Cats are known to be finicky, so when I spotted one rubbing against the door of Joyce Cafe and purring to get in, I figured there must be something good inside.
Turns out the cat was a connoisseur. The water at Joyce's costs NT$30 and the fresh bread that's brought to your table will cost that much again. Add an extra 10 percent service charge and 5 percent VAT and you've spent nearly NT$70 without even ordering.
Happily, at Joyce Cafe the emphasis in fine dining is on the dining. The fine stuff is left in the background where it belongs. This is something many local restaurants serving Western cuisine don't seem to understand. A month ago, this column reviewed a fine dining establishment that also traded in motorcycles and lingerie. "We have LV upstairs," the owner told me by way of establishing his credentials. At Joyce, if you don't like the food, there's no browsing to do. Not to worry, you're sure to like the food.
PHOTO: DAVID MOMPHARD, TAIPEI TIMES
The first of two set menus for this month (NT$1,380) offers sauteed fresh mushrooms and escargot in a puff pasty and seafood chowder to start, followed by either pan-fried fillet of catfish served with dill sauce, oven-roasted boneless chicken served with green pepper sauce, or braised veal knuckle with fresh rosemary and lemon grass in a white wine sauce. Dessert is an orange and strawberry flavored pancake and coffee or tea. The pricier set meal (NT$1,680) begins with a romaine salad topped with goose liver and giant scallops in black truffle sauce and a roasted leeks and crab meat veloute.
Diners are then confronted with difficult task of choosing between a pan-fried tiger king prawn wrapped in a fillet of sole and covered with lobster sauce, roasted herb-crust veal served with porcinni mushrooms or grilled lamb chops topped with bleu cheese in a red wine and shallot sauce. Hot chocolate cake a la mode and a cup of coffee or tea will send you waddling contentedly home.
Diners wanting a delicious and filling meal for less should try any of the pastas, priced around NT$380. Lunch diners should look at the salads, especially the chicken-breast Caesar, priced round NT$400. Be sure to save a piece of chicken for the cat huckstering everyone into the restaurant -- as he's worked hard for it.
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