Savoury ice cream has become a popular fad in trendy Western restaurants, but local vendor Liny Hsueh (
Hsueh's "Dr. Ice" brand offers ice cream, "snowflake ice" (shaved ice) and "bubble ice" (thinly shaved ice) made from shrimp, cuttlefish, tuna, seaweed and laver (purple seaweed) combined with fruits, mint, wasabi, peanut and wine.
Salty, pungent seafood does not seem ideally suited to traditionally sweet and soft ice cream, yet Hsueh has managed to find a harmony between the two to create the nation's only seafood-flavored frozen desserts line.
PHOTO: AFP
The combination might even pique the interest of Ferran Adria, Spain's experimental chef famed for his startling combinations of seemingly incongruous ingredients often based on their their similar molecular structure.
Hsueh's ice cream booth sits amongst stalls at an indoor fish market in Bisha port (
She launched Dr. Ice in 2003 and now has two shops in the city better known by their Chinese name "Shia Bing Hsieh Chiang" (蝦冰蟹醬, "shrimp ice crab sauce").
The 13 flavors on offer include pineapple shrimp, wasabi cuttlefish, strawberry tuna and mango seaweed, all in stark colors from orange to green to black.
All are served in white or blue shell on fish-shaped plates and bowls, and some also come with a sprinkle of small dried fish, roe or chopped squid.
"I walked by Shia Bing Hsieh Chiang several months ago and entered out of curiosity. Now I visit the store often with my classmates," 14-year-old student Yvonne Yen said.
"I like the ice cream here, especially the cuttlefish flavor, because of the rich texture and lighter sweet taste. The color [black] is really cool," Yen said.
Peter Lin, a first-time customer who tried shrimp and seaweed flavored ice cream, said he was surprised that it didn't carry the smell or salty taste of seafood.
"I was a little worried that it would taste disgusting and weird," the 41-year-old said.
Hsueh's family initially expressed similar skepticism when she announced she was going to make "snowflakes ice" from shrimp.
"They thought I was crazy because shrimp seemed an impossible ingredient for frozen desserts," the spirited Hsueh, 45, said.
"I had to find a niche in the crowded market of ice desserts and I thought that even though Taiwan is an island with abundant oceanic resources, seafood was never used to make them and I wanted to give it a try," she said.
Hsueh was also encouraged by an old Taiwanese saying which goes: "The number one job is selling ice desserts and the number two is being a doctor."
More inviting still was the dessert market, estimated by industry watchers at over NT$10 billion (US$298.8 million) a year.
The novelty proved an initial success, with Hsueh greeting the patrons at her small store and making up to NT$700,000 a month during summer.
In less than a year she opened her second branch shop in Taipei's bustling Tung Hua Street night market, popular with locals and foreign tourists, but it flopped and closed after six months.
Hsueh decided to focus her efforts in Keelung and opened a booth in Bisha fish market last December, developing a new line of seafood sausage, dumpling and meat balls to make up for the slow winter season.
Now, she is ready to expand again and this time is targeting the sunny southern part of the country, where ice desserts business has an average ten-month sales season compared with five in the north.
Taiwan does not exclude the possibility of having formal diplomatic relations with countries that also have formal ties with China, regardless of Beijing’s stance, Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) said on Sunday. There was speculation in 2012 that Honduras was attempting to have simultaneous diplomatic relations with Taiwan and China, an idea that then-minister of foreign affairs David Lin (林永樂) rejected. Honduras severed formal ties with Taiwan on Sunday morning after establishing diplomatic relations with Beijing. President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) administration has taken a more practical approach to relations with like-minded countries since assuming government in 2016. Previous administrations took the
Seven senior faculty members, including the principal, of a high school in Taichung were temporarily suspended from their jobs on Friday, pending an investigation by the Taichung Education Bureau into alleged bullying and abuse that led to the suicide of a student last month. The city’s education officials were too slow to suspend those involved, the student’s father told a news conference on Wednesday, at which Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Chang Liao Wan-chien (張廖萬堅) and members of the Humanistic Education Foundation were also present. The boy had been a good student and a high achiever during elementary and junior-high, and had
ORIGIN UNKNOWN: The Leofoo Village Theme Park and Taipei Zoo have accounted for their baboons, as authorities continue a 12-day capture attempt Authorities in Taoyuan are searching for a non-native baboon, possibly of the chacma species, that has been spotted several times in the city’s Pingjhen District (平鎮) over the past 12 days, and was most recently seen in coastal Sinwu District (新屋). The baboon was first spotted near a local factory on March 10 in central Taoyuan, Jhensing Borough Warden Huang Chih-chieh (黃志杰) said. Huang said he requested the Leofoo Village Theme Park’s help after a second sighting on Saturday. In other sightings, the baboon raided fruit and vegetable gardens on private property, and has evaded one capture attempt via a tranquilizer dart. Media reported
Taiwan would have established formal relations with Argentina long ago if not for China’s interference, Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Alexander Yui told US-based Spanish-language online news outlet Infobae in an interview published on Tuesday. Beijing has left behind a string of unfulfilled promises in Latin America, including pledges to build the Grand Nicaragua Canal and airports, docks, ports and industrial zones in El Salvador, he said. Meanwhile, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Mexico and other countries enjoy pragmatic and improving relations with Taiwan based on cooperation on the economy, culture, technology and science, he said. While Taiwan is “happy to live and let live,”