For the past decade, Karachi native, Muhammad Ali, has been cooking up a storm with his authentic, flavorsome and at times tongue numbing Pakistani and Indian fare.
Originally located amid the chaos of the bustling Ninghsia Rd., (寧夏路) and its ever-busy night market, but for the last three years Ali has been operating out of the second floor of a commercial building on Nanjing East Road (南京東路).
PHOTO: GAVIN PHIPPS, TAIPEI TIMES
Vegetarian and non-vegetarian dishes such as sizzling spice-infused tandoori chicken (NT$280 to NT$550), nut-loaded and creamy masalas (NT$200 to NT$280), yogurt-based makhanwallas (NT220 to NT$340) and fiery hot vindaloos (NT$290) provide a range of flavors that will be popular with new-comers and hardened curry fanciers.
And of course, what curry restaurant would be complete without the fine breads to accompany the meal. Here too Ali Baba's doesn't disappoint with the choice of reasonably priced breads including butter naan, garlic naan, allo paratha (bread stuffed with potatoes), keema naan (bread stuffed with minced lamb) and plain naan, just to name a few.
If you still have room after the main course, then check out the desserts, which are as authentic as all the other fare. Gulab juman (NT$80), the popular small cake balls made from milk and flour deep-fried and served in a light sugar syrup, and gajar halwa (NT$100), a carrot based dessert made with milk and sugar and best served with ice cream are a great way to complete any meal.
In the coming weeks Ali is set to introduce his new menu. Along with the addition of glossy photos of all the dishes on offer, the ever-jovial restaurateur has added nearly a dozen new creations to the already extensive inventory.
While Ali will be the first to admit that several of the seafood based new additions are far from authentic, he has taken steps to include half-a-dozen or so dishes from his homeland, Pakistan, that are rare finds in Taipei.
These include authentic Karachi dishes such as haleem, mutton cooked with several varieties of beans and rice, and paya, a slightly bony dish made of slowly cooked lambs' feet and spices -- a dish Ali describes as "a meal for men."
For those looking to sample a mixture of South Asian flavors at one sitting, Ali Baba's offers a reasonably priced weekend buffet. Priced at NT$399, the buffet changes every weekend, but always includes a good choice of both vegetarian and non-vegetarian curries, kormas, masalas, do piazas, daals and so on.
Although, for obvious reasons, alcoholic beverages are not served at Ali Baba's, diners wishing to enjoy a drink or two with their meal are free to bring their own without fear of either offending the staff or paying an annoying corkage charge.
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
The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on May 18 held a rally in Taichung to mark the anniversary of President William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20. The title of the rally could be loosely translated to “May 18 recall fraudulent goods” (518退貨ㄌㄨㄚˋ！). Unlike in English, where the terms are the same, “recall” (退貨) in this context refers to product recalls due to damaged, defective or fraudulent merchandise, not the political recalls (罷免) currently dominating the headlines. I attended the rally to determine if the impression was correct that the TPP under party Chairman Huang Kuo-Chang (黃國昌) had little of a
RSS