Few restaurants in Taipei last much longer than six months, it seems, so a simple diner that has been in business for 53 years is worth taking a look at.
The Duck and Traditional Goose Restaurant in Hsimenting is as unpretentious as its name and delivers a standard meal with the minimum of fuss to a consistently good level, cheaply. And, if this is the secret of its success, the recipe may be found elsewhere, because the food is nothing special.
PHOTO: JULES QUARTLY, TAIPEI TIMES
The noodle soup (NT$40) is simple: Spring onions, bean sprouts -- and a sprinkling of fried-and-dried onion flakes to give a touch of sweetness -- are submerged in a clear broth with a thin veneer of essential fats and oils. Earthenware bowls have given way to plastic facsimiles which can be quickly cleaned and sent out again. The sliced goose meat (NT$60 for a small plate) is always fresh -- since it doesn't hang around -- and arrives with a garnish of ginger and dollops of red and dark brown sauce. Chopped intestines (
Other goose-and-soup joints' food may be more flavorsome but they vary, often from day to day. The Duck and Traditional Goose Restaurant remains the same. "One and only," is how the current second-generation owner, Chang Jen-ho (
It all began in 1950 as a street stall, run by a Taiwanese family whose business was boosted by the arrival of hungry Kuomintang soldiers. Though the family that started the business no longer runs it, the proud boast is there have been no changes -- which is believable if not entirely true.
There are two stories to the restaurant and the ground floor is what might grandly be termed "open plan," with mainly stainless steel fittings and around 16 formica-topped tables surrounded by those small stools that allow six or more people to share a table.
There are 20 plus tables upstairs and the calculation of 200 people at a sitting, NT$100 per head, 30 minutes turnaround, up to NT$40,000 an hour, 11 hours a day, seven days a week, adds up to serious money at the end of a good year.
So, no wonder that the service doesn't need to come with a smile and publicity, while not turned down, is not invited either. This is a seriously successful diner that is still packing them in after 50 years.
The boss may not be much of a talker, but he is always there watching the sidewalk for signs of business, keeping an eye on the cooks huddled over their vats of soup and chopping up hundreds of thousands of birds.
He is the captain of his ship and The Duck and Traditional Goose Restaurant can be depended on for good value -- sit down or take away -- while he's on board.
By global standards, the traffic congestion that afflicts Taiwan’s urban areas isn’t horrific. But nor is it something the country can be proud of. According to TomTom, a Dutch developer of location and navigation technologies, last year Taiwan was the sixth most congested country in Asia. Of the 492 towns and cities included in its rankings last year, Taipei was the 74th most congested. Taoyuan ranked 105th, while Hsinchu County (121st), Taichung (142nd), Tainan (173rd), New Taipei City (227th), Kaohsiung (241st) and Keelung (302nd) also featured on the list. Four Japanese cities have slower traffic than Taipei. (Seoul, which has some
Michael slides a sequin glove over the pop star’s tarnished legacy, shrouding Michael Jackson’s complications with a conventional biopic that, if you cover your ears, sounds great. Antoine Fuqua’s movie is sanctioned by Jackson’s estate and its producers include the estate’s executors. So it is, by its nature, a narrow, authorized perspective on Jackson. The film ends before the flood of allegations of sexual abuse of children, or Jackson’s own acknowledgment of sleeping alongside kids. Jackson and his estate have long maintained his innocence. In his only criminal trial, in 2005, Jackson was acquitted. Michael doesn’t even subtly nod to these facts.
Writing of the finds at the ancient iron-working site of Shihsanhang (十 三行) in New Taipei City’s Bali District (八里), archaeologist Tsang Cheng-hwa (臧振華) of the Academia Sinica’s Institute of History and Philology observes: “One bronze bowl gilded with gold, together with copper coins and fragments of Tang and Song ceramics, were also found. These provide evidence for early contact between Taiwan aborigines and Chinese.” The Shihsanhang Web site from the Ministry of Culture says of the finds: “They were evidence that the residents of the area had a close trading relation with Chinese civilians, as the coins can be
During her 2015 trip to Taiwan, Sophia J. Chang (張詠慧) got fewer answers than she’d hoped for, but more revelations than she could have imagined. “That was the year I last saw my grandmother. She was in hospice care in Tainan, and it was painful to see her in bed, barely able to open her eyes,” says Los Angeles-born Chang. “The grandma I’d known, a fantastic cook and incredibly kind, was already gone.” After their visit, Chang and her grandfather went back to his apartment. There she asked him how he’d met her grandmother. “He hesitated, then started talking a bit.
RSS