Ever since the Taipei International Beef Noodle Festival released its list of the capital's top 20 beef noodle restaurants — the result of more than a month of voting and evaluation by a group of undercover gourmets — the award-winning shops have seen long queues. Now the nearly two-month long festival is about to reach its climax as the beef noodle expo opens to the public tomorrow and Sunday at the TWTC Hall 2.
Visitors are strongly advised to turn up with an empty stomach since the top 20 restaurants and 10 other selected establishments from around the island will set up stalls serving their mouthwatering creations for just NT$50 a bowl.
The specialties from previous winners like Lao Chang Beef Noodle Shop (老張牛肉麵) and Yung Kang Beef Noodle Shop (永康牛肉麵) are not to be missed, while Hsiao Li Tzu Beef Noodle Shop's (小李子蘭州牛肉拉麵館) version will surprise taste buds with its beef broth made from over 40 Chinese herbs in accordance with the traditional recipe from Lanzhou, China. Lao Tung Beef Noodle Shop's (老董牛肉細粉麵店) stall is expected to be inundated as it successfully made it into the finals for both the traditional and creative beef noodles categories.
PHOTO: SEAN CHAO, TAIPEI TIMES
The preliminaries, held last month, eliminated around 50 contenders, retaining the top five shops and individuals for each category. Chef Liu Cheng-hsiung (劉正雄) from Lao Tung won the jury's heart with his traditional-flavored light stew that retains the freshness of the meat and his curry beef noodles, which has been revived from a recipe created by the Master Huang Noodle Shop (洪師父麵食棧) in Shanghai. The establishment is a strong contender in both traditional and creative categories. Chefs from Master Huang's itself will meet the challenge with the shop's signature beef noodles with pickled Chinese cabbage soaked in the aromatic beef broth made from fruits and vegetables.
Each cooking contest will be three hours long starting at 10am and will be judged by 100 culinary industry professionals, renowned gourmets, representatives from the press and members of the general public.
To add a tinge of global flavor to Taiwan's traditional culinary culture, 10 teams from Thailand, South Korea, China, Singapore, Canada, New Zealand, Italy, France, Japan and the US have been invited to create their own innovative beef noodles in a three-hour contest on Sunday.
While global attention is finally being focused on the People’s Republic of China (PRC) gray zone aggression against Philippine territory in the South China Sea, at the other end of the PRC’s infamous 9 dash line map, PRC vessels are conducting an identical campaign against Indonesia, most importantly in the Natuna Islands. The Natunas fall into a gray area: do the dashes at the end of the PRC “cow’s tongue” map include the islands? It’s not clear. Less well known is that they also fall into another gray area. Indonesia’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) claim and continental shelf claim are not
Nov. 4 to Nov. 10 Apollo magazine (文星) vowed that it wouldn’t play by the rules in its first issue — a bold statement to make in 1957, when anyone could be jailed for saying the wrong thing. However, the introduction to the inaugural Nov. 5 issue also defined the magazine as a “lifestyle, literature and art” publication, and the contents were relatively tame for the first four years, writes Tao Heng-sheng (陶恒生) in “The Apollo magazine that wouldn’t play by the rules” (不按牌理出牌的文星雜誌). In 1961, the magazine changed its mission to “thought, lifestyle and art” and adopted a more critical tone with
“Designed to be deleted” is the tagline of one of the UK’s most popular dating apps. Hinge promises that it is “the dating app for people who want to get off dating apps” — the place to find lasting love. But critics say modern dating is in crisis. They claim that dating apps, which have been downloaded hundreds of millions of times worldwide, are “exploitative” and are designed not to be deleted but to be addictive, to retain users in order to create revenue. An Observer investigation has found that dating apps are increasingly pushing users to buy extras that have been
Hourglass-shaped sex toys casually glide along a conveyor belt through an airy new store in Tokyo, the latest attempt by Japanese manufacturer Tenga to sell adult products without the shame that is often attached. At first glance it’s not even obvious that the sleek, colorful products on display are Japan’s favorite sex toys for men, but the store has drawn a stream of couples and tourists since opening this year. “Its openness surprised me,” said customer Masafumi Kawasaki, 45, “and made me a bit embarrassed that I’d had a ‘naughty’ image” of the company. I might have thought this was some kind