, who arrived from China with a pregnant wife, spent his last bit of money to buy a few pots and pans, a sack of flour and a street stall. The restaurant is now in the second generation, but the recipes haven't changed.
PHOTO: DAVID FRAZIER, TAIPEI TIMES
The Shandong style of noodle making, when done correctly, produces wide flour noodles with a marvelous texture. The first step is kneading the dough and rolling it out flat and relatively thin. This giant flat square is then rolled into a giant roll, but a thin coat of flour keeps the spiraling doughy rings from sticking together. Then cross-sections about 2cm wide are cut off and unraveled, forming the individual noodles.
Lao Shan Dong's beef and broth are prepared with equal care. The restaurant prefers to use Taiwan beef as it is slaughtered fresh daily, unlike imported beef, and provides a better, fresher flavor. Through more than half a century, the kitchen has also refrained from incorporating any unnatural additives or preservatives into any of the dishes.
Perhaps the most singular bowl of noodles Lao Shan Dong offers is its dry noodles in sauce
June 2 to June 8 Taiwan’s woodcutters believe that if they see even one speck of red in their cooked rice, no matter how small, an accident is going to happen. Peng Chin-tian (彭錦田) swears that this has proven to be true at every stop during his decades-long career in the logging industry. Along with mining, timber harvesting was once considered the most dangerous profession in Taiwan. Not only were mishaps common during all stages of processing, it was difficult to transport the injured to get medical treatment. Many died during the arduous journey. Peng recounts some of his accidents in
“Why does Taiwan identity decline?”a group of researchers lead by University of Nevada political scientist Austin Wang (王宏恩) asked in a recent paper. After all, it is not difficult to explain the rise in Taiwanese identity after the early 1990s. But no model predicted its decline during the 2016-2018 period, they say. After testing various alternative explanations, Wang et al argue that the fall-off in Taiwanese identity during that period is related to voter hedging based on the performance of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Since the DPP is perceived as the guardian of Taiwan identity, when it performs well,
A short walk beneath the dense Amazon canopy, the forest abruptly opens up. Fallen logs are rotting, the trees grow sparser and the temperature rises in places sunlight hits the ground. This is what 24 years of severe drought looks like in the world’s largest rainforest. But this patch of degraded forest, about the size of a soccer field, is a scientific experiment. Launched in 2000 by Brazilian and British scientists, Esecaflor — short for “Forest Drought Study Project” in Portuguese — set out to simulate a future in which the changing climate could deplete the Amazon of rainfall. It is
Artifacts found at archeological sites in France and Spain along the Bay of Biscay shoreline show that humans have been crafting tools from whale bones since more than 20,000 years ago, illustrating anew the resourcefulness of prehistoric people. The tools, primarily hunting implements such as projectile points, were fashioned from the bones of at least five species of large whales, the researchers said. Bones from sperm whales were the most abundant, followed by fin whales, gray whales, right or bowhead whales — two species indistinguishable with the analytical method used in the study — and blue whales. With seafaring capabilities by humans
RSS