As the "2006 Taiwan Lantern Festival" swings into full force in the Anping District (安平區) of Tainan City this weekend, a nearby fairytale-castle restaurant Wu Jiao Chuan Ban -- "Five-Dime Ship Driftwood" -- is worth a visit, if only to get away from the crowds. It is a two-story building that is almost completely hidden behind tall banyan and other trees.
The restaurant can accommodate up to 400 guests. It is located in front of the famous Eternal Golden Castle (億載金城), another hot tourist spot. The decor includes driftwood, high ceilings, roomy dining spaces, huge glass windows by the wall, large wooden dining tables and lots of green plants. The airy and relaxing setting gives diners the feeling of feasting in a forest.
Hsieh Li-siang (謝麗香), the artist-turned restaurant owner, who is in her early 40s, insists on serving Taiwanese and Chinese gourmet dishes to her patrons. She hires chefs from 5-star hotels to design and prepare new dishes and changes her restaurant menus every week.
PHOTO COURTESY OF WU JIAO CHUAN BAN
Hsieh's other two eateries do not appear to be like chain stores. Each one of them is built with distinctive features. They are located in Hsinying (新營), Tainan County and at Wenxin Road (文心路), Taichung City. A fourth restaurant in Neihu District (內湖區), Taipei, is scheduled to open by the end of next month.
The spacious eating tables and long business hours suits people who enjoy long afternoon tea times or late dinners. For this weekend, two signature dishes from the master chef are highly recommended. Five-dime green tea with shrimp (伍角綠茶蝦) is a sauteed dish made with high-quality Da-Mao-Feng green tea (大茅峰綠茶). The Thai-style fried taco steak (泰式花枝排) is crunchy and goes well with the homemade Thai sauce.
The restaurant serves numerous kinds of beverages, including coffee, tea, cocktails and different red wines. The house blend of Taiwan Coffee tastes superb. One popular sticky-rice-like dessert, called xian naini (鮮奶泥), or fresh mild mud, is made from fresh milk and dipped with peanut powder. The dessert usually comes with the meal.
One of the amazing things about Hsieh is that she insists on building her restaurants based on artistic instinct. She takes pride in claiming each restaurant is "a house built by a woman."
She taught herself to apply different media for various art creations and is not shy about showing off her works, such as nude female statues, inside her restaurants. Since this is going to be a busy lantern festival weekend, reservations are a wise idea.
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