Jolly offers up an unusual but tantalizing combination of Thai food and beer from the restaurant’s microbrewery. The eatery has two locations, one in Neihu and the other on Qingcheng Street (慶城店) near the Nanjing East Road MRT Station (南京東路捷運站). This review is for the latter.
The restaurant prides itself on serving food and drinks with its own signature combination of flavors. Jolly says its take on Thai cuisine emphasizes the use of Thai spices and herbs to create a balance between tangy and spicy flavors, while its beers combine European and American brewing methods.
My dining companion said that Jolly’s pale ale, one of its regular offerings, was not too sweet nor too bitter, but also did not stand out from other pale ales he had sampled before. The pilsner, which he had on a previous visit, is a good choice for people who like dry, slightly sweet beer. (Beers range from NT$110 for a 250ml glass to NT$350 for 800ml).
Photo: Catherine Shu, Taipei Times
Jolly’s current drink special is passionfruit witbier (wheat bear) made from a blend of barley malts with unmalted wheat and oats. Passion fruit is added during the first fermentation. The juice’s acidic flavor adds a gentle but tart kick to the witbier’s honey-like aroma and crisp, yeasty flavor.
The light, slightly sweet beer paired very well with the spicy squid salad (NT$280), made with squid, basil, cherry tomatoes and red onion gently tossed with a mixture of jalapeno peppers, fish sauce and lemon juice. The texture and taste of the crisp red onions and vinegary cherry tomatoes was a toothsome contrast to the tender but firm slices of squid.
Like the spicy squid salad, crab fried rice (NT$270) can be found on the menus of many other Thai restaurants, but Jolly’s version stands out by not being too greasy and having plenty of fat crab claw meat. It is stir-fried with just enough green onion slices and fluffy scrambled egg to make the dish hearty without being too heavy. Slices of dried seaweed and diced fresh cucumber are served on the side to sprinkle on top of the rice for a bit of crunch.
Photo: Catherine Shu, Taipei Times
All the classic Thai curries — red, green and yellow — appear on Jolly’s menu, and are thick, rich and creamy without being cloying.
Filled with fresh, crunchy snap peas and potato, our yellow curry chicken (NT$275) was served with thick white bread slices for dipping. The sweet coconut milk was offset by plenty of very hot cayenne pepper.
My favorite course of the evening was our chicken with coconut milk soup (NT$300). Served piping hot in a tureen with enough soup for four people, it is made with dark chicken meat still on the bone, galangal, lemon grass and kaffir lime leaves stewed in lemon juice and coconut milk. The smooth, creamy broth has a wonderful, satisfying array of flavors and aromas.
Photo: Catherine Shu, Taipei Times
The interior of Jolly’s Qingcheng Street location is furnished like a sports bar, with heavy dark wood furniture and a small TV screen mounted next to each table that broadcasts games and sports news. The well-lit space is family friendly, however, and there is a patio that faces onto the road for warm weather dining.
Late last month Philippines Foreign Affairs Secretary Theresa Lazaro told the Philippine Senate that the nation has sufficient funds to evacuate the nearly 170,000 Filipino residents in Taiwan, 84 percent of whom are migrant workers, in the event of war. Agencies have been exploring evacuation scenarios since early this year, she said. She also observed that since the Philippines has only limited ships, the government is consulting security agencies for alternatives. Filipinos are a distant third in overall migrant worker population. Indonesia has over 248,000 workers, followed by roughly 240,000 Vietnamese. It should be noted that there are another 170,000
Enter the Dragon 13 will bring Taiwan’s first taste of Dirty Boxing Sunday at Taipei Gymnasium, one highlight of a mixed-rules card blending new formats with traditional MMA. The undercard starts at 10:30am, with the main card beginning at 4pm. Tickets are NT$1,200. Dirty Boxing is a US-born ruleset popularized by fighters Mike Perry and Jon Jones as an alternative to boxing. The format has gained traction overseas, with its inaugural championship streamed free to millions on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. Taiwan’s version allows punches and elbows with clinch striking, but bans kicks, knees and takedowns. The rules are stricter than the
“Far from being a rock or island … it turns out that the best metaphor to describe the human body is ‘sponge.’ We’re permeable,” write Rick Smith and Bruce Lourie in their book Slow Death By Rubber Duck: The Secret Danger of Everyday Things. While the permeability of our cells is key to being alive, it also means we absorb more potentially harmful substances than we realize. Studies have found a number of chemical residues in human breast milk, urine and water systems. Many of them are endocrine disruptors, which can interfere with the body’s natural hormones. “They can mimic, block
Pratas Island, or Dongsha (東沙群島) had lain off the southern coast of China for thousands of years with no one claiming it until 1908, when a Japanese merchant set up a facility there to harvest guano. The Americans, then overlords of the Philippines, disturbed to learn of Japanese expansion so close to their colony, alerted the Manchu (Qing) government. That same year the British government asked the Manchus who owned the island, which prompted the Manchu government to make a claim, according to South China Sea expert Bill Hayton. In 1909 the government of Guangdong finally got around to sending
RSS