Thai Lao Yeh (太老爺) is not your usual Thai restaurant in Taipei. It has the ambience of a bistro, featuring the food of Thailand’s Northeastern region in small plates, boosted by a solid selection of beer and wine. The restaurant’s interior was designed by Yeh Yu-ching (葉裕清), a Taiwanese designer who has lived in Thailand for nearly 20 years. Yeh has also built and ran a couple of popular Bangkok hotels.
It was just recently that Yeh expanded his undertaking to Taipei, with Thai Lao Yeh’s third branch opening three months ago at the intersection of Shaoxing South Street (紹興南街) and Xuzhou Road (徐州路). My dining companions and I visited this branch on a weekend. Adorned with a lush outdoor seating area in a quiet, shady neighborhood, the restaurant is appealing from the outside. Inside, the rare high ceiling and bamboo wall coverings exude a laid-back, tropical charm. Lighting is dim and hazily pleasant at night.
According to the restaurant’s Facebook page, its menu centers on Northeastern Thai cuisine, which shares notable influences from culinary traditions in the bordering countries of Laos and Cambodia. Richly flavored and served in small portions, the majority of the dishes lend themselves to sharing among friends.
Photo: Ho Yi, Taipei Times
Delectable tidbits such as deep-fried fish cake (炸魚餅, NT$120) and deep-fried chicken feet (炸雞爪, NT$120) are common street foods in Thailand. Eaten with chili peppers, garlic and slices of lettuce, the sour pork sausage (烤東北酸香腸, NT$160) was a fun treat but not as tart-tasting as its name suggests.
A bit of Laotian influence can be detected in the spicy larb salad with minced beef, Laotian style (辣拌寮國牛, NT$180). Known as larb, the salad is composed of minced meat and herbs, spiced with lemon juice, chili peppers and fermented fish sauce. The spicy nam tok salad with pork neck (辣淋松阪豬, NT$180) is a similar appetizer seasoned with lemongrass and fish sauce.
The dish that won unanimous approval on our table was the Thai curry fat crab (泰式咖哩肥蟹, NT$680 or NT$1,280). Cooked with chili oil, chicken bones and creamy red curry sauce, the food is as messy as it is gratifying, and you are left licking your fingers and wanting more.
Photo: Ho Yi, Taipei Times
Also on offer are several other crustacean dishes originating from different parts of Southeast Asia, such as the Laotian garlic and chili deep-fried fat crab (寮國蒜炸肥蟹, NT$680), Vietnamese garlic and butter grilled fat crab (越式蒜烤肥蟹, NT$680) and the Thai fat crab fried with holy basil (泰式打拋肥蟹, NT$680).
Another specialty of Thai Lao Yeh is its fine selection of soup. The spicy soup with chicken feet (酸辣雞爪湯, NT$120 or NT$320) is said to be to a hangover cure which is popular amongst young club-hoppers in Thailand. Another must-try is the tom yum goong, or what the restaurant calls its famous hot spicy soup with shrimp (苳茵酸辣鮮蝦湯, NT$160 or NT$420).
Other recommended dishes include stir-fried holy basil with seafood (打拋海鮮, NT$210), grilled chicken thigh with lemongrass (烤雞腿, NT$160) and the Thai hot pot (太老爺火鍋) (NT$680 for two) with tom yum soup base.
Photo: Ho Yi, Taipei Times
Apart from the a la carte menu, there are three types of set meals for groups of two, four and six (NT$620, NT$1,320 and NT$1,800). To pair with the richly flavorful food, the restaurant offers a collection of red, white and sparkling wine from France and Germany (NT$680 to NT$2,080).
Thai Lao Yeh has another venue in the city, located at Taipei Expo Park (花博公園). Tel: (02) 2597-1508. Those interested in checking out its Bangkok headquarters can go to www.cabochonhotel.com.
Photo: Ho Yi, Taipei Times
Photo: Ho Yi, Taipei Times
By global standards, the traffic congestion that afflicts Taiwan’s urban areas isn’t horrific. But nor is it something the country can be proud of. According to TomTom, a Dutch developer of location and navigation technologies, last year Taiwan was the sixth most congested country in Asia. Of the 492 towns and cities included in its rankings last year, Taipei was the 74th most congested. Taoyuan ranked 105th, while Hsinchu County (121st), Taichung (142nd), Tainan (173rd), New Taipei City (227th), Kaohsiung (241st) and Keelung (302nd) also featured on the list. Four Japanese cities have slower traffic than Taipei. (Seoul, which has some
Michael slides a sequin glove over the pop star’s tarnished legacy, shrouding Michael Jackson’s complications with a conventional biopic that, if you cover your ears, sounds great. Antoine Fuqua’s movie is sanctioned by Jackson’s estate and its producers include the estate’s executors. So it is, by its nature, a narrow, authorized perspective on Jackson. The film ends before the flood of allegations of sexual abuse of children, or Jackson’s own acknowledgment of sleeping alongside kids. Jackson and his estate have long maintained his innocence. In his only criminal trial, in 2005, Jackson was acquitted. Michael doesn’t even subtly nod to these facts.
Writing of the finds at the ancient iron-working site of Shihsanhang (十 三行) in New Taipei City’s Bali District (八里), archaeologist Tsang Cheng-hwa (臧振華) of the Academia Sinica’s Institute of History and Philology observes: “One bronze bowl gilded with gold, together with copper coins and fragments of Tang and Song ceramics, were also found. These provide evidence for early contact between Taiwan aborigines and Chinese.” The Shihsanhang Web site from the Ministry of Culture says of the finds: “They were evidence that the residents of the area had a close trading relation with Chinese civilians, as the coins can be
During her 2015 trip to Taiwan, Sophia J. Chang (張詠慧) got fewer answers than she’d hoped for, but more revelations than she could have imagined. “That was the year I last saw my grandmother. She was in hospice care in Tainan, and it was painful to see her in bed, barely able to open her eyes,” says Los Angeles-born Chang. “The grandma I’d known, a fantastic cook and incredibly kind, was already gone.” After their visit, Chang and her grandfather went back to his apartment. There she asked him how he’d met her grandmother. “He hesitated, then started talking a bit.
RSS