Hot pot restaurants are a kind of shrine to gluttony. Unlike their shabu-shabu cousins, the majority are all-you-can-eat meat, seafood and vegetables along with ice cream and drinks. Like Lotus Vegetarian Restaurant (若荷蔬食時尚餐廳) follows this tradition but substitutes the meat offerings with tofu imitations.
Like Lotus's mellow lighting creates an intimate interior atmosphere, with deep mahogany-colored wainscoting, doors and tabletops set against Chinese scrolls hanging from vanilla walls. An added decorating flourish is the exposed brick pillars and wooden shutters with Chinese designs that separate the smaller front area from the larger back section.
Vegetarian restaurants, it seems to me, suffer in part from an identity crisis. Aware that many of their clientele grew up on diets of fish, chicken or pork, they always incorporate these items - though in tofu imitation - on to the menu.
PHOTO: NOAH BUCHAN, TAIPEI TIMES
And so there is fake crab, cuttlefish, fish balls, duck blood - and my personal favorite, faux chicken leg. With the exception of the chicken and crab, however, these tofu imitations were largely tasteless. Which is fine because the soups are what people are lining up for. NT$390 gives you the "benz" hot pot - three different soups, from a choice of six, that come in a large metal bowl resembling the Mercedes symbol.
Our party ordered Japanese kelp (海味昆布), South Asia style (南洋風味) and Chinese medicine (御用藥膳).
The Japanese kelp was, well, just that. If you like the flavor of seaweed or kelp and prefer something salty, this is the soup for you. The Chinese medicine is popular because of its perceived health benefits. A little more inspired than the kelp, its flavor resembles that of a light chicken broth rather than the medicinal flavor I had expected.
The South Asia style is alone worth the visit to this restaurant. Stems of fresh lemongrass swam around in a fiery red bowl of red chili and basil that, though spicy, didn't overwhelm the palette. Our server had to refill the soup three times. Three other flavors are on offer: the standard mala ("spicy," 紅燒麻辣), Italian (義式蔬菜) and pumpkin (養生南瓜). Bloggers have praised the pumpkin, so this might be a good alternative if, like me, you want to avoid the kelp. - Noah Buchan
March 24 to March 30 When Yang Bing-yi (楊秉彝) needed a name for his new cooking oil shop in 1958, he first thought of honoring his previous employer, Heng Tai Fung (恆泰豐). The owner, Wang Yi-fu (王伊夫), had taken care of him over the previous 10 years, shortly after the native of Shanxi Province arrived in Taiwan in 1948 as a penniless 21 year old. His oil supplier was called Din Mei (鼎美), so he simply combined the names. Over the next decade, Yang and his wife Lai Pen-mei (賴盆妹) built up a booming business delivering oil to shops and
Indigenous Truku doctor Yuci (Bokeh Kosang), who resents his father for forcing him to learn their traditional way of life, clashes head to head in this film with his younger brother Siring (Umin Boya), who just wants to live off the land like his ancestors did. Hunter Brothers (獵人兄弟) opens with Yuci as the man of the hour as the village celebrates him getting into medical school, but then his father (Nolay Piho) wakes the brothers up in the middle of the night to go hunting. Siring is eager, but Yuci isn’t. Their mother (Ibix Buyang) begs her husband to let
The Taipei Times last week reported that the Control Yuan said it had been “left with no choice” but to ask the Constitutional Court to rule on the constitutionality of the central government budget, which left it without a budget. Lost in the outrage over the cuts to defense and to the Constitutional Court were the cuts to the Control Yuan, whose operating budget was slashed by 96 percent. It is unable even to pay its utility bills, and in the press conference it convened on the issue, said that its department directors were paying out of pocket for gasoline
On March 13 President William Lai (賴清德) gave a national security speech noting the 20th year since the passing of China’s Anti-Secession Law (反分裂國家法) in March 2005 that laid the legal groundwork for an invasion of Taiwan. That law, and other subsequent ones, are merely political theater created by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to have something to point to so they can claim “we have to do it, it is the law.” The president’s speech was somber and said: “By its actions, China already satisfies the definition of a ‘foreign hostile force’ as provided in the Anti-Infiltration Act, which unlike
RSS