nanamoose

When Xiaolongbaos Go Global

If I have only one day in Taipei the places I would visit are, in that order: breakfast at Mei Er Mei, lunch at Din Tai Fung, a visit to Eslite bookstore, coffee at Have a Booday followed by KTV and beef noodles at Partyworld, massage at Sakura and lastly a late night snack of soybean milk and fried dough and shao bing at Yong He.

Amongst these places to visit perhaps Din Tai Fung is the only place that is also available outside of Taiwan. Din Tai Fungs have mushroomed all over the world, Singapore, Korea, Japan, Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong, even the United States. It is therefore not the case that I do not have the opportunity to sample Din Tai Fung on a regular basis. It is also not the case whereby its branches are so numerous that their qualities become inconsistent while only the original one in Taipei is good. Quite the opposite, ALL Din Tai Fungs all over the world (with the exception of the one in Hong Kong – or perhaps I have gone on a bad hair day) are of a surprisingly high quality; from décor to cleanliness to its friendly and efficient staff to thoughtful little details like folding baskets put alongside the table for your bags, to its food. Everything at Din Tai Fung is so perfect, like your annoying high school friend who has got the looks, the grades, the family background, and the cutest guy as her boyfriend. Din Tai Fung makes you wonder – how do you manage to keep everything under such perfect control when you are a 36- fold chain?

No matter how much you hate or question your high school friend or Din Tai Fung, the reality remains the same. Some people are just good at everything. Take a look at the open kitchen window of Din Tai Fung’s new Sogo branch for example. Look at the dedication with which the staff breaks up the dough, puts it onto the scale (they even weigh the dough to make sure that they are all the same size! I could hardly believe my eyes) and flattens it out into small pancakes. Watching this scene ought to make many feel ashamed of themselves. At least thinking about myself, I can hardly remember the last time when I put that much dedication into producing something. Even if there was, it was definitely not at work. How did the management at Din Tai Fung pull this off? Like the beaming staff at Haidilao in Beijing, this remains a big mystery to me.

So, why do I keep on visiting Din Tai Fung everywhere I go despite the fact that it is soon becoming as commonplace as Starbucks? Simply because it is so good I just cannot afford to not go.

Finding Taipei's Beef Noodle King

Cash Box, now Partyworld, is undoubtedly the best KTV in the whole wide world. I could go as far as saying that its one of the best things to come out of Taiwan (on top of the back alley cafes and books), for reasons below:

1. They are huge (often occupying a whole building with something like 10 floors);
2. All rooms are clean (with no cigarette smoke smell unlike the ones in Hong Kong) and most come with an en suite toilet;
3. All staff are friendly and efficient;
4. Songs are super new and aplenty (very often they have every single song from a hit singer’s new album) while all MVs are all beautifully filmed (though they all conform to a certain Taiwan-esque style); and
5. Most important of all, the food here is great!

The beef noodles here are so yummy a friend admitted to opening a room at Partyworld solely for the purposes of eating its beef noodles! Thing is, no matter how hard I tried I was not able to remember who said this to me, so in order to make sure I was not dreaming this whole thing up I decided to put its noodles to the test despite having to sport a big stomach after homemade dumplings from dinner.

The noodles here truly give a lot of proper beef noodle restaurants in Taipei a run for their money. The noodles were cooked al dente, the soup base was flavoursome with preserved veggies served on the side. The only thing that was slightly disappointing was the beef. Beef is the true art of beef noodles. You master the texture of the beef and you become the true beef noodle king.

This award I will for now, at least until I have found the next beef noodle king, give to Lao Wang Ji Beef Noodle King on Tao Yuan Street. Lao Wang uses authentic Taiwanese yellow cow imported fresh every day to create a broth that is thick yet not greasy, fragrant yet not salty. The beef, though cut up in big pieces, is slow-cooked so that it maintains the natural sweetness of yellow beef while being soft at the same time. Lao Wang even custom makes your noodles for you according to your preferences on the heaviness of the soup and texture of the noodles. Just make sure you don’t come here during peak lunch or dinner hours or you will have to be ready for a long queue.

Cash Box Partyworld 钱柜
Try its flagship store on台北市林森北路139號 (臨六條通) (tel: +886 2 23702277)

Lao Wang Ji Beef Noodle King 老王记牛肉面大王
台北市桃源街15号 (tel: +886 937 860 050)

Having a Good Day at Have a Booday

I believe Hong Kong’s coldness comes from its commercialism, addiction to materialism and lack of art and culture, while Taiwan breathes the latter. Anyone who’s visited Taipei knows that Taipei is best known for its street food, hidden cafes and bookstores. Its been talked about so often it has almost become cliché. But it is amazingly true. No visit to Taipei would be complete without a visit to an Eslite bookstore and coffee or tea at a back alley café.

Have a Booday is my newly discovered gem tucked away in a back alley a short 5 minute stroll from Zhongshan MRT station. The article about Have a Booday published in Ming Pao late last year aptly explained what these back alley discoveries are all about, “There may be nothing people in Taipei can do about their objective environment [meaning its less than attractive skyline and horrible traffic], but they put in 100% effort into their surroundings. They create one small cozy paradise after another in narrow side streets and back alleys while their dreams shone like a glowing halo on the top of their heads. The recent opening of a new shop by Mogu is a therefore news everyone is fighting to report to their peers because we have just found another hub in Taipei that allows us to rest and think.”

Have a Booday is the baby of the Booday design team, which most people in Hong Kong know through their publication “Mogu” magazine. Have a Booday is split over four floors in an old Taiwanese house - the ground floor is a small shop selling Mogu designed items like T-shirts, bags, postcards and cute boxes of matches with different poems written on each matchbox, the second floor is a café with an open kitchen selling coffee and tea, homemade cakes and Mogu recommended books and music, while the third and fourth floors are the Mogu design studio. This is the kind of place where you can spend the entire afternoon reading a book and sipping coffee, or even bringing your knitting to do and striking a conversation with artists and designers who treat the place like home.

On the Friday we visited Typhoon Sepat was wreaking havoc on the streets of Taipei with its strong winds and torrential rain, while inside Have a Booday soft Bossa Nova music was playing, the aroma of coffee and the sweet smell of innocence and creativity was lingering in the air. This is my kind of place. This is the kind of place where people build dreams. This is the kind of place that can change Hong Kong.

Culture Shock in Hong Kong

Believe it or not, I came back from Taiwan yesterday experiencing culture shock here in Hong Kong. Its quite unbelievable given I have lived here a good eighteen years of my life and have been spending my summers in Taiwan for the past few years. Both places are equally as familiar to me. But the strange thing happened. I was shocked, as if seeing Hong Kong for the first time. I came home yesterday to be greeted first thing by an emotionless and speechless cabby then a group of inefficient, rude and incomprehensible waitresses in Soho. No big deal. This is Hong Kong. However, it becomes unbearable when you’ve experienced hospitality in Taiwan. You start to remember what life before we all became pokerfaced workaholics was supposed to be like, what relationships between people were meant to be.

In Taiwan, I can walk around looking helpless in a bookshop trying to find the number of a café I just read about and the young gentleman at the counter would offer to look it up for me on the internet; I can walk down a street in a night market talking to my aunt about trying to find 大饼包小饼 (big pancake wrapping small pancake) and a passerby would appear from nowhere offering us directions; I can ask a waitress at a restaurant whether their wontons are Wenzhou or otherwise and she would gladly bring out the actual wonton for me to inspect, then engage me in a conversation about what kind of wonton I am looking for; I can walk up to a vendor to ask for directions of a competing vendor and he would gladly give it to me. In Hong Kong being distant seems to be the norm. I cannot even guarantee that I would do the same as the gentleman in the bookstore, the woman in the night market, the waitress at the xiaolongbao restaurant or the helpful vendor. Not because I don’t want to help these people, but because I am so used to focusing only upon my own affairs that I would probably surprise even myself if I had been over friendly.

I have a theory on how to cure this coldness disease in Hong Kong and I'll share it with you in my next post.

No Politics on Taiwanese Cabs

Shanghai cabbies might come before Hong Kong cabbies according to my latest post on taxis in China, yet cabbies in Taiwan are better still. London cabbies are by far the best in the world, but they win by virtue of their cute black cabs, intelligent cabbies with proven larger brains than the average person thus giving them better navigation skills (or perhaps the other way round, bigger brains due to their trained navigation skills), and their ability to U-turn on virtually every road in London. However, taxis in Taiwan excel in their own unique ways. The most obvious virtues are how new, clean, well equipped (with GPS navigation systems and TVs) they are, and how friendly and well mannered the cabbies are (not to mention their driving skills which are if not better, at least equally as good as the cabbies in China due to their amazing ability to steer clear from the hordes of motorbikes). One reason for this is the good nature of the people in Taiwan in general, but another might come from effective management. See a taxi’s mission statement posted at the back of the front seat passenger’s headrest for example:

10 promises to our customers:

1. No smoking in the vehicle;
2. No chewing beetle nut in the vehicle;
3. No detouring and no speeding;
4. No refusal to take short trips;
5. No drink driving;
6. No talking about politics;
7. No talking about religion;
8. Will always wear uniform and wear a tie;
9. Will accept routes suggested by customers; and
10. Will listen to radio station designated by customers.

I think it is only in Taiwan that you have to tell your cabbies not to talk about politics to passengers. However, it is after all only nature. Despite the cab company’s promise, my aunt and I had this conversation with a cabby who had his TV on watching the New York Yankees play against Detroit last night:

Aunt: Who is playing?
Cabby: The New York Yankees vs Detroit.
Aunt: Which team are we?
Cabby: I think we are the New York Yankees.
Me: What do you mean we are the New York Yankees?
Aunt: (Laughing) Because Wang Chien-Ming (who is from Taiwan) is in that team! When there is a Chinese person… a person from Taiwan playing, we naturally think of ourselves as belonging to that team! Haha….
Cabby: Not Chinese, but Taiwanese! Its funny, you know the Mainland Chinese people say that Wang Chieng-Ming is theirs!
Aunt: Oh really? (laughing stiffly) Haha….

Lanna Kingdom on a Plate

I am very proud of my top three cuisines list. I think it’s the best list in the world - Chinese, Thai and Italian. You might wonder, where is French? Foodies alike from all over the world seem to go weak at the knees for French. This I never quite understood. True the French have taken its cuisine to unprecedented heights by making the simple act of eating an art form. However, how many people can really eat French every single day? Can you sit through a seven course and at least 3 hour dinner with a sommelier better groomed than your boyfriend explaining the 100-page wine list with a heavy French-accent say, once every week? If not for all the fanfare, then can you really eat mediocre bistro French on a regular basis? I certainly cannot (though I have to admit, “Ratatouille”, not French Laundry, has changed my perspective slightly). And so my list includes all foods which can be eaten, if you like, as comfort foods.

To justify my love for Thai food I embarked on a cooking course with the Four Seasons in Chiang Mai. I have never realized what an intricate matter Thai gastronomy is. From the variety of the original ingredients down to the very cooking, everything is a journey in itself if not an ordeal - but to those who love cooking, the ordeal is a pleasurable one. At the first break of dawn and after having finished breakfast with freshly toasted bread from our very own private toaster on our very own private verandah, we met up with Por the cooking assistant for our local market tour.

It was my first experience in a fresh food market in Thailand. Everything is organized in perfect harmony, even the chilies and salty fish are arranged in little piles and plates according to price and category...