Close to the Tonghua Street (通化街) night market, Hui Guan (回館) occupies a rare niche in the city’s dietary landscape by serving cuisine from Ningxia, a Hui autonomous region in China. Li Hai-jung (李海蓉), who is Muslim, opened the restaurant a few years ago primarily to observe her religion’s dietary code and satisfy her craving for a taste of home.
A red lantern hanging at the entrance makes Hui Guan hard to miss. The interior is simple and understated, spiced up with wood furnishings and the signatures of celebrity patrons written on the walls.
Though the meat is halal, alcoholic beverages are served. Hui Guan offers ice-cold Taiwan beer in tin mugs, which go well with the richly flavored dishes.
From a menu featuring a selection of meals made from nearly every sheep part, the cumin-flavored mutton with bread (孜然羊羔烙饃, NT$280), a type of street food in Ningxia, is a friendly choice for first timers. Stir-fried with cumin, celery, onion and other vegetables, the mutton cubes are paired with slightly salted breads made in accordance to a recipe from Li’s mother.
Meticulous effort goes into preparing Hui Guan’s Ningxia braised mutton (寧夏手抓羊肉, NT$260). It requires a process of boiling, braising and marinating, which is repeated. The cooked meat is surprisingly tender and is meant to be eaten with bare hands. The salty and slightly spicy soy-cheese sauce on the side helps neutralize the mutton’s gaminess.
For those with a low tolerance for spicy food, it is recommended to inform the chef while ordering as he doesn’t skimp on the red chili oil or peppercorn (花椒), which are found throughout the menu. The sour and spicy lentil noodles (酸辣扁豆粉, NT$120) are a good example. The deceivingly mild looking plate of cold noodles had one of my dining partners, who has been known to eat spicy hot pot for breakfast, proclaiming his admiration for the dish while gulping down cold beer.
On the other end of the flavor spectrum, mother’s salad (母親手拌菜, N$$180) mixes onions, bell peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes and pea sprouts seasoned with a sweet-and-sour dressing. The ginger-flavored thousand-year eggs (薑汁松花蛋, NT$140) give the staple snack a refreshing update. One must-try appetizer not to be found on the menu is the preserved garlic sprouts (蒜台), which pack a vinegary punch.
The restaurant also serves mutton and beef brochettes (NT$100 per plate). The meat has the right amount of fat to render it alluringly juicy, though the unpleasant smell of grill smoke lingers long after the meal.
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
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) hatched a bold plan to charge forward and seize the initiative when he held a protest in front of the Taipei City Prosecutors’ Office. Though risky, because illegal, its success would help tackle at least six problems facing both himself and the KMT. What he did not see coming was Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (將萬安) tripping him up out of the gate. In spite of Chu being the most consequential and successful KMT chairman since the early 2010s — arguably saving the party from financial ruin and restoring its electoral viability —
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,