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
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
The classic warmth of a good old-fashioned izakaya beckons you in, all cozy nooks and dark wood finishes, as tables order a third round and waiters sling tapas-sized bites and assorted — sometimes unidentifiable — skewered meats. But there’s a romantic hush about this Ximending (西門町) hotspot, with cocktails savored, plating elegant and never rushed and daters and diners lit by candlelight and chandelier. Each chair is mismatched and the assorted tables appear to be the fanciest picks from a nearby flea market. A naked sewing mannequin stands in a dimly lit corner, adorned with antique mirrors and draped foliage
The consensus on the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chair race is that Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) ran a populist, ideological back-to-basics campaign and soundly defeated former Taipei mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌), the candidate backed by the big institutional players. Cheng tapped into a wave of popular enthusiasm within the KMT, while the institutional players’ get-out-the-vote abilities fell flat, suggesting their power has weakened significantly. Yet, a closer look at the race paints a more complicated picture, raising questions about some analysts’ conclusions, including my own. TURNOUT Here is a surprising statistic: Turnout was 130,678, or 39.46 percent of the 331,145 eligible party
The election of Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) as chair of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) marked a triumphant return of pride in the “Chinese” in the party name. Cheng wants Taiwanese to be proud to call themselves Chinese again. The unambiguous winner was a return to the KMT ideology that formed in the early 2000s under then chairman Lien Chan (連戰) and president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) put into practice as far as he could, until ultimately thwarted by hundreds of thousands of protestors thronging the streets in what became known as the Sunflower movement in 2014. Cheng is an unambiguous Chinese ethnonationalist,
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