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.
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 —
It is one of the more remarkable facts of Taiwan history that it was never occupied or claimed by any of the numerous kingdoms of southern China — Han or otherwise — that lay just across the water from it. None of their brilliant ministers ever discovered that Taiwan was a “core interest” of the state whose annexation was “inevitable.” As Paul Kua notes in an excellent monograph laying out how the Portuguese gave Taiwan the name “Formosa,” the first Europeans to express an interest in occupying Taiwan were the Spanish. Tonio Andrade in his seminal work, How Taiwan Became Chinese,
Toward the outside edge of Taichung City, in Wufeng District (霧峰去), sits a sprawling collection of single-story buildings with tiled roofs belonging to the Wufeng Lin (霧峰林家) family, who rose to prominence through success in military, commercial, and artistic endeavors in the 19th century. Most of these buildings have brick walls and tiled roofs in the traditional reddish-brown color, but in the middle is one incongruous property with bright white walls and a black tiled roof: Yipu Garden (頤圃). Purists may scoff at the Japanese-style exterior and its radical departure from the Fujianese architectural style of the surrounding buildings. However, the property
RSS