Having dined unannounced at L'escargots, I could believe it when a waitress told me that ingredients for the NT$480 business lunch would cost the restaurant as much as NT$300. Now open for about two years, the restaurant defies the norms of Taipei gourmet dining by offering unreasonably reasonable prices for unreasonably delicious food. Currently the most expensive dinner set, lobster thermidor, costs only NT$780. At the other end of the menu, the range begins with stuffed pike in white wine sauce for NT$530. Anything you eat will be marvelous, and if that were not enough, the waitstaff provides knowledgeable and impeccable service, the tables are far enough apart, and the atmosphere is friendly and local -- a happy alternative to the aloof, five-star environments that usually signify Taipei gourmet. All told, there's so much right with this restaurant, it's hard to note any flaws.
L'escargots' head chef, Yeh Yeong-ming (
To keep the menu fresh and in season, Yeh brings in almost completely new menus once every three to four months. The business lunch set, meanwhile, changes weekly.
PHOTO: DAVID FRAZIER, TAIPEI TIMES
Six-course dinner sets include a choice of five appetizers, soup, salad, main course, dessert and coffee or tea. The pacing and proportions of the various courses are so perfect it's almost magical. Needless to say, he's trained his staff quite well -- to the point, in fact, that they will probably know better than you which wines from the cellar will go with your meal. It's a welcome change from more standard and stand-offish fine dining, where black-tied waiters snatch plates the moment the fork has been implanted into a dish's final morsel -- in effect rushing you out of the restaurant. At L'escargots, courses ebb and flow naturally, as if the wait staff could read your mind, or at least your appetite.
One of the only dishes that never changes is the restaurant's namesake, escargots bourguignon, a truly delicious dish that no one should pass up. Yeh makes it by first sauteing the shelled snails in garlic and spices, then simmering them in beef broth for at least two hours, making them tender and fully impregnated with the broth. Afterwards they are baked underneath a batter of butter, egg and garlic, which seals in their extraordinary flavor. Yeh says that the recipe is French, but has been adjusted to tone down some of the stronger flavors. I would say it's its own unique brand of perfection.
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