Located near Spot - Taipei Film House (光點-台北之家), Hanabi has found favor among the city's growing tribe of sake lovers as an evening retreat. Its power to soothe and amuse derives from a respectable sake menu and a famed selection of Japanese tapas and kamameshi, a rice dish of broth and vegetables, meat or seafood that is cooked and served in an iron or ceramic pot.
Painted black and brown, Hanabi has the comfortable atmosphere of your friendly neighborhood tavern. The accommodating young wait staff makes the 10 percent service charge worthwhile.
There is, however, one major flaw, unless that is if you're anosmic. No sooner were we, a group of six, led to the seating area in the back than we hit a pungent wall of grilling odors from the semi-open kitchen. A few minutes after we complained, though, the air cleared.
Hanabi's range of premium daiginjo and ginjyo sakes is limited but priced reasonably, with most 720ml bottles costing between NT$1,280 to NT$2,680.
As for the food, we ordered almost every signature dish recommended by foodie blogs. Soaked in a marinade made of more than 20 ingredients, the chicken wings (密傳手羽先唐揚, NT$120) had the sweetness and saltiness of both miso and teriyaki sauces while the sesame seeds on the skin accentuated the grilled charcoal flavor. The fish egg omelet (明太子蛋捲, NT$280) was a fine combination of tastes and textures; the fluffy exterior contained a savory soup of fishy spheres that burst in the mouth.
Sea urchin (NT$240 each), which wasn't listed on the menu but written on a blackboard along with other seasonal delicacies, was the one dish that earned a unanimous seal of approval. The oversized globular sea creatures, fresh and shipped in from Penghu, are served split open. The gleaming orange flesh inside was extracted with spoons. The taste is light, sweet and slightly saline; just right for a raw piece of flesh recently plucked from the ocean.
Other specialties include grilled items marinated in a noteworthy black miso sauce. Believed to have originated from Nagoya, the brochettes are first grilled then stewed in a pot of the sauce flavored with sake. We had chicken (雞肉串, NT$120) and beef brochettes (牛肋條, NT$180); both had a novel sweet-salty combination of flavors.
Our last order was kamameshi bowls. The dish comes with a small hourglass so that the rice can be simmered precisely. The mushroom and truffle rice bowl (野菇松露釜飯, NT$300) and the gomoku rice bowl (五目釜飯, NT$280), which contains burdock, chicken and carrot, won praise for their sophisticated symphony of flavors. The sapid rice was halfway between fluffy and chewy.
Reservations are advisable as the sake bar seats around 30. Ravenous diners should expect to leave a dent in their bank balance.
Oct. 27 to Nov. 2 Over a breakfast of soymilk and fried dough costing less than NT$400, seven officials and engineers agreed on a NT$400 million plan — unaware that it would mark the beginning of Taiwan’s semiconductor empire. It was a cold February morning in 1974. Gathered at the unassuming shop were Economics minister Sun Yun-hsuan (孫運璿), director-general of Transportation and Communications Kao Yu-shu (高玉樹), Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) president Wang Chao-chen (王兆振), Telecommunications Laboratories director Kang Pao-huang (康寶煌), Executive Yuan secretary-general Fei Hua (費驊), director-general of Telecommunications Fang Hsien-chi (方賢齊) and Radio Corporation of America (RCA) Laboratories director Pan
President William Lai (賴清德) has championed Taiwan as an “AI Island” — an artificial intelligence (AI) hub powering the global tech economy. But without major shifts in talent, funding and strategic direction, this vision risks becoming a static fortress: indispensable, yet immobile and vulnerable. It’s time to reframe Taiwan’s ambition. Time to move from a resource-rich AI island to an AI Armada. Why change metaphors? Because choosing the right metaphor shapes both understanding and strategy. The “AI Island” frames our national ambition as a static fortress that, while valuable, is still vulnerable and reactive. Shifting our metaphor to an “AI Armada”
The older you get, and the more obsessed with your health, the more it feels as if life comes down to numbers: how many more years you can expect; your lean body mass; your percentage of visceral fat; how dense your bones are; how many kilos you can squat; how long you can deadhang; how often you still do it; your levels of LDL and HDL cholesterol; your resting heart rate; your overnight blood oxygen level; how quickly you can run; how many steps you do in a day; how many hours you sleep; how fast you are shrinking; how
When Taiwan was battered by storms this summer, the only crumb of comfort I could take was knowing that some advice I’d drafted several weeks earlier had been correct. Regarding the Southern Cross-Island Highway (南橫公路), a spectacular high-elevation route connecting Taiwan’s southwest with the country’s southeast, I’d written: “The precarious existence of this road cannot be overstated; those hoping to drive or ride all the way across should have a backup plan.” As this article was going to press, the middle section of the highway, between Meishankou (梅山口) in Kaohsiung and Siangyang (向陽) in Taitung County, was still closed to outsiders
RSS