Sweet Dynasty (糖朝) has earned a reputation in Hong Kong and Taiwan for excellent desserts. Its Chinese language name is a pun on Tang Dynasty, and the restaurant takes its treats seriously, with a fifth of the menu dedicated to douhua (豆花), or tofu pudding, sweet soups, bubble tea and other confections. But the restaurant’s savory dishes, which include a wide variety of dim sum staples, are hit-and-miss.
Some were very good, including the fried turnip cake (煎北菇蘿蔔糕, NT$70), which has a crispy exterior that gives way to a tender middle punctuated with crisp turnip pieces and soft mushroom slices. The steamed rice roll with shrimp (鮮玻璃明蝦腸粉, NT$160) and steamed dumpling with shrimp, pork and bamboo shoot (筍尖鮮蝦餃, NT$100) were also pleasing. The tiny bits of bamboo in the latter’s filling added a welcome contrast to the chewy rice wrapper.
The seafood and pork shiumai (海皇燒賣, NT$100), or steamed dumplings stuffed with shrimp and pork and topped with a sprinkling of shrimp roe, were a disappointment, partly because they were overcooked, leaving the wrapper slightly too chewy. The shiumai was also not served with the customary mustard dipping sauce. In fact, supplying guests with condiments seems to be a weak point in Sweet Dynasty’s service. On both our visits, we had to grab a condiment tray from a neighboring table, only to have it whisked away by staff almost immediately. They were refilling the bottles, a process that seemed to take forever.
This was unfortunate, because many of our other savory courses could have used some help. From the photo in Sweet Dynasty’s picture menu, we expected our plate of water spinach (空心菜, NT$160 or NT$220 depending on portion size) to come topped with slices of ginger, garlic, chili peppers and other exciting flavor enhancers. Instead, we got a heap of unadorned veggies so soggy it left puddles on the table whenever we lifted a portion to our plates. The fried scallops with egg white (蛋白炒帶子, NT$340 or NT$510), or a pile of sauteed scallops sandwiched in between a layer of egg white and youtiao slices, was also bland.
A meal at Sweet Dynasty should be planned so that most of what you eat comes off the restaurant’s dessert menu. Standouts include the steamed egg custard buns (蛋王蒸, NT$80), which are also available fried, and the hot tofu pudding with almond soup (豆腐花杏仁露, NT$80), a comforting pick for a cold afternoon. On warmer days, the sago soup with fresh fruit (鮮雜果西米露, NT$90), which features watermelon, cantaloupe and honeydew balls and tiny pearls made from sago palm starch floating in coconut milk, is a refreshing choice. One of the restaurant’s specialties is tofu pudding in a cask (原木桶豆腐花, NT$220) for splitting among multiple diners. On a recent weekend visit, almost every table had a wooden bucket sitting on it.
June 2 to June 8 Taiwan’s woodcutters believe that if they see even one speck of red in their cooked rice, no matter how small, an accident is going to happen. Peng Chin-tian (彭錦田) swears that this has proven to be true at every stop during his decades-long career in the logging industry. Along with mining, timber harvesting was once considered the most dangerous profession in Taiwan. Not only were mishaps common during all stages of processing, it was difficult to transport the injured to get medical treatment. Many died during the arduous journey. Peng recounts some of his accidents in
“Why does Taiwan identity decline?”a group of researchers lead by University of Nevada political scientist Austin Wang (王宏恩) asked in a recent paper. After all, it is not difficult to explain the rise in Taiwanese identity after the early 1990s. But no model predicted its decline during the 2016-2018 period, they say. After testing various alternative explanations, Wang et al argue that the fall-off in Taiwanese identity during that period is related to voter hedging based on the performance of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Since the DPP is perceived as the guardian of Taiwan identity, when it performs well,
A short walk beneath the dense Amazon canopy, the forest abruptly opens up. Fallen logs are rotting, the trees grow sparser and the temperature rises in places sunlight hits the ground. This is what 24 years of severe drought looks like in the world’s largest rainforest. But this patch of degraded forest, about the size of a soccer field, is a scientific experiment. Launched in 2000 by Brazilian and British scientists, Esecaflor — short for “Forest Drought Study Project” in Portuguese — set out to simulate a future in which the changing climate could deplete the Amazon of rainfall. It is
The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on May 18 held a rally in Taichung to mark the anniversary of President William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20. The title of the rally could be loosely translated to “May 18 recall fraudulent goods” (518退貨ㄌㄨㄚˋ！). Unlike in English, where the terms are the same, “recall” (退貨) in this context refers to product recalls due to damaged, defective or fraudulent merchandise, not the political recalls (罷免) currently dominating the headlines. I attended the rally to determine if the impression was correct that the TPP under party Chairman Huang Kuo-Chang (黃國昌) had little of a
RSS