When I stepped into DS Music Restaurant, I found it to be an extremely well-put-together, professional establishment with good food and a pleasant atmosphere that is night-lifey but not overwhelming. This disturbed me.
The reader is invited to consider the nurse fetish. It is an institution that lies at the heart of DS. And so I entered DS prepared to immerse myself in sleaze and then write ironically about it. What I found, though, was a disquietingly congruous marriage of unabashed hedonism and well-funded good taste.
Overall, DS looks like many other posh restaurant-and-bars, with lots of spot lighting, funny-shaped chairs, and clear alcohol bottles lit from underneath. Except that many of the tables look like sleek hospital beds, there are a few wheelchairs and crutches sitting around, backlit X-rays decorate some walls, and above each table hangs a big "IV drip," which functions like a small keg. And then, of course, there are nurses everywhere you look.
PHOTO COURTESY OF DS MUSIC RESTAURANT
The hospital theme is pervasive, but somehow subtle, or at least natural. I never thought I would say this, but it turns out that a wheelchair does not look out of place next to a wall of Smirnoff Ice bottles. There is something appealing about the audacity of taking a concept as (someone has to say it) flagrantly trashy as this and making something so cool out of it. To top it off, the food is good.
The menu consists of lightly Westernized Chinese, Japanese and Thai, with an inexplicable but not unwelcome Polynesian flare running through the presentation. The sashimi, for example, is served on a mountain of ice covered with leaves and flowers. The "Fire Pheonix Beer (sic)" (火鳳牛柳) is a successful beef-and-pineapple stir-fry served inside a hollowed-out half pineapple.
As is probably apparent in that last sentence, the English on the menu is more color commentary than viable translation. Some items -- like the pretty-good XO sauce stir-fry prawn ball (served on a bed of water convulvus) -- are more or less what they sound like, but the menu really isn't navigable without some knowledge of Chinese. Nor are the waitresses hired for their English.
It should be said that, DS, despite its thematically seamy underbelly, is family safe (the one exception is the Saturday night "showgirl" performance). The nurses outfits are not tailored to be especially kinky, and as far as I can tell the curtained-off "intensive care unit" is nothing more than a place where large groups can sit together.
In the March 9 edition of the Taipei Times a piece by Ninon Godefroy ran with the headine “The quiet, gentle rhythm of Taiwan.” It started with the line “Taiwan is a small, humble place. There is no Eiffel Tower, no pyramids — no singular attraction that draws the world’s attention.” I laughed out loud at that. This was out of no disrespect for the author or the piece, which made some interesting analogies and good points about how both Din Tai Fung’s and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) meticulous attention to detail and quality are not quite up to
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) hatched a bold plan to charge forward and seize the initiative when he held a protest in front of the Taipei City Prosecutors’ Office. Though risky, because illegal, its success would help tackle at least six problems facing both himself and the KMT. What he did not see coming was Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (將萬安) tripping him up out of the gate. In spite of Chu being the most consequential and successful KMT chairman since the early 2010s — arguably saving the party from financial ruin and restoring its electoral viability —
April 28 to May 4 During the Japanese colonial era, a city’s “first” high school typically served Japanese students, while Taiwanese attended the “second” high school. Only in Taichung was this reversed. That’s because when Taichung First High School opened its doors on May 1, 1915 to serve Taiwanese students who were previously barred from secondary education, it was the only high school in town. Former principal Hideo Azukisawa threatened to quit when the government in 1922 attempted to transfer the “first” designation to a new local high school for Japanese students, leading to this unusual situation. Prior to the Taichung First
The Ministry of Education last month proposed a nationwide ban on mobile devices in schools, aiming to curb concerns over student phone addiction. Under the revised regulation, which will take effect in August, teachers and schools will be required to collect mobile devices — including phones, laptops and wearables devices — for safekeeping during school hours, unless they are being used for educational purposes. For Chang Fong-ching (張鳳琴), the ban will have a positive impact. “It’s a good move,” says the professor in the department of