Among the outdoor vendors and snack cart operators who crowd the narrow alleys of Gongguan (公館), Horace Liu (劉家豪) has always stood out. He wears an impeccably white chef's uniform, not a T-shirt; sells pasta, burritos and risotto, not typical night market fare; and his food-preparation techniques would seem more at home in an open-kitchen restaurant than the makeshift street stall he's been running for the past year and a half.
But things won't seem so out of place starting tomorrow, when Liu — who previously worked at the Q Bar as a bartender and later a chef — trades his cart for a restaurant a few storefronts down from his current location. Prices will be around NT$10 higher, new dishes will be added, but other aspects of the operation will remain the same.
The name of the new restaurant is Free Style, because, as with Liu's street stall, the emphasis is on customers' choosing the ingredients for their dishes. Take the pasta, for example. Customers first choose what kind of noodles they want — spaghetti (義大利麵), penne (筆管麵), fettuccine (寬扁麵) or shell pasta (貝殼麵). They pick a sauce — marinara (蕃茄), white wine and cream (白酒奶油), pesto (羅勒松子), garlic and chili (香蒜辣椒) or beef demi-glace (牛肉醬汁). And they can also choose one of four different toppings — seafood (海鮮), chicken (雞肉), bacon (培根) or mushrooms (野菇). (This reviewer recommends the fettuccine, with seafood and white wine and cream or with demi-glace and bacon.)
PHOTO: RON BROWNLOW, TAIPEI TIMES
The order is then handed to Liu, who ladles the selected sauce into a frying pan, adds the chosen topping along with butter or a pinch salt, and when everything is ready tastes each dish himself. He uses a clean spoon to do this, which he then flips away with a flourish. And when cooking seafood, Liu has been observed on several occasions making sure each clam opens and tossing away those that don't.
Free Style's kitchen has been designed so that both pedestrians walking outside as well as customers inside can continue to watch Liu cook. New dishes like chicken cheese burritos (墨西哥起司雞肉, NT$90), french fries (炸薯條, NT$60) and onion rings (洋蔥圈, NT$80) have been added to the menu. Liu said he will also sell cheeseburgers (NT$220) in the near future.
Feces, vomit and fossilized food from inside stomachs have provided new clues into how dinosaurs rose to dominate Earth, a new study revealed on Wednesday. Scientists have discovered plenty about dinosaurs — particularly about how they vanished off the face of the planet 66 millions years ago. But “we know very little about their rise,” said Martin Qvarnstrom, a researcher at Sweden’s Uppsala University and the study’s lead author. Dinosaurs first appeared at least 230 million years ago, fossils have shown. But they would not become the world’s dominant animal until the start of the Jurassic Period some 30 million years later. What caused this
Last week, the government rejected a petition to amend the law that would allow permanent residents a path to citizenship. This was widely expected, but it came amid a flurry of negative trends about the future of the nation’s labor force. There was much ironic commentary on the juxtaposition of that decision with its idiotic, abusive reasoning with the urgent demand for labor across a wide range of fields. This demand was highlighted by the government’s plans for five NT$10 billion (US$307.6 million) funds to promote development in key fields, including artificial intelligence (AI), “smart” healthcare and green growth announced
The Mountains to Sea National Greenway (山海圳國家綠道) draws its name from the idea that each hiker starting at the summit of Jade Mountain (玉山) and following the trail to the coast is like a single raindrop. Together, many raindrops form life and prosperity-bringing waterways. Replicating a raindrop’s journey holds poetic beauty, but all hikers know that climbing is infinitely more appealing, and so this installment picks up where the last one left off — heading inland and uphill along the 49.8-kilometer Canal Trail (大圳之路) — second of the Greenway’s four sections. A detailed map of the trail can be found
“Bro, I can’t wait for my first dead body,” wrote an 11-year-old boy on Instagram in Sweden, where gangs recruit children too young to be prosecuted as contract killers on chat apps. “Stay motivated, it’ll come,” answered his 19-year-old contact. He went on to offer the child 150,000 kronor (US$13,680) to carry out a murder, as well as clothes and transport to the scene of the crime, according to a police investigation of the exchange last year in the western province of Varmland. In this case, four men aged 18 to 20 are accused of recruiting four minors aged 11 to 17
RSS