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NYT Syndicate
Taipei has always been a city where one doesn't have to work hard to eat awfully well: It has a street food scene as vibrant as that of Bangkok; restaurants that specialise in both Taiwanese and regional cuisines from around China; thousands of cheap and cheerful joints at which to have small plates and quick stir-fries; and a plethora of sushi bars, a remnant of decades spent under Japanese rule.
It's easier than ever to enjoy those qualities, largely thanks to a crop of chefs drawing inspiration from homegrown ingredients: cured mullet roe, lily stems, purple taro. Taiwan offers possibilities for farm-to-table dining that don't exist in Singapore and Hong Kong. Surrounded by clean waters and dotted with mountains and fertile plains, with more than 20 microclimates and a deeply embedded small farming tradition recently given new life by urbanites going back to the land, Taiwan places agricultural bounty within easy reach of diners in the capital.
"Now everyone is talking about local ingredients," the Taiwanese chef Andr` Chiang said."We have everything here, and we should be proud of it." Serving ingredient-focused contemporary Taiwanese cuisine, Chiang's 2-year-old RAW is just one of a growing number of restaurants, ranging from casual to upscale, that are riding the wave of a growing"eat local" movement.
RAW
Anchored by a sinuous cloud-shaped bar hand-carved from two colossal hunks of pine, the dining room at RAW is cavernous and murky, strikingly backlit by a semiopen kitchen. Instagram-friendly pin lights illuminate tables, which are set far apart and have hidden drawers for flatware.
The seasonal set menu of eight courses and a few smaller bites, eschews dish names in favour of shortened ingredient lists ('Taiwan' Rice Fish Mushroom, no commas). Chiang, who worked in France before he opened Singapore's acclaimed Restaurant Andr`, where he spends most of his time, devises the menu at RAW with two Taiwanese chefs, Zor Tan and Alain Huang.
Every dish on the menu is Taiwanese"in form, structure, colour or flavour," Chiang said. A skewered baby corn cob coated with kernels from a mature cob and slicked with deeply smoky barbecue sauce winked at the sort of fare you might find in Taipei's night markets, while Beef Tongue Cracker, an oblong crisp with shavings of velvety ox tongue arranged atop a smear of caramelised onions, confit egg yolk with vinegar for dipping, was a sly nod to ox tongue crackers, a classic Taiwanese snack named for their shape.
At a nearby table an elegantly dressed Taiwanese woman, obviously perplexed by a shallow bowl containing a single sheet of dried squid, laughed aloud as it separated into curly noodles when a server poured hot kombu broth over. She ate every bite.
RAW, No 301 Le Qun Third Road. Lunch and dinner tasting menu, 2,680 Taiwanese dollars (about $87) per person, plus 10 percent service charge.
Tairroir
Tairroir, which opened last May on the sixth floor of a building next to RAW, is, in appearance at least, its polar opposite: intimate (just eight tables) and elegant (white-on-white dining room, sleek copper bar). The French training of Kai Ho, the Taiwanese chef, is reflected in both his restaurant's name (a mix of Taiwan and terroir) and in refined plating, with colour and texture highlighted in smears, dabs, dots and drizzles.
But Ho is quick to add:"I'm not French. I'm Taiwanese. And I do my own thing." The result is a set menu (six or eight courses) that crosses Taiwanese ingredients with French technique.
During my lunch only one dish, warm pumpkin pur`e accompanied by buttery mushroom brioche, bowed toward the west; others were unequivocally Taiwanese in spirit if not form. In Ho's hands taro cake, a Chinese New Year favourite, became a spoonable mash to be stirred together with a sous-vide egg, the combination's richness cut by dried sakura shrimp and crispy shallots.
A magnificent dessert combined moist purple cakes tasting of concentrated blueberries with a powerfully lemony mousseline, bracingly tart yogurt"snow" and honeycombed pong tang, a traditional Taiwanese hard candy.
When it comes to sourcing ingredients, Ho said he's"not as hard-core as some chefs. I'm not at the farm every day." But he estimates that about 90 percent of what he uses in the kitchen is local; on the day we met he was excitedly planning a visit to a fish farmer in nearby Yilan county to investigate a tip about local caviar.
Tairroir, 6F, No 299 Le Qun Third Road. Tasting menu (lunch) 1,650 or 2,350 Taiwanese dollars and (dinner) 3,200 or 5,000 dollars per person, plus 10 percent service charge.
YEN
Before arriving at YEN (yet another all-caps venture), the Hong Kong-born Hoi Ming Wo cooked in Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia. In Osaka, he led the Xiang Tao restaurant to its first Michelin star. But he had never been to Taiwan, so before starting as executive chef he travelled the island to eat, and inspiration struck:"I realised that, hey, there are a lot of really great local ingredients," he said,"and I knew that was where I wanted to focus at YEN."
Atop the W Hotel, YEN is as stylish as one would expect: bold colours (deep violet and pink), inventive artwork (wall sculptures incorporating kitchen tools), a wall of windows overlooking Taipei's urban sprawl. Much of the long menu is composed of dishes one might find in a restaurant of similar calibre in Hong Kong: succulent roast meats and fowl, steamed fish priced by the pound, double-boiled soups. But you'll also unearth gems, examples of what Wo describes as Taiwanese-Cantonese fusion.
Delicate cones filled with crispy green apple sticks and pan-fried slices of mullet roe are all crunch and tartness with a bracing hit of piscine saltiness. Mi tai mu, an iconic street dish of stubby rice flour noodles made like spaetzle and usually eaten in soup, are here served in a Cantonese-style lobster broth whose sumptuousness is bolstered by rafts of sweet loofah gourd.
For a main dish Wo steams chunks of lobster from Penghu (islands in the Taiwan Strait) ” very tender, unlike Boston lobster, he said ” and sets them in a shallow bowl in the centre of a creamy"ocean" of egg white; a tangle of bird's nest adds crunch. There's nothing Taiwanese about YEN's custard buns, but order them anyway: Served warm, dusted with semi-bitter cacao and shaped like mushrooms, they ooze golden eggy custard.
YEN, 31F, W Hotel, No 10 Zhongxiao East Road, Section 5. An average meal for two is 3,500 dollars.
