Bravo Burger, which opened its third Taipei location in Gongguan (公館) last year, has quickly become a standout warrior in the capital’s burger wars. Matador Nights, a Web site “covering the world’s best nightlife, festivals and eats,” organized a contest earlier this year after digesting “some serious burger porn.” It gave one of its intrepid reviewers the “beefy challenge” of picking the world’s top 50 burger joints. Bravo Burger was the only restaurant in Taiwan to make the list.
Taiwan’s food bloggers agree with the accolade. I couldn’t find one negative word written about the place — except that without a reservation you’ll be waiting for a seat. On my most recent visit on Monday at 4:30pm, the restaurant’s second floor, which seats about 40 people at its comfy booths and stand-alone tables, was half full. By the time I left at 5:30pm, it was packed.
Exposed dark wood beams, white walls adorned with framed pictures lend it a British-style pub vibe. But if Bravo’s interior seems vaguely English, the menu and portions are all-American.
Photo: Noah Buchan, Taipei Times
Fresh ingredients and lean beef go into making the menu’s 12 burger choices, which all come served with a bottomless drink and a choice of fries, onion rings or fried mushrooms. Bravo also serves up three chicken burgers and a fish burger. I tried the popular bacon, cheese and double patty burger (NT$340) served with crispy homemade onion rings.
Order this monstrosity if you haven’t been getting enough attention at home — or if you didn’t eat enough over Christmas.
“It’s so big,” gushed a young woman at the table next to me when it arrived. The burger’s superlative size attracted attention from other patrons, who craned their necks for a look. In fact, it wasn’t so much a burger as a small tower. As Matador’s reviewer wrote: “You need a mechanical jaw to bite into the thing.”
What we’re talking about here are two quarter pound patties layered between three slices of melted cheese, and topped with generous amounts of onion, pickles, tomato and lettuce — all of it stacked within a large bun. The patties are made from lean beef, but a word of caution: they are only grilled for a few minutes, leaving them pink in the middle. Diners who like their burger well done should inform their server when ordering.
What surprised me about the burger was that it didn’t leave me feeling bloated or lethargic. The Oreo milk shake (NT$120) that I ordered was large, thick and mixed with plenty of cookies.
Bravo Burger also serves a limited range of appetizers — calamari (NT$170), fried mozzarella (NT$170), chicken fingers (NT$120) and Buffalo wings (NT$160) — as well as hard-to-find sodas such as root beer, Dr Pepper, Mountain Dew and ginger ale (NT$70). The restaurant stocks Budweiser and Heineken (NT$100), and sells mixed drinks, including Jack Daniels and cola (NT$120).
Not in the Gongguan area? Bravo’s other two locations are at 2, Ln 140, Minquan E Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市民權東路三段140巷2號), tel: (02) 2713-5923, and 72, Civic Boulevard Sec 4, Taipei City (台北市市民大道四段72號), tel: (02) 8771-9787.
The primaries for this year’s nine-in-one local elections in November began early in this election cycle, starting last autumn. The local press has been full of tales of intrigue, betrayal, infighting and drama going back to the summer of 2024. This is not widely covered in the English-language press, and the nine-in-one elections are not well understood. The nine-in-one elections refer to the nine levels of local governments that go to the ballot, from the neighborhood and village borough chief level on up to the city mayor and county commissioner level. The main focus is on the 22 special municipality
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) invaded Vietnam in 1979, following a year of increasingly tense relations between the two states. Beijing viewed Vietnam’s close relations with Soviet Russia as a threat. One of the pretexts it used was the alleged mistreatment of the ethnic Chinese in Vietnam. Tension between the ethnic Chinese and governments in Vietnam had been ongoing for decades. The French used to play off the Vietnamese against the Chinese as a divide-and-rule strategy. The Saigon government in 1956 compelled all Vietnam-born Chinese to adopt Vietnamese citizenship. It also banned them from 11 trades they had previously
In the 2010s, the Communist Party of China (CCP) began cracking down on Christian churches. Media reports said at the time that various versions of Protestant Christianity were likely the fastest growing religions in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The crackdown was part of a campaign that in turn was part of a larger movement to bring religion under party control. For the Protestant churches, “the government’s aim has been to force all churches into the state-controlled organization,” according to a 2023 article in Christianity Today. That piece was centered on Wang Yi (王怡), the fiery, charismatic pastor of the
Hsu Pu-liao (許不了) never lived to see the premiere of his most successful film, The Clown and the Swan (小丑與天鵝, 1985). The movie, which starred Hsu, the “Taiwanese Charlie Chaplin,” outgrossed Jackie Chan’s Heart of Dragon (龍的心), earning NT$9.2 million at the local box office. Forty years after its premiere, the film has become the Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute’s (TFAI) 100th restoration. “It is the only one of Hsu’s films whose original negative survived,” says director Kevin Chu (朱延平), one of Taiwan’s most commercially successful
RSS