A colleague's judgement after sampling the fare at this country's first "authentic" fish and chip shop was that it wasn't how he remembered the dish. The Brit is a southerner, you see, but in the north of England and Scotland they do things slightly differently. In the south fries are generally thinner and the fish is cooked in vegetable oil. Salt and vinegar are added and sometimes tomato sauce. In the North, the fish and chips tend to be larger and fried in animal fat. The sauce is brown and and the vinegar is a heavy malt.
As the name suggests, The Frying Scotsman provides a genuine sample of Scottish cuisine, from cod fillets fished out of the North Atlantic, to scotch pies and deep fried Mars bars (surprisingly good). And if the only thing missing at the moment is a can of Irn Bru to wash it down, that's coming, along with Tennants lager. In the meantime there is Boddingtons, Guiness, Stella Artois and Taiwan beer. Failing that a cup of English tea is hard to beat.
The managers at Frying Scotsman are from Falkirk in central Scotland and spent NT$2 million buying a state-of-the-art fish-and-chip fryer, the only one in Taiwan. Shipping the 4 tonnes of parts to Taiwan and getting an engineer to put them back together again was extra.
PHOTO CREDIT: JULES QUARTLY, TAIPEI TIMES
They have set up shop in the Xinyi district, in a brightly lit space that has pale yellow and blue walls, with two cherry red lamps and a flat-screen TV at the back. It's plainly not the work of an interior designer, but then no UK fish and chip shop (with the possible exception of Harry Ramsden's) is.
General manager Duncan Inglis is a former cook, paratrooper, oil rig engineer and high speed rail engineer who has settled in Taiwan and started his restaurant for the simple reason there was a gap in the market and he knew he could fill it.
Inglis said that at the opening last week, "A lady said to me, `You have just made living in Taiwan 1,000 times better. Thank you.' I want to provide a taste of Britain. I don't want to change it and make it sweeter for local tastes. I don't know whether you can change it or make it better."
As for our meal, the European cod fillet with chips was good but a bit pricey for NT$390. The cheaper Canadian cod fillet was bland in comparison. The pies received good reviews from friends who had tried them and though a little on the small side represent good value at NT$200.
May 26 to June 1 When the Qing Dynasty first took control over many parts of Taiwan in 1684, it roughly continued the Kingdom of Tungning’s administrative borders (see below), setting up one prefecture and three counties. The actual area of control covered today’s Chiayi, Tainan and Kaohsiung. The administrative center was in Taiwan Prefecture, in today’s Tainan. But as Han settlement expanded and due to rebellions and other international incidents, the administrative units became more complex. By the time Taiwan became a province of the Qing in 1887, there were three prefectures, eleven counties, three subprefectures and one directly-administered prefecture, with
Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) and the New Taipei City Government in May last year agreed to allow the activation of a spent fuel storage facility for the Jinshan Nuclear Power Plant in Shihmen District (石門). The deal ended eleven years of legal wrangling. According to the Taipower announcement, the city government engaged in repeated delays, failing to approve water and soil conservation plans. Taipower said at the time that plans for another dry storage facility for the Guosheng Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Wanli District (萬里) remained stuck in legal limbo. Later that year an agreement was reached
What does the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) in the Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) era stand for? What sets it apart from their allies, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)? With some shifts in tone and emphasis, the KMT’s stances have not changed significantly since the late 2000s and the era of former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九). The Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) current platform formed in the mid-2010s under the guidance of Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), and current President William Lai (賴清德) campaigned on continuity. Though their ideological stances may be a bit stale, they have the advantage of being broadly understood by the voters.
In a high-rise office building in Taipei’s government district, the primary agency for maintaining links to Thailand’s 108 Yunnan villages — which are home to a population of around 200,000 descendants of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) armies stranded in Thailand following the Chinese Civil War — is the Overseas Community Affairs Council (OCAC). Established in China in 1926, the OCAC was born of a mandate to support Chinese education, culture and economic development in far flung Chinese diaspora communities, which, especially in southeast Asia, had underwritten the military insurgencies against the Qing Dynasty that led to the founding of
RSS