The French Michelin Guide yesterday awarded stars to 24 establishments in its second restaurant guide to Taipei.
“Our inspectors were not only impressed by the standard of local Taiwanese cuisine, but also by the global influences being imported by the very talented and innovative local chefs, which together will no doubt entice food lovers from around the world,” said Gwendal Poullennec, International Director of the Michelin Guides.
Establishments like Tairroir (態芮) and Raw, prominent names that each received a star last year for thoughtful modern treatments of Taiwanese ingredients, embody that attitude. Both restaurants rose to earn two stars in this year’s guide.
Photo: Ling Mei-hsueh, Taipei Times
The name Tairroir — a portmanteau of “Taiwan” and “terroir” — is an artist’s statement by chef Kai Ho (何順凱). Speaking after the ceremony yesterday morning, Ho said that his intention went beyond using indigenous ingredients, to give diners an immersive experience in Taiwanese culture and history.
Raw, opened by renowned chef Andre Chiang (江振誠) in 2014, is already one of the city’s most in-demand reservations. Chiang’s decision to shutter his eponymous two-star restaurant in Singapore last year and return to train a new generation of Taiwanese chefs was regarded as a boon for the country’s culinary scene.
Chef Alain Huang (黃以倫) said that Raw, which treats local ingredients with French techniques, had taken the last year to embark on “deeper research” into Taiwanese produce and culture. But the win still came as a surprise.
Photo courtesy of Taiwan Michelin
Also among the new one-star recipients is Mountain and Sea House (山海樓), which serves meticulously-researched banquet-style dishes honoring Taiwan’s culinary heritage. Chef Tsai Jui-lang (蔡瑞郎) acknowledged the hard work of colleagues who scour the island in search of native species of ingredients, allowing his kitchen to revive authentic versions of Taiwanese dishes from early 20th-century recipe archives.
Two young restaurants that opened just last year also received one star each at yesterday’s ceremony — Logy, which Hokkaido-born chef Ryogo Tahara said aspires to bring French and Italian inflections to Asian cuisine; and Impromptu by Paul Lee, which offers casual fine-dining for an international palate.
One new entrant immediately received two stars on its first outing with the Michelin Guide. Sushi Amamoto is a 12-seat sushi bar offering a 20-course chef’s choice menu, with seasonal fish flown in from Kyushu and Tokyo.
Photo: Chou Tsai-wei, Taipei Times
Cantonese restaurant Le Palais (頤宮) at the Palais de Chine Hotel remains Taipei’s only three-star Michelin establishment.
Reactions by recipients ranged from delight to near nonchalance, with many admitting that they could not take the day off to celebrate as they had full houses of reservations to honor.
“The pressure starts tomorrow,” Ho said, acknowleding the high scrutiny and expectations that Michelin honorees receive.
STREET FOOD CAPITAL
Earlier, Michelin also named 58 eateries, including 25 new entrants, in its more affordable Bib Gourmand selection. To qualify for the Bib Gourmand, an eatery must offer a three-course meal not exceeding NT$1,000 (roughly US$32).
Gongguan (公館), Yansan (延三) and Huaxi Street (華西街) night markets made their debut on the list, which already recognizes Shilin (士林), Ningxia (寧夏), Raohe (饒河), Nanjichang (南機場) and Linjiang (臨江) night markets.
Yansan landed a whopping three recommendations on its first appearance, owing to the market’s delectable cabbage rice and pork rib soup, savory tube rice cakes and glutinous rice meat dumplings.
Like other Asian capitals with rich street food cultures, the Bib Gourmand selection lends a sheen of glamor to Taipei natives’ humble favorites like scallion pancake, stinky tofu and guabao (割包) — flat steamed buns stuffed with braised pork — and will be an indispensable guide for globe-trotting foodies.
Has the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) changed under the leadership of Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌)? In tone and messaging, it obviously has, but this is largely driven by events over the past year. How much is surface noise, and how much is substance? How differently party founder Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) would have handled these events is impossible to determine because the biggest event was Ko’s own arrest on multiple corruption charges and being jailed incommunicado. To understand the similarities and differences that may be evolving in the Huang era, we must first understand Ko’s TPP. ELECTORAL STRATEGY The party’s strategy under Ko was
Before the recall election drowned out other news, CNN last month became the latest in a long line of media organs to report on abuses of migrant workers in Taiwan’s fishing fleet. After a brief flare of interest, the news media moved on. The migrant worker issues, however, did not. CNN’s stinging title, “Taiwan is held up as a bastion of liberal values. But migrant workers report abuse, injury and death in its fishing industry,” was widely quoted, including by the Fisheries Agency in its response. It obviously hurt. The Fisheries Agency was not slow to convey a classic government
It’s Aug. 8, Father’s Day in Taiwan. I asked a Chinese chatbot a simple question: “How is Father’s Day celebrated in Taiwan and China?” The answer was as ideological as it was unexpected. The AI said Taiwan is “a region” (地區) and “a province of China” (中國的省份). It then adopted the collective pronoun “we” to praise the holiday in the voice of the “Chinese government,” saying Father’s Day aligns with “core socialist values” of the “Chinese nation.” The chatbot was DeepSeek, the fastest growing app ever to reach 100 million users (in seven days!) and one of the world’s most advanced and
It turns out many Americans aren’t great at identifying which personal decisions contribute most to climate change. A study recently published by the National Academy of Sciences found that when asked to rank actions, such as swapping a car that uses gasoline for an electric one, carpooling or reducing food waste, participants weren’t very accurate when assessing how much those actions contributed to climate change, which is caused mostly by the release of greenhouse gases that happen when fuels like gasoline, oil and coal are burned. “People over-assign impact to actually pretty low-impact actions such as recycling, and underestimate the actual carbon
RSS