VIEW THIS PAGE It’s noon in Taipei, 5am in Paris and midnight in New York as I take my seat in economy class. The seatbelt and no smoking lights have been switched on and the monitor on the wall shows a plane taking off. A “stewardess” comes over to take my order.
Taipei has seen its fair share of theme restaurants over the years. The Jail (惡魔島) shackled diners with handcuffs and crossed the limits of cultural sensitivity by hanging photos of Nazi concentration camps on its prison-like walls. DS Music Restaurant played on a hospital theme, complete with IV drips for drinks, wait staff dressed as nurses and hospital beds for tables.
A380 In-Flight Kitchen is named after the largest passenger airliner in the world. The restaurant looks and functions much like the Airbus it’s named after — though it only has one floor. “Passengers” sit in “first class,” “business class,” or, like this flyer, “economy class.” I was assigned seat 10A. Large comfortable blue chairs with headrests covered with white headrest covers emblazoned with the “airline’s” logo ensure optimum comfort for those long-haul meals. Stewardesses are dressed neatly in uniforms and dash back and forth with trays of “airplane food” or beverages on metal trolleys. A line of oval-shaped windows run along one side and look out onto a white “sky.”
The a la carte and set menus include foie gras filet mignon, vanilla lamb, dory and German pig knuckle (NT$480 for the set menu, NT$420 for a la carte), as well as chicken and pasta. There is also chicken spaghetti (NT$220) and stewed beef in red wine (NT$220) — both set meals and served in the same plastic trays found on airplanes. I went with the grilled US steak set menu (NT$480 set menu, NT$420 a la carte).
The iceberg lettuce salad came with some withered sprouts, chunks of moistureless cucumbers and an out-of-place wedge of sliced boiled ham. The miso dressing didn’t do much to enliven this salad, half of which I left in the bowl. The corn chowder soup wasn’t much of an improvement. It was tasteless and seemed to have come from a packet.
The steak was adequate and came with a dollop of mashed potatoes, a few green beans and baby corn. Cooked to my specifications — medium rare — it was served with a gravy-like sauce, the only purpose of which, aside from complementing the mashed potatoes, was to hide the generous marbling (dare I say gristle) of the beef. Dessert — coffee and sponge cake — was as memorable as the appetizer.
Although the decor is creative and the service prompt, the food will certainly not make me a “frequent flyer” in this mid-range family restaurant.VIEW THIS PAGE
In the March 9 edition of the Taipei Times a piece by Ninon Godefroy ran with the headine “The quiet, gentle rhythm of Taiwan.” It started with the line “Taiwan is a small, humble place. There is no Eiffel Tower, no pyramids — no singular attraction that draws the world’s attention.” I laughed out loud at that. This was out of no disrespect for the author or the piece, which made some interesting analogies and good points about how both Din Tai Fung’s and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) meticulous attention to detail and quality are not quite up to
April 21 to April 27 Hsieh Er’s (謝娥) political fortunes were rising fast after she got out of jail and joined the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in December 1945. Not only did she hold key positions in various committees, she was elected the only woman on the Taipei City Council and headed to Nanjing in 1946 as the sole Taiwanese female representative to the National Constituent Assembly. With the support of first lady Soong May-ling (宋美齡), she started the Taipei Women’s Association and Taiwan Provincial Women’s Association, where she
It is one of the more remarkable facts of Taiwan history that it was never occupied or claimed by any of the numerous kingdoms of southern China — Han or otherwise — that lay just across the water from it. None of their brilliant ministers ever discovered that Taiwan was a “core interest” of the state whose annexation was “inevitable.” As Paul Kua notes in an excellent monograph laying out how the Portuguese gave Taiwan the name “Formosa,” the first Europeans to express an interest in occupying Taiwan were the Spanish. Tonio Andrade in his seminal work, How Taiwan Became Chinese,
Mongolian influencer Anudari Daarya looks effortlessly glamorous and carefree in her social media posts — but the classically trained pianist’s road to acceptance as a transgender artist has been anything but easy. She is one of a growing number of Mongolian LGBTQ youth challenging stereotypes and fighting for acceptance through media representation in the socially conservative country. LGBTQ Mongolians often hide their identities from their employers and colleagues for fear of discrimination, with a survey by the non-profit LGBT Centre Mongolia showing that only 20 percent of people felt comfortable coming out at work. Daarya, 25, said she has faced discrimination since she
RSS