If you’re looking for a cool summer breeze in the Taipei area, it’s tough to beat Bitan (碧潭), located close to Xindian MRT Station (新店捷運站). A major renovation project completed at the end of 2008 breathed new life into this riverside park area, which has a wood deck arcade lined with outdoor cafes and restaurants.
The dozen or so establishments here serve everything from cold tea drinks and kebab sandwiches to Korean barbecue and Japanese ramen noodles, and offer covered seating areas with nice views of the glistening green waters from which Bitan derives its name.
Waterfront (水灣) presents itself as one of the more upscale dining choices, with wait staff dressed in matching tropical-themed uniforms and a menu comprised of a mish-mash selection of Western-style dishes. The food is decent and nicely presented, but some items are overpriced and cater more to the Taiwanese imagination than Western palates.
The crispy pork knuckle (NT$700, NT$720 for beer-flavored) is listed as a house recommendation, as is the grilled duck breast (NT$680), which was sold out on my visit. I settled for the John Dory (NT$540), a white ocean fish that Waterfront serves breaded and pan-fried. The fish fillet was tender and flaky and tasted fresh, but the kebab vegetables on the side were hit and miss. The zucchini was tasty, but the potato was ruined by a sickly-sweet glaze.
Other main courses include short-rib beefsteak (NT$760) and several seafood pastas for NT$540. All main course meals come with soup (creamy pumpkin with bacon bits on this visit), a bread roll (which was a little stale), a drink (coffee, tea, soda or juice; the mango-pomelo juice with vinegar is good on a hot day) and dessert.
For something lighter, there’s a selection of salads and pizzas, but the pictures in the menu don’t hold out much promise. The Caesar salad (NT$250) looked thoroughly unappetizing, with a photograph showing a clump of lettuce overflowing with a creamy dressing and whole strips of bacon covered in cheese.
My dining companion liked the “Italian-style tomato and cheese pizza” (NT$300), which I found too salty. The thin crust was also too oily, but the dish won points for fresh toppings, which included buffalo mozzarella. However, pizza aficionados will likely be disappointed, and the portions — it’s an 8-inch pie — are small for what you pay.
The dessert selection consists of Thai-style ice cream (a scoop of vanilla served with tapioca and sweet beans), Black Forest banana cake and apple pie. At NT$160 for a single order, neither the ice cream nor the apple pie are worth trying, unless you get them with a main course meal.
But there’s no need to splurge to enjoy the scenery and the comfy seating at Waterfront. The minimum charge per person is NT$150 (plus 10 percent service charge), and the restaurant offers a large variety of beverages to fuel an extended chat with friends. Espresso drinks, tea, juices and smoothies run from NT$160 to NT$180; Heineken on tap is available at NT$250 for 500ml and NT$1,100 for 2,500ml and bottled beers from the microbrewery North Taiwan Brewing Company are NT$180 each.
When the weather is nice on weekends, expect large crowds and a long wait. The restaurant recommends making a reservation a week in advance for a table with a view. And don’t let the sunshine or a light rain scare you away — the entire arcade is covered by a large awning that provides ample protection.
June 5 to June 11 After trying all day, reporters finally reached then-Peking University president Ding Shisun (丁石孫) by phone. It was around 6pm on June 10, 1989, the first day that Taiwanese could directly call people in China, and a week after the People’s Liberation Army began violently suppressing the pro-democracy student protests in Tiananmen Square. The reporters, who worked at the Liberty Times (Taipei Times’ sister newspaper), asked Ding about the situation at the school, whose students were the center of the demonstrations. Ding replied, “The students have all left!” When they asked whether any students or professors had been
It’s certainly been a pleasure watching the presidential campaign launch of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate Hou You-yi (侯友宜) lurch painfully about like a wounded pachyderm in search of an elephant graveyard. Hou’s fall to third place in some polls last week appears early, and it might still be recoverable. But grumbling in his party about replacing him has already begun. Indeed, all indications are that the party that twice gave us Lien Chan (連戰), the most despised politician in Taiwan, as a presidential candidate and later offered voters Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) and Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), is arcing along its normal
When Toi Windham co-organized a Black Lives Matter rally in Taipei three years ago, she received some unfriendly comments questioning the relevance of such an event to Taiwan. “They were like, don’t bring your American problems here, we’re not racist,” she says. While it’s true that African-Americans don’t experience the same overt racial tension here as they do back home, microaggressions such as constant stares, people trying to touch her hair or making insensitive comments are part of Windham’s daily life. Discriminatory hiring practices still occur. Plus, blatant racism toward Southeast Asian migrant workers and the indigenous community regularly make
Most tourists and longtime residents of Taiwan have visited Taipei’s tallest building, Taipei 101, at some point. Far fewer make it inside the building that was Taipei’s tallest over a century ago and is still standing today. It has withstood fires, American bombardment during World War II and major political regime changes. Throughout most of its existence, its purpose has remained the same, serving as an office for the leader of Taiwan: the governor-general during the Japanese era, and the Republic of China (ROC) president since then. This place is the Presidential Office Building (總統府). As it is still in active
RSS