Though it is located within sight of Taipei City Hall, Mayur Indian Kitchen is easy to miss because the small takeaway restaurant is tucked among a row of motorcycle repair shops and food stands behind the Keelung Road underpass. Mayur Indian Kitchen is just a kitchen counter with a few tables lined up on the sidewalk, but it offers a wide, constantly changing assortment of home-style Indian cooking. (A second location is located in New Taipei City’s St Ignatius Plaza (徐匯廣場) shopping mall).
Owner Mayur Srivastava worked as a hotel chef before opening Mayur Indian Kitchen six months ago. The eatery’s dishes are freshly prepared and feature whole spices instead of powdered versions. The restaurant specializes in north Indian cuisine, but also offers south Indian classics like dosa, or savory pancakes made from rice flour and lentils served with a variety of stuffings, and crispy samosas. The restaurant frequently changes its menus and offers specials depending on the season. For example, next week Mayur will began serving homemade yogurt, mango and lemon drinks for the warm weather.
“We keep changing our menu because we want to let people taste new things every time. There are so many dishes in India,” says Srivastava.
Photo: Catherine Shu, Taipei Times
The curries I ate at Mayur Indian Kitchen are mildly spicy, but can be made more piquant based on customer requests. The restaurant offers several jain, or vegetarian dishes, such as aloo gobhi (NT$110), which is made with sauteed potato, cauliflower, tomato and spices. I liked how the cauliflower was lightly cooked to retain some of its crunch. The tandoori chicken masala (NT$145) was also good, though most of the chicken was still on the bone and it became tiresome picking off the meat. My favorite dish of the night was the chana masala (NT$95), which paired very well with the butter naan (NT$55). Mayur Indian Kitchen’s freshly prepared version of the Indian flatbread is especially good: the edges are baked until crisp, while the middle is moist and chewy — just right for scooping up curry. The naan comes in 14 savory or sweet flavors. My companion and I also ordered the garlic version (NT$55), which was topped with a plentiful sprinkling of seaweed flakes. The flavor combination was fine but unexpected. We preferred how the plain butter naan tasted with our other dishes.
On a separate visit, I ordered a vegetarian lunch set with chickpea curry, which was made with a liberal helping of cumin. Even the simple cabbage salad included with the set was sprinkled with plenty of fennel seeds, which offered an interesting contrast to the tart vinegar dressing and was a cool palate cleanser after the rich curry and rice.
For dessert, Mayur Indian Kitchen offers both gulab jamun (deep-fried milk balls served in sugar syrup, NT$80) and gajar halwa (NT$95), which we ordered. The deliciously thick, sticky pudding-like dish is made with carrots and cashew nuts cooked in milk and made my sweet tooth very happy.
Photo: Catherine Shu, Taipei Times
May 18 to May 24 Pastor Yang Hsu’s (楊煦) congregation was shocked upon seeing the land he chose to build his orphanage. It was surrounded by mountains on three sides, and the only way to access it was to cross a river by foot. The soil was poor due to runoff, and large rocks strewn across the plot prevented much from growing. In addition, there was no running water or electricity. But it was all Yang could afford. He and his Indigenous Atayal wife Lin Feng-ying (林鳳英) had already been caring for 24 orphans in their home, and they were in
On May 2, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫), at a meeting in support of Taipei city councilors at party headquarters, compared President William Lai (賴清德) to Hitler. Chu claimed that unlike any other democracy worldwide in history, no other leader was rooting out opposing parties like Lai and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). That his statements are wildly inaccurate was not the point. It was a rallying cry, not a history lesson. This was intentional to provoke the international diplomatic community into a response, which was promptly provided. Both the German and Israeli offices issued statements on Facebook
Even by the standards of Ukraine’s International Legion, which comprises volunteers from over 55 countries, Han has an unusual backstory. Born in Taichung, he grew up in Costa Rica — then one of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies — where a relative worked for the embassy. After attending an American international high school in San Jose, Costa Rica’s capital, Han — who prefers to use only his given name for OPSEC (operations security) reasons — moved to the US in his teens. He attended Penn State University before returning to Taiwan to work in the semiconductor industry in Kaohsiung, where he
Australia’s ABC last week published a piece on the recall campaign. The article emphasized the divisions in Taiwanese society and blamed the recall for worsening them. It quotes a supporter of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) as saying “I’m 43 years old, born and raised here, and I’ve never seen the country this divided in my entire life.” Apparently, as an adult, she slept through the post-election violence in 2000 and 2004 by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), the veiled coup threats by the military when Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) became president, the 2006 Red Shirt protests against him ginned up by
RSS