Three months after Pamirs moved to the bustling Taida (台大) area from Sindian (新店) in Taipei County, the eatery has secured a steady stream of customers with its home-cooked Xinjiang fare and wallet-friendly prices. Run by a couple who picked up their cooking skills during a stay in Urumqi, Pamirs has a homely feel and a clientele made up mostly of students and families.
The menu is roughly divided between rice, noodle and nan bread dishes, combined with various dishes of beef, chicken and lamb, as well as soups and desserts.
A popular Xinjiang staple is the meat nan (NT$100, 肉食囊). It tastes like the Taiwanese scallion pancake (蔥油餅), but instead of scallions it's flavored with diced lamb. Nan with meat (NT$150, 食囊包肉) is an appetizing reverse of meat nan, with stir-fried beef capping a sliced nan pancake.
PHOTO: HO YI, TAIPEI TIMES
True to its name, big-plate chicken (NT$350, 大盤雞) offers a filling portion of green bell peppers, onions, potatoes, carrots and chicken with plenty of dried chilies and peppers to give the dish a delicious piquancy. The handmade noodles that come with it are surprisingly al dente. This sauce also makes a delicious dip for sesame nan (NT$50, 芝麻食囊).
The mutton skewer (NT$100), another Xinjiang staple, was the biggest disappointment at a recent visit to Pamirs. The expected crispy cumin-flavored roasted meat served sizzling hot from a charcoal fire had little savor and came to the table tepid.
From the Muslim tradition, ta si mi (它似蜜, NT$200), a sour-sweet lamb plate seasoned with sugar, thick sweet sauce (甜麵醬), ginger and soy sauce, is a dish with an interesting story behind it. Folklore has it that ta si mi was named by the Dowager Empress Cixi (慈禧太后), who was greatly pleased by its honey tang. However, transplanted from Xinjiang to Taiwan and served at Pamirs, this famed Muslim dish is more vinegar-sour than honey-sweet.
Lamb consomme (缸缸羊肉湯, NT$70 for one person) provides yet another novel dining experience that involves sucking bone marrow through straws.
The service at Pamirs can be slow when the bargain eatery fills up, but the good value hearty meals it serves are certainly worth the wait and make the restaurant an excellent choice for a casual gathering of friends.
Wooden houses wedged between concrete, crumbling brick facades with roofs gaping to the sky, and tiled art deco buildings down narrow alleyways: Taichung Central District’s (中區) aging architecture reveals both the allure and reality of the old downtown. From Indigenous settlement to capital under Qing Dynasty rule through to Japanese colonization, Taichung’s Central District holds a long and layered history. The bygone beauty of its streets once earned it the nickname “Little Kyoto.” Since the late eighties, however, the shifting of economic and government centers westward signaled a gradual decline in the area’s evolving fortunes. With the regeneration of the once
Even by the standards of Ukraine’s International Legion, which comprises volunteers from over 55 countries, Han has an unusual backstory. Born in Taichung, he grew up in Costa Rica — then one of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies — where a relative worked for the embassy. After attending an American international high school in San Jose, Costa Rica’s capital, Han — who prefers to use only his given name for OPSEC (operations security) reasons — moved to the US in his teens. He attended Penn State University before returning to Taiwan to work in the semiconductor industry in Kaohsiung, where he
On May 2, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫), at a meeting in support of Taipei city councilors at party headquarters, compared President William Lai (賴清德) to Hitler. Chu claimed that unlike any other democracy worldwide in history, no other leader was rooting out opposing parties like Lai and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). That his statements are wildly inaccurate was not the point. It was a rallying cry, not a history lesson. This was intentional to provoke the international diplomatic community into a response, which was promptly provided. Both the German and Israeli offices issued statements on Facebook
Perched on Thailand’s border with Myanmar, Arunothai is a dusty crossroads town, a nowheresville that could be the setting of some Southeast Asian spaghetti Western. Its main street is the final, dead-end section of the two-lane highway from Chiang Mai, Thailand’s second largest city 120kms south, and the heart of the kingdom’s mountainous north. At the town boundary, a Chinese-style arch capped with dragons also bears Thai script declaring fealty to Bangkok’s royal family: “Long live the King!” Further on, Chinese lanterns line the main street, and on the hillsides, courtyard homes sit among warrens of narrow, winding alleyways and
RSS