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.
That US assistance was a model for Taiwan’s spectacular development success was early recognized by policymakers and analysts. In a report to the US Congress for the fiscal year 1962, former President John F. Kennedy noted Taiwan’s “rapid economic growth,” was “producing a substantial net gain in living.” Kennedy had a stake in Taiwan’s achievements and the US’ official development assistance (ODA) in general: In September 1961, his entreaty to make the 1960s a “decade of development,” and an accompanying proposal for dedicated legislation to this end, had been formalized by congressional passage of the Foreign Assistance Act. Two
March 31 to April 6 On May 13, 1950, National Taiwan University Hospital otolaryngologist Su You-peng (蘇友鵬) was summoned to the director’s office. He thought someone had complained about him practicing the violin at night, but when he entered the room, he knew something was terribly wrong. He saw several burly men who appeared to be government secret agents, and three other resident doctors: internist Hsu Chiang (許強), dermatologist Hu Pao-chen (胡寶珍) and ophthalmologist Hu Hsin-lin (胡鑫麟). They were handcuffed, herded onto two jeeps and taken to the Secrecy Bureau (保密局) for questioning. Su was still in his doctor’s robes at
Last week the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said that the budget cuts voted for by the China-aligned parties in the legislature, are intended to force the DPP to hike electricity rates. The public would then blame it for the rate hike. It’s fairly clear that the first part of that is correct. Slashing the budget of state-run Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) is a move intended to cause discontent with the DPP when electricity rates go up. Taipower’s debt, NT$422.9 billion (US$12.78 billion), is one of the numerous permanent crises created by the nation’s construction-industrial state and the developmentalist mentality it
Experts say that the devastating earthquake in Myanmar on Friday was likely the strongest to hit the country in decades, with disaster modeling suggesting thousands could be dead. Automatic assessments from the US Geological Survey (USGS) said the shallow 7.7-magnitude quake northwest of the central Myanmar city of Sagaing triggered a red alert for shaking-related fatalities and economic losses. “High casualties and extensive damage are probable and the disaster is likely widespread,” it said, locating the epicentre near the central Myanmar city of Mandalay, home to more than a million people. Myanmar’s ruling junta said on Saturday morning that the number killed had
RSS