Many bars around town, and especially those in five star hotels, have set up screens for the World Cup. The Front Page Bar at the Imperial Hotel (
Front Page's international style is that of an up-market British pub, and offers an elegant, cheerful and pleasant environment in which to sit and relax with friends or have a drink at the bar. The low ceiling gives it an intimate feel, and the selection of flags around the room hints at the inter-national crowd that passes through.
Although the Imperial Hotel has been around for the last 30 years, Front Page has been open for just two years.
PHOTO COURTESY OF FRONT PAGE BAR
The hotel's proximity to Taipei's Zhongshan Soccer Stadium makes it a favorite with visiting athletes, including local sports icon, Wang Chien-ming (王建民), who plays for the New York Yankees. The bar displays a baseball shirt with his autograph, among much other sporting paraphernalia.
Bar manager Liao Yu-hwei (廖裕輝), has done his bit for national sports; he was formerly on Taiwan's soft tennis team.
Head chef of the Front Page Bar Tony Chen (陳進男) said that a variety of international dishes are offered to appeal to guests from many different countries. Dutch deep-fried beef meatballs with tomato sauce (NT$480) is recommended, and was selected to represent the hotel at the Taipei International Food Show last week.
For avid sports fans who don't want to take their eyes off the television, Brazilian grilled beef skewers (NT$480) are popular as they are easy to handle. The French grilled ham and cheese sandwich (NT$360), provides a big meal, even if it tastes a bit ordinary for the price.
Other dishes include German pig knuckle (NT$480), Italian carbonara (NT$380), Mexican beef fried rice with hot chili (NT$360) and English deep-fried fish burger (NT$380).
Cocktails cost around NT$270 and the bar stocks a wide range of beers and spirits, starting at NT$220 per glass.
The bar has a private suite for three to eight people. There is no minimum charge for this, although a reservation is necessary. Internet access is a cinch with WiFi access.
Earlier this month Economic Affairs Minister Kuo Jyh-huei (郭智輝) proposed buying green power from the Philippines and shipping it to Taiwan, in remarks made during a legislative hearing. Because this is an eminently reasonable and useful proposal, it was immediately criticized by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). KMT Legislator Chang Chia-chun (張嘉郡) said that Taiwan pays NT$40 billion annually to fix cables, while TPP heavyweight Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) complained that Kuo wanted to draw public attention away from Taiwan’s renewable energy ratio. Considering the legal troubles currently inundating the TPP, one would think Huang would
Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (將萬安) last week told residents to avoid wearing scary Halloween costumes on the MRT so as not to alarm other passengers. Well, I thought, so much for my plan to visit Taipei dressed as the National Development Council’s (NDC) biennial population report “Population Projections for the Republic of China (Taiwan): 2024-2070,” which came out last week. Terms like “low birth rate” and “demographic decline” do not cut it — the report is nothing short of a demographic disaster. Yet, in Taiwan, as in other countries, it is solvable. It simply requires a change in mindset. As it
Chiayi County is blessed with several worthwhile upland trails, not all of which I’ve hiked. A few weeks ago, I finally got around to tackling Tanghu Historic Trail (塘湖古道), a short but unusually steep route in Jhuci Township (竹崎). According to the Web site of the Alishan National Scenic Area (阿里山國家風景區), the path climbs from 308m above sea level to an elevation of 770m in just 1.58km, an average gradient of 29 percent. And unless you arrange for someone to bring you to the starting point and collect you at the other end, there’s no way to avoid a significant amount
For three films now, Tom Hardy has smushed Jekyll and Hyde into one strange and slimy double act. In a Marvel universe filled with alter egos that cloak stealthy superpowers, his investigative reporter Eddie Brock doesn’t transform. He shares his body with an ink-black alien symbiote (voiced with a baritone growl by Hardy), who sometimes swallows him whole, sometimes shoots a tentacle or two out and always chipperly punctuates Eddie’s inner monologue. These have been consistently messy, almost willfully bad movies, but Hardy’s performance has been a strangely compelling one-body buddy comedy. It’s one thing to throw a cape on and