1010 Hunan Cuisine (1010湘辣料理), an undertaking by the Tai Tong Food & Beverage Group (瓦城泰統集團), which already has two successful chain restaurants — Thai Town (瓦城) and Very Thai (非常泰) — under its belt, shares many similarities with its Thai-inspired counterparts. Located on the sixth floor of the Eslite Bookstore Xinyi Branch (信義誠品書店), it boasts a clean-cut interior, a family-friendly atmosphere and a menu that alters traditional recipes to cater to the popular palate.
I was unable to book a table one day before a planned meal on a recent Sunday evening. Sensing my disappointment over the phone, the staff person suggested that my group come before 6pm to avoid a long wait. One hour after arriving, our six-person party was seated in a brightly lit dining area featuring a soothing color scheme of light wood brown and pastel white.
The menu begins with the restaurant’s top 10 dishes, which could be seen on many of the dining tables. The fried pork ribs with chili and fennel spices (神仙孜然肋排骨, NT$130 per rib) was a mouthwatering highlight. First marinated with dozens of spices and then deep-fried to a crisp golden brown with different types of chili, the ribs burst with meaty juiciness, while a thin, fried layer of cumin added a delightful crunchiness.
Photo: Ho Yi, Taipei Times
The restaurant’s rendition of hot pot of preserved tofu and pork intestine (臭豆腐肥腸干鍋, NT$380) is a standard mixture of chunks of congealed pig blood, intestines and tofu that absorb the savory broth, which is flavored with lashings of chili and chopped scallion. However, when the fried chicken meat, heart and gizzards Hunan style (鄉巴佬炒雞, NT$280) and fried chicken with red chili (辣子尋雞丁, NT$280) arrived, the heaps of chilies started to lose their novelty value, and a few of my dining companions complained that the chili was too mild and had been toned down to suit popular tastes.
Among the disappointments on our table was the fish ball and spinach soup (菠菜魚丸湯, NT$250 or NT$320), which was as insipid as it sounds.
Another highlight of the meal, buns with condensed milk (金銀饅頭, NT$120 for six buns), available steamed or deep-fried, offered a brief escape from the bombardment of flavors.
The restaurant has a small vegetarian menu that includes sauteed shredded potato with vinegar (醋溜土豆絲, NT$180), which has a pleasant tartness and makes a good appetizer.
For a group of three to six, a selection from the set menu, which features many of the restaurant’s signature dishes, costs NT$450 per person plus a 10 percent service charge.
1010 Hunan Cuisine operates two other venues in Taipei and two in Taichung. For more information, visit the restaurant’s Web site at www.1010restaurant.com.
When Taiwan was battered by storms this summer, the only crumb of comfort I could take was knowing that some advice I’d drafted several weeks earlier had been correct. Regarding the Southern Cross-Island Highway (南橫公路), a spectacular high-elevation route connecting Taiwan’s southwest with the country’s southeast, I’d written: “The precarious existence of this road cannot be overstated; those hoping to drive or ride all the way across should have a backup plan.” As this article was going to press, the middle section of the highway, between Meishankou (梅山口) in Kaohsiung and Siangyang (向陽) in Taitung County, was still closed to outsiders
President William Lai (賴清德) has championed Taiwan as an “AI Island” — an artificial intelligence (AI) hub powering the global tech economy. But without major shifts in talent, funding and strategic direction, this vision risks becoming a static fortress: indispensable, yet immobile and vulnerable. It’s time to reframe Taiwan’s ambition. Time to move from a resource-rich AI island to an AI Armada. Why change metaphors? Because choosing the right metaphor shapes both understanding and strategy. The “AI Island” frames our national ambition as a static fortress that, while valuable, is still vulnerable and reactive. Shifting our metaphor to an “AI Armada”
The older you get, and the more obsessed with your health, the more it feels as if life comes down to numbers: how many more years you can expect; your lean body mass; your percentage of visceral fat; how dense your bones are; how many kilos you can squat; how long you can deadhang; how often you still do it; your levels of LDL and HDL cholesterol; your resting heart rate; your overnight blood oxygen level; how quickly you can run; how many steps you do in a day; how many hours you sleep; how fast you are shrinking; how
US President Donald Trump may have hoped for an impromptu talk with his old friend Kim Jong-un during a recent trip to Asia, but analysts say the increasingly emboldened North Korean despot had few good reasons to join the photo-op. Trump sent repeated overtures to Kim during his barnstorming tour of Asia, saying he was “100 percent” open to a meeting and even bucking decades of US policy by conceding that North Korea was “sort of a nuclear power.” But Pyongyang kept mum on the invitation, instead firing off missiles and sending its foreign minister to Russia and Belarus, with whom it
RSS