A Kaohsiung restaurant famous for its garish bathroom decor has opened a branch in Shilin.
Marton -- the name sounds like "toilet" in Mandarin -- serves up pasta, rice curries and ice cream in miniature loos, bathtubs and Japanese-style squat toilets. Customers sit on real commodes decorated with fanciful ocean themes and are encouraged to stir up their meals so they look like, well ...
"It's delicious," giggled Violet, 15, as she and three classmates dug into a pile of brown mush they swore was ice cream. "It's special and funny," friend Ivy added.
PHOTO COURTESY OF MARTON
If a recent visit was any indication, the gimmick works. A score of happy teenagers and office workers slurped hot pot from purple toilets and picked at appetizers in plastic turd-shaped swirls. The tables -- real porcelain sinks with glass covers -- each contained piles of notes penned by satisfied customers, many of the scatological variety. "Our turds are really thick," read one.
Marton is all about the atmosphere. Set meals consisting of soup, a main course and ice cream offer plenty of potential for play. Served in a light blue bathtub, a main course of seafood casserole nearly floated in its soggy, gray stew. All the better to stir up, but not very filling. Clever presentation aside, little distinguished this dish from similar fare that can be obtained at cheaper prices from Taipei's legion of coffee shops. The melted cheese tasted artificial and the portion was on the small side. There were, however, two mussels buried along with their shells in the muck.
The ice cream, a small vanilla and chocolate swirl resembling a cartoon turd, came in a tiny squat toilet and tasted like the convenience store variety. This was disappointing, since Marton's founder tested the bathroom concept with a roadside ice cream stand before opening his first full-blown restaurant in Kaohsiung. Perhaps these were bad choices. Branch manager Jessica Huang recommended the current favorite, creamy hot pot (日式濃牛奶鍋). The Marton No. 2 ice cream (馬桶2號) also looked intriguing. It features a scoop of strawberry ice cream, a chocolate-vanilla ice cream swirl and passion fruit sauce.
Those planning on becoming repeat customers should pick up a card and get it stamped after each meal. Five stamps earn a free ice cream sundae. Thirty are good for a commode like the one customers sit on. These can also be purchased directly, as can whimsical turds and other sculptures. Customers can also order the toilet seats, which are decorated with seashells and starfish.
Ahead of incoming president William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20 there appear to be signs that he is signaling to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and that the Chinese side is also signaling to the Taiwan side. This raises a lot of questions, including what is the CCP up to, who are they signaling to, what are they signaling, how with the various actors in Taiwan respond and where this could ultimately go. In the last column, published on May 2, we examined the curious case of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) heavyweight Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) — currently vice premier
The last time Mrs Hsieh came to Cihu Park in Taoyuan was almost 50 years ago, on a school trip to the grave of Taiwan’s recently deceased dictator. Busloads of children were brought in to pay their respects to Chiang Kai-shek (蔣中正), known as Generalissimo, who had died at 87, after decades ruling Taiwan under brutal martial law. “There were a lot of buses, and there was a long queue,” Hsieh recalled. “It was a school rule. We had to bow, and then we went home.” Chiang’s body is still there, under guard in a mausoleum at the end of a path
On Facebook a friend posted a dashcam video of a vehicle driving through the ash-colored wasteland of what was once Taroko Gorge. A crane appears in the video, and suddenly it becomes clear: the video is in color, not black and white. The magnitude 7.2 earthquake’s destruction on April 3 around and above Taroko and its reverberations across an area heavily dependent on tourism have largely vanished from the international press discussions as the news cycle moves on, but local residents still live with its consequences every day. For example, with the damage to the road corridors between Yilan and
May 13 to May 19 While Taiwanese were eligible to take the Qing Dynasty imperial exams starting from 1686, it took more than a century for a locally-registered scholar to pass the highest levels and become a jinshi (進士). In 1823, Hsinchu City resident Cheng Yung-hsi (鄭用錫) traveled to Beijing and accomplished the feat, returning home in great glory. There were technically three Taiwan residents who did it before Cheng, but two were born in China and remained registered in their birthplaces, while historians generally discount the third as he changed his residency back to Fujian Province right after the exams.