In the movie Troy, Odysseus hatches a dastardly plan to breach the besieged city's defenses. The Greeks build a wooden horse within which Achilles and a batch of soldiers hide, and the unsuspecting people of Troy take the horse into the city with dire consequences.
The plot works, Troy falls, and the movie suggests that this was the birth of the Greek nation.
Troy is now in Turkey.
PHOTO: STEVE PRICE, TAIPEI TIMES
Marketing savvy Timucin Ozcan named his new restaurant Truva, the Turkish word for Troy, and uses the Trojan horse as its logo. "I wanted to open a restaurant that reflects the true nature of the Turkish people," he said.
Truva has been open three months and has attracted a lot of local publicity. Ozcan brought in two Turkish chefs and designed the menu to reflect different types of cuisine from his native country.
A new homestyle cooking section will be added to the menu this month to supplement the current selection of Turkish food.
The decor is stylish, with atmospheric lighting, dark wooden tables and chairs. Throughout the restaurant there are references to Turkey such as a traditional dress hung in a glass case above the staircase, the national flag attached to the ceiling and an Ottoman-style rug hung on the wall.
Appetizers include spicy vegetable salad, tarator (which is yoghurt curd topped with garlic and walnuts) and egg plant salad. The main course options are dominated by kebabs and pita bread pizza.
The most famous kebab, or perhaps the most infamous, is the doner kebab. In many European cities it is associated with greasy sidewalk stalls serving up slivers of stringy meat on a thin, hard pita bread.
Truva, however, presents the doner kebab in a more traditional way. The beef that is used to form the large rotating tower of meat is marinated for one day in yoghurt and herbs, including mint. Slices are carved off and served on a soft herby pita bread. The dish is accompanied with homemade sour yoghurt. The slices of beef although cooked through are surprisingly tender, and a dollop of yoghurt augments the dish into a mouthwatering treat.
Dessert includes Turkish ice cream made using orchid root: the resulting texture is thick and creamy.
Truva has a wide selection of wines and and serves Raki, a Turkish liquor that packs a punch and has an intense licorice flavor.
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
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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
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