Taipei is undertaking a “food vendors long-term advancement project” in the hopes that more of its traditional markets would be awarded “five stars” by the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) said yesterday.
Ko made the remarks at the launch ceremony of the two-day Taipei City Traditional Market Festival at Taipei Flora Expo Park in Zhongshan District (中山), where 59 food vendors from Taipei’s traditional market offer delicacies from a variety of cuisines.
At the end of the two-day event, which is its 14th year, the Taipei Market Administration Office is to present an award to the food stall that offers the best dumpling-based dish. Nineteen dumpling vendors competed for the award.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
In the post-COVID-19 era, cooking at home will be a trend, Taipei Market Administration Office Director Chen Ting-hui (陳庭輝) said, adding that the competition focuses on dumplings because they are nutritious and convenient to prepare at home.
Ko said that if a visitor wishes to experience Taipei in just 30 minutes, they should spend the time at a traditional market, which is the epitome of the local culture and manifests Taiwan’s economic environmental and moral standards.
With that in mind, Taipei has been striving to improve its markets to become an internationally recognized civilized city, he said.
The Taipei Government has been promoting a “food vendors long-term advancement project” aimed at improving the service quality, hygiene and food safety of food stalls in the city, Ko said.
The city’s Shidong Market (士東市場), Nanmen Market (南門市場) and Ningxia Night Market (寧夏夜市) were awarded “five stars” by the ministry last year, he said, adding that hopefully other markets would also be recognized.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,