Taipei is no stranger to food courts, but there are food courts, and there is Breeze Taipei Station, the future of inexpensive, choice-oriented, and lets face it, fun dining. This enterprise, launched last October by the same fashion and media savvy city slickers behind Breeze Center, has "high-concept" written all over it, and though you could satisfy yourself with donuts and coffee from Mister Donut for NT$80, you can also explore all kinds of weird and wonderful eats from tofu and chestnut ice cream (NT$58) from the Japanese Kofukudo (口福堂) to the beautifully presented vegetarian buffet offered by Minder Vegetarian (明德素食園), a favorite with traveling Buddhist clergy.
The combination and the mix of restaurants makes this venture special. The first thing to strike visitors is the high proportion of proper restaurants with their own seating, most of which looks down onto the railway station's main ticketing hall. (A convenient perch for people watching during a busy weekend and worth making a visit for this reason alone.) A second feature is the four themed areas into which the food hall is divided.
There is the Sweets Corner (甜品小路), where Mr Donut rubs shoulders with Maison Kayser (cakes only, no breads) and the Italian ice cream sundae specialist Sweetberry. The Breeze people understand the power of labels, and everywhere you look, there are the Polo Ralph Laurens and Armani Exchange A|Xs of Taiwan's food establishment - big names, but plenty of affordable items.
PHOTO: IAN BARTHOLOMEW, TAIPEI TIMES
Just down the corridor is the Taiwan Beef Noodle Competition Corner, which has eight highly regarded beef noodle stalls standing side by side. It's almost as good as taking part in the Taipei International Newrow Mian Festival (臺北國際牛肉麵節).
The Taipei Night Market section also presents a wide variety of well-known local names, not least Tainan's Hong Yutou Danzai Noodles (洪芋頭擔仔麵), which has a history going back over 100 years.
Turn a corner and you're at the Curry Palace, where you can get anything from a falafel role from the Sababa Pita Bar, to Japanese style curry from Yokohama Curry (橫?;咖哩), and a reasonable attempt at the real deal at Indian Fan (印度風). The whole thing is given a stylish personal touch with photos of the proprietors and chefs of the various restaurants plastered across the walls of these themed areas.
The Evergreen Laurel Collection (長榮桂冠酒坊) has 16 wines sold by the glass (from NT$60 for 50ml). These can be tasted in the shop or taken out into the general dining area.
In all, Breeze Taipei Station, for all its street food elements, manages to be more than the sum of its parts.
June 9 to June 15 A photo of two men riding trendy high-wheel Penny-Farthing bicycles past a Qing Dynasty gate aptly captures the essence of Taipei in 1897 — a newly colonized city on the cusp of great change. The Japanese began making significant modifications to the cityscape in 1899, tearing down Qing-era structures, widening boulevards and installing Western-style infrastructure and buildings. The photographer, Minosuke Imamura, only spent a year in Taiwan as a cartographer for the governor-general’s office, but he left behind a treasure trove of 130 images showing life at the onset of Japanese rule, spanning July 1897 to
One of the most important gripes that Taiwanese have about the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is that it has failed to deliver concretely on higher wages, housing prices and other bread-and-butter issues. The parallel complaint is that the DPP cares only about glamor issues, such as removing markers of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) colonialism by renaming them, or what the KMT codes as “de-Sinification.” Once again, as a critical election looms, the DPP is presenting evidence for that charge. The KMT was quick to jump on the recent proposal of the Ministry of the Interior (MOI) to rename roads that symbolize
On the evening of June 1, Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) apologized and resigned in disgrace. His crime was instructing his driver to use a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon. The Control Yuan is the government branch that investigates, audits and impeaches government officials for, among other things, misuse of government funds, so his misuse of a government vehicle was highly inappropriate. If this story were told to anyone living in the golden era of swaggering gangsters, flashy nouveau riche businessmen, and corrupt “black gold” politics of the 1980s and 1990s, they would have laughed.
In an interview posted online by United Daily News (UDN) on May 26, current Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) was asked about Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) replacing him as party chair. Though not yet officially running, by the customs of Taiwan politics, Lu has been signalling she is both running for party chair and to be the party’s 2028 presidential candidate. She told an international media outlet that she was considering a run. She also gave a speech in Keelung on national priorities and foreign affairs. For details, see the May 23 edition of this column,
RSS