Lunch was at 王品, a very well-known chain of western-food restaurants in Taiwan. They only serve sets at a fixed price of NT$1,300 ($56.81), which sounds a bit expensive. But for this price, you get an aperitif, bread (with liver pate and butter), salad, soup, main course, plum juice, fruits, dessert, and a drink. As my Taiwanese friend described perfectly - a meal 王品 will make you "full until you die". Service was superb. Service standards in Taiwan are already much higher than Singapore's, but 王品's is clearly a head over the rest.
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| 餐前酒 - Aperitif |
The aperitif was non-alcoholic, with a tinge of fruit and not too sweet. Behind it - the liver pate and butter for the bread.
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| 松露鲜蔬佐鸭胸海鲜 - Tender Duck Breast and Seafood seasoned with Truffle Oil |
This was surprisingly light and bland. The left-most item is actually squid rolled around potato (I think), on top of some asparagus. The middle is duck breast, while I am not sure what the right-most is... I think they are bamboo shoots. A nice appetiser to start the meal after the aperitif.
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| 松露海鲜浓汤 - Truffle and Seafood Bisque |
An interesting dish - you are supposed to pour the seafood bisque (left) into the right bowl, which is egg steamed with some vegetable (suspect it is spinach), topped with prawn and scallop. My father commented that it is better not to mix, because the steamed egg is very bland and would dilute the soup taste, but I think the combination worked out pretty well.
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| 台塑牛排 - Wang Steak |
Their trademark dish. If you eat beef, this is a must-try. Although they use New Zealand beef, this was extremely delicious! It is the short-rib portion, and is separated into two sections - the meat (top) and the tendons (below). We were advised to eat the tendons portion first. For steaks, the tendons are usually quite tough, but theirs were nicely chewy. The meat was also very tender and juicy.
Don't let the picture deceive you - it may look small, but the portion is really huge.
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| 烤浓浆巧克力冰淇淋 - Chocolate Lava |
Finally, it's dessert. The ice cream was quite normal, but the waiter kept on asking us if we wanted any free refills of ice cream. Pity I was too full to utilise it! The chocolate lava was very thick and rich - in fact, so much that I was afraid to eat too much as I was having a sore throat. But my father said it was very good.
Indeed, after we have finished our meal, we were really "full until can die".
Restaurant name: 王品
Address: 台北市光复南路612号 (Nearest MRT is Daan or Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall station )
Tel: 02-2325-3478
(Note that they have several outlets around Taipei; this is just one of them. A list of their outlets can be found here.)
After the heavy lunch, we took a 10 minute walk to Taipei 101. Like most shopping centres, this didn't really catch my eye except for a shop called Toyland, which sells lots of anime figurines. After a while, I just sat somewhere and entertained myself with some iPhone games until my parents were done with their shopping.
Next destination for dinner was 金泰, a Japanese restaurant. Tried to make bookings, but they were totally full, so my friend advised me to go earlier. We reached there at 515pm (which is already very early for dinner!) and there was already a long queue in front of us. To make things worse, we had to queue under the rain (in fact, it has been raining non-stop since we landed on Taipei).
After a 1 hour and 10 minutes wait - we finally got a seat. Whew! This had better be good.
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| 综合生鱼片, NT$220 (S$9.62) |
A plate of the usual sashimi that Singaporeans are familiar with. While this was very fresh, it isn't incredibly unique or special.
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| 牡丹虾 (巨大) , NT$630 (S$27.53) |
This was definitely one of the best prawns I have ever eaten, and is a close fight with 天母's 阿吉师. The prawn meat was tender and fresh, but the most attractive trait is its sweetness. And the heads were also delicious, with the prawn liver and pancreas etc. This plate would probably cost more than S$50 in Singapore. The picture didn't portray it, but the prawns are actually big (around 25cm excluding feelers). Totally worth it!
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| 烤鲔鱼肚, NT$300 (S$13.11) |
Grilled tuna belly. Although tuna belly is supposed to be a delicacy, I found this to be quite underwhelming. It wasn't just the seasoning - it was the fish flavour itself that was bland. Maybe we should have ordered tuna belly sashimi instead.
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| 烤明太子, NT$210 (S$9.18) |
This is actually mullet roe. It was good, but a tad too salty. However, if you eat it with the raw sweet onions (under the roe), it turned out just nice.
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| 烤鳗鱼串, NT$210 (S$9.18) |
Hmm... if you compare this to the mullet roe, then the eel seemed rather expensive. Still, this was grilled very well, and I could taste the difference between their eel and the eel found in Singapore.
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| 烤鲭鱼, NT$210 (S$9.18) |
I didn't want to order this, because at home, we eat saba fish very often. But my mother overheard other customers ranting about it, so she insisted on ordering it. Although it didn't look very nice in terms of appearances, it was excellent. I guess this is because the saba fish in Singapore is almost always frozen while theirs was fresh.
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| 烤鲜干贝, NT$320 (S$13.99) |
Grilled scallops. I found this to be very expensive - two small scallops for S$14! While the scallop was very sweet and fresh, it was a bit too tough and dry. I think it was left too long on the grill.
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| 海胆, NT$420 (S$18.36) |
This is the second time I have ever tasted sea urchin sashimi. The first time was at Sushi Tei. This plate totally blew me away. It was sweet and briny and simply melted in the mouth. Gosh! After we left, I regretted not ordering one more plate. I don't know how much this would cost in Singapore - probably several times more and yet not as fresh and delicious too.
金泰 is a must-go place if you are a fan of Japanese food, especially sashimi. Their sashimi was incredibly fresh and yet at such affordable prices. The total bill for the three of us came up to NT$2,715 (S$118.66), which was ridiculously cheap compared to Singapore! And we ordered such high quality and expensive food too. I think this meal would easily cost more than S$300 in Singapore. Fantastic place, but you really have to make reservations way in advance!
Address: 台北市内湖区旧宗路121巷34号 (Nearest MRT is Gangqian or Wende station, but still need to take a cab)
Tel: 02-8792-8167
Day 4
There wasn't anything much to do in the morning, so after breakfast, we went to Sogo's supermarket again before taking a cab down to 龙都酒楼, a place my friend recommended for its roast duck. I tried to make a reservation on a weekend, but was told brusquely that for weekend reservations, I would need to call at least two weeks in advance. Whoa. Fortunately, they still had space for lunch on a Monday.
The place looked like a traditional Hong Kong restaurant, with all the gold pillars and gold words etc everywhere.
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| 龙都酒楼, 台北 |
They only sell their roast ducks in wholes - so three of us had to order one whole roast duck! Well, I am not complaining. Each roast duck costs NT$1,200 (S$52.45). If you want to use it twice - for example, using some of the meat for duck porridge, it will cost NT$1,400 (S$61.19). For three uses, it costs NT$1,600 (S$69.93). We opted for two uses, which is to eat the duck itself and have some duck porridge.
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| 广式片皮鸭. Just look at the layer of fat... |
It is eaten just like Peking Duck. The waitress sliced some of the duck breast out for us to wrap with the crepe, along with sweet sauce and spring onion. Being more health conscious (when possible), we tried to scrape off the fat and realised that it was extremely difficult - the fat clung on stubbornly to the skin. My father shrugged and just ate it, fats and all. But I persevered and managed to remove around 75% of the fat before eating the rest. For some pieces that came without fat, I have to conclude that it really tastes much better with at least a bit of fat!
The duck was very different from our own roast duck. As mentioned earlier, the skin and fat were extremely difficult to separate, whereas for local roast duck, all the fat can come off in one piece easily. Another difference is the meat texture - their roast duck was more chewy. And finally, the skin also has a different texture and taste (and more oily too). Delicious!
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| The rest of the duck meat for direct eating |
The waitress then cut some more meat from the other parts of the duck, then took the rest to make into duck porridge.
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| 姜丝皮蛋鸭骨粥 |
This is just century egg porridge with duck. I was wondering - in just twenty minutes, are they able to bring out the duck flavour into the porridge? I guess they probably have several pots of porridge with duck bones inside simmering, so whenever a customer orders the duck porridge, they would just put the customer's duck bones into a new pot of porridge and serve them an existing pot. But when I tasted the porridge, I think maybe they really just boil the porridge with our duck for twenty minutes, because the duck taste in the porridge wasn't really that strong.
While some people may think that eating Hong Kong roast duck at Taiwan is a waste of time, I beg to differ. Their roast duck tastes very different from our Hong Kong roast duck, and the wonderfully crisp skin (with some fat) and meat texture make it definitely worth a try.
Restaurant name: 龙都酒楼
Address: 台北市中山区中山北路一段105巷18号 (Nearest MRT is Zhongshan station)
Tel: 02-2563-9293
After lunch, we proceeded to 五分埔 for shopping. I walked around, thinking that there would be nothing for me to buy, but surprisingly I managed to get some stuff - a dog shirt for my dog, a One Piece towel for a friend, and a One Piece long-sleeved t-shirt for myself. They were all rather cheap, because they get their goods from wholesalers and sell them below retail price. The dog shirt costs NT$200 (S$8.74), the towel costs NT$370 (S$16.17) [retail price is NT$580, which is S$25.95], while the t-shirt costs NT$330 (S$14.42).
Took a cab to 犁记, which is famous for their pineapple tarts. I am not really a fan of pineapple tarts, but after trying theirs during my previous visit, I was won over. This time, I was prepared to buy quite a few back home as gifts.
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| 犁记凤梨酥, NT$18 (S$0.79) each |
The thing is that their pineapple tarts were good and cheap. We saw many other brands at departmental stores that taste nowhere as good as 犁记's and yet cost up to twice as much! I ended up buying eighty - yes, eighty - and when I returned to Singapore, I realised that it was still not enough. Damn!
It was an early dinner again today, at 530pm, because the hotpot restaurant, 无老锅, was fully booked and my friend only managed to secure the 530pm slot. The food was pretty good, but the way the waiters bowed deeply after speaking to us was rather... unnerving.
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| 鸳鸯锅 |
The left side contains 麻辣 soup. Not too sure about the right side, because when we asked a trainee waiter about it, he mumbled so fast that we couldn't catch anything. Personally, I prefer the soup from the right side, though. Occasionally, they will top up the soup with pig's blood and other ingredients, while the soup base itself was provided to us for self-refill. Pictures of other hotpot ingredients below:
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| Scallop paste |
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| Beef slices |
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| 无老肉 |
Their trademark meat, 无老肉, is actually pork slices that have already been cooked and served chilled. The waiter said that we could also cook it in the steamboat, but I think it's better eaten like this. The bowl looked small in the picture, but it's just the tip of the iceberg.
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| Collagen from fish skin |
Collagen! It was promoted there as being good for the skin, so my mother ordered it to try. After cooking, it became almost totally transparent and tasted pretty good.
After 1.5 hour, we were chased out (politely, of course) because each table could only be held for that period of time to make way for other customers. Damn. 1.5 hour is too short for hotpot! Thanks to that, I wasn't really that satisfied, but after that we passed by 阿宗面线 again and I was satisfied, heh.
This hotpot tasted quite good, but I still prefer the one I went to five years ago - 桥头麻辣鸳鸯. Will go during my next visit!
Restaurant name: 无老锅
Address: 台北市市民大道三段143号 (Nearest MRT is Zhongxiao Fuxing station)
Tel: 02-2731-7927
Day 5
Our flight was at 235pm and we had to reach the airport before 1pm, so we skipped breakfast and went for brunch instead at 鼎泰丰. Ordered their trademark xiao long bao, and there is actually a noticeable difference between theirs and Singapore's. Singapore's xiao long bao tastes saltier and has more gravy inside. Hmm... I think I prefer Taiwan's.
My luggage was really filled to the brim, and I had to hand-carry a big bag of fish crackers and cup noodles. Our total luggage weighed around 20kg when we left Singapore, and we returned with almost 70kg of stuff.
Thinking of when to visit Taipei again. Maybe next year?
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