When it comes to jumbo-sized sushi, many Taiwanese foodies immediately think of San Wei Shi Tang (三味食堂). This neighborhood eatery gained national fame when a blogger posted a photo on the Internet several years ago showing that its nigiri roll was bigger than a mobile phone. It is now one of the busiest restaurants in town, and reservations are not available.
San Wei (三味) refers to the restaurant’s three characteristics: good food, good memories and good flavors (美味、回味、好滋味). Shi Tang (食堂) simply means “dining hall” in Chinese.
Established 18 years ago at the edge of Ximending (西門町), San Wei is about a 15-minute walk from Ximen MRT Station (西門站). Arriving for lunch at 1pm on a weekday, the restaurant was still full while dozens of guests were waiting outside. After obtaining a number from the waiter, my friend and I waited for over 30 minutes until our number finally flashed on a display by the door. We were quickly seated at a small square table with stools on the first floor of the two-story restaurant. It was rather clean but very crowded inside.
Photo: Eddy Chang, Taipei Times
At San Wei, you need to write down your orders by yourself. But don’t worry. Waiters can explain the menu in English and Japanese if you can’t read Chinese. The extensive menu offers 60 to 70 classic dishes, as well as free miso soup and refills. We ordered the popular sashimi combo (生魚片, NT$300) and the nigiri combo half-set (握壽司[半份], NT$160). The sashimi combo included tuna, salmon, cuttlefish and crab sticks. The raw fish was thickly sliced and we could clearly taste the sweetness of the fish.
The restaurant’s signature dish, the nigiri combo half-set (raw fish on vinegar rice) included three nigiri rolls. And if you feel hungry, you can always try the whole set (NT$250) with six rolls: tuna, salmon, spearfish, amberjack, cuttlefish and shrimp. Although it was not our first visit, we were overwhelmed by the giant size of the rolls, which were several times larger than regular rolls. I really enjoyed the large pieces of fish over small dabs of rice, whose vinegar flavor was not too strong. The chef already applied some wasabi to glue the fish to the rice and brushed some soybean sauce on the fish to make it shiny and flavorsome, so I suggest that diners not add too much wasabi or soybean sauce when eating the rolls.
We also ordered an asparagus hand roll (蘆筍手卷, NT$70) and a sea urchin hand roll (海膽手卷, NT$140). The hand rolls were so big that they were served in beer glasses. The sea urchin roll was particularly fine, and the chef put a generous amount on my roll.
Photo: Eddy Chang, Taipei Times
For grilled items, the grilled chicken skewer with barbecue sauce (雞肉串燒, NT$60) was my favorite. There were four big chunks of chicken on each stick, and the meat was slightly burned with white sesame sprinkled on the surface to enrich its flavor.
For fried items, we ordered the deep-fried vegetable tempura (野菜天, NT$140) featuring taro and yam slices, some burdocks and string beans. But I was not very impressed with the battered and deep-fried vegetables, and the sauce was light and flavorless.
At previous visits, I had the vegetable salad (野菜沙拉, NT$130) and would highly recommend it. The mix of lettuce, cucumber, corn, black soybeans, fish egg and mashed potato is a good combination. Both the fried chicken (雞肉唐揚, NT$150) and fish and shrimp tempura (炸魚蝦天, NT$220) also deserve a try.
Photo: Eddy Chang, Taipei Times
The lunch for two cost me NT$930, and there is no service charge. We could not finish the vegetable tempura and had to take it home. Overall, if you like large portions of Japanese food with a fair quality and price (and do not care about the atmosphere), San Wei may be a good option.
Photo: Eddy Chang, Taipei Times
June 2 to June 8 Taiwan’s woodcutters believe that if they see even one speck of red in their cooked rice, no matter how small, an accident is going to happen. Peng Chin-tian (彭錦田) swears that this has proven to be true at every stop during his decades-long career in the logging industry. Along with mining, timber harvesting was once considered the most dangerous profession in Taiwan. Not only were mishaps common during all stages of processing, it was difficult to transport the injured to get medical treatment. Many died during the arduous journey. Peng recounts some of his accidents in
“Why does Taiwan identity decline?”a group of researchers lead by University of Nevada political scientist Austin Wang (王宏恩) asked in a recent paper. After all, it is not difficult to explain the rise in Taiwanese identity after the early 1990s. But no model predicted its decline during the 2016-2018 period, they say. After testing various alternative explanations, Wang et al argue that the fall-off in Taiwanese identity during that period is related to voter hedging based on the performance of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Since the DPP is perceived as the guardian of Taiwan identity, when it performs well,
A short walk beneath the dense Amazon canopy, the forest abruptly opens up. Fallen logs are rotting, the trees grow sparser and the temperature rises in places sunlight hits the ground. This is what 24 years of severe drought looks like in the world’s largest rainforest. But this patch of degraded forest, about the size of a soccer field, is a scientific experiment. Launched in 2000 by Brazilian and British scientists, Esecaflor — short for “Forest Drought Study Project” in Portuguese — set out to simulate a future in which the changing climate could deplete the Amazon of rainfall. It is
The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on May 18 held a rally in Taichung to mark the anniversary of President William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20. The title of the rally could be loosely translated to “May 18 recall fraudulent goods” (518退貨ㄌㄨㄚˋ!). Unlike in English, where the terms are the same, “recall” (退貨) in this context refers to product recalls due to damaged, defective or fraudulent merchandise, not the political recalls (罷免) currently dominating the headlines. I attended the rally to determine if the impression was correct that the TPP under party Chairman Huang Kuo-Chang (黃國昌) had little of a