arondanburg.com

The street looked as from a beachfront town somewhere along the East Coast, but in the dream I recognized the place as New Orleans. I had gone there to interview for a job as a speechwriter, and one of the politician’s handlers had invited me and everyone else on her team out for dinner. The restaurant she said she had not visited for a long time, and then brought us to what looked like a two-story white clapboard house. The restaurant had only a single big table in what otherwise looked just like the small dining room of a private home. The chef worked behind a swinging door to the next room, which looked just like the kitchen of a private home. So many people had taken seats around the table that I had to squeeze into my chair, and then an incongruously Thai waiter brought out the first course: a bowl of tom yum gong, a spicy soup. “I need to get a photo of that,” I thought, and with that idea I woke up, disgusted with myself all over again.

Before going to sleep last night, I had left both of my digital cameras, a flash memory stick, a NT$500 mobile telephone recharge card, and around US$500 worth of Thai and Taiwanese currency in a shoulder bag on the bus running from the Taipei airport back into Taipei city. After a four day weekend in Thailand, I had carried home so many bags that I did not even notice I had forgotten the most important one until nearly an hour after stepping into my apartment. Three calls to the shuttle bus company got no results. The passengers on this kind of bus sit above a large luggage compartment, and the driver would never have gone upstairs until asked to look for my bag, which somebody on the next run to the airport probably picked up. By now my cameras and money have traveled to Kaohsiung or Hong Kong or San Francisco, where they will underwrite somebody else’s vacation. Losing the cash hurts, but even worse, I will never get to see the full-size photos I took of the sunset from Vertigo at the top of the Banyan Tree Hotel, the guy making Thai desserts at a stall in Chatuchak Market, or the great seafood dinner at Ban Klang Nam, or the fresh fruit in a hawker’s cart on Phayathai Road. That loss kept me awake and angry with myself late into the night.

One thing could rescue me from my carelessness: along with the money and electronics, I also left behind my company identity badge. Whoever found my bag now also knows my name. If that person puts my name into Google, this site will appear at the top of the list, and then he can write to me: arondanburg @ hotmail.com. If he calls my company, whoever answers the phone can easily find my name and extension in the Outlook address book.

I think many people will find the temptation to keep the money and sell the cameras too strong to resist, however. Does anyone out there have recommendations for a high end camera that can take very detailed macro close ups (of food, indoors) without the flash washing out the colors and yet still capture clear landscape images? I might as well replace what I lost with something even better.

Kristie and Paulina have spent much of this week on tours around Taiwan, seeing Kaohsiung, Hualien (for the sake of Taroko Gorge) and Jinshan. We did get together to eat at “Talking Place” on Tuesday night and “Fat Guy Little Diner” last night, but since I’ve already written posts about both 談話頭 and 胖子小吃, I haven’t bothered to document either dinner. With the weather so damp lately, I also declined their invitations to visit the National Palace Museum and some little umbrella-making town. After seeing Jiufen (九份), I’ve had enough of nearby tourist traps.

Tomorrow Kristie and Paulina fly back to Texas, however, so I promised to show them around the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial, take them shopping for souvenirs at the Taiwan Handicraft Promotion Center and then join them for dinner with Kristie’s friend Fenlih.
Read the rest of this entry »

Two colleagues from my company’s mainland China office have spent this past week in the Taipei, so to bid them farewell before their flights back to the People’s Republic, a half dozen people from my department went out with them for beers and munchies at Carnegie’s last night. Although I’ve got nothing against cheese nachos and beer, I couldn’t stay for long, however. Yet another colleague had invited me to a birthday dinner at GG 季吉朝鮮美食餐飲房, a Korean restaurant. Now, since moving to Taipei I have only eaten Korean food (Bibim Bahp) at Jizhou Tofu Pot (濟州豆腐鍋之家), so I just couldn’t miss a chance to try this place.

From the outside, GG looked like a regular restaurant, with a glass wall enclosing the lower tier of two seating areas, with a bar and cashier towards the back. Inside, the place had a family-run atmosphere, with chairs piled up in the corner and children running around. It felt just right for a casual birthday dinner.

While the bahn chan (小菜類) didn’t quite meet my baseline standard set by Seoul Garden in Houston, I must compliment the chef on the “house special” pork cutlet (人蔘豬排, second from the left) and the spicy squid (辣花枝, second from the right). The tofu soup (辣味豆腐湯, rightmost) and dolsot bibim bahp (石鍋拌飯, in the middle) I also liked, but those meat dishes stole the show. Good thing I asked for those dishes as spicy as possible too, because from my perspective, “really spicy” in Taipei too often means “just noticeable heat,” and that sort of relativity applied tonight as well.

You know, I have really got to find some more good Korean restaurants in this city.

When in the mood for a plate of Japanese-style curry at lunchtime, I usually cross Dunhua South Road and go into Tomato Curry, a little shop along Le-Ye Road just off Keelung Road. The “Golden Curry Pork” there costs just a hundred New Taiwan Dollars (about three bucks American). The same co-worker who had directed me to 川巴子火鍋樓, 濟州豆腐鍋之家, 得記港式麻辣, 鴉片粉圓 and 寶島肉圓 had claimed that 知多家 (“Chitaka”) serves a much better カツカレー (katsu curry) than what I get along Le-Ye Road. In the company of my colleague Phillip, I put that claim to the test today.

I chose the tonkatsu lunch special, which included a deep-fried pork cutlet, white rice, a bowl of miso soup and some pickled vegetables. Phillip took the beef curry special, which came with pretty much the same combination of side dishes. Both specials also featured a scoop of mango ice cream and a glass of orange juice for dessert.

Phillip liked what he ate, and I enjoyed what I got as well, but neither of us felt that we’d had food three times better than what Tomato Curry serves, although Chitaka does charge about triple what Tomato Curry costs for lunch. Price and convenience made the difference in this contest, and so I remain a loyal Tomato Curry customer.

After seeing so much of Taipei, Kaohsiung, Danshui, Bali, Jiufen and Keelung, I had no more great scenic expectations of Taiwan. I know, Taroko Gorge, Sun Moon Lake and the beach at Kending all have a reputation as the most beautiful places in Taiwan, and I have visited none of them. Still, Danshui and Juifen draw huge crowds of Taiwanese, and both seem to me nothing but tourist traps, apart from the food. Yangmingshan I imagined would also fall short of the guidebook praise, with thousands of Taiwanese marching up the same sort of hills that I can see from my office window, except (maybe) without power line pylons or roadways cutting into the slopes.

Kristie had already done the research on the best route through the national park, however. Both she and Pauline also could ask for help in Mandarin if we got lost. I wouldn’t get a better introduction to Yangmingshan, and so accepted their invitation. Before heading north to the park, however, we went to 明月湯包 (Míng Yùe Tāng Bāo, “Bright Moonlight Soup Dumplings”) across the street and up a block from my apartment building for a big brunch. Unfortunately I managed to order plenty of steamed buns but none of the crunchy potstickers (鍋貼) that Kristie really craved, or so she realized after seeing an order of them on another table. Maybe next time, Kristie.

Today I had planned to take Kristie and Pauline out for a walk around Danshui and then across the river to Bali for some seafood after meeting for a snack at Ice Monster on Yongkang Food Street (where I should have ordered a mixed fruit platter like Kristie and Paulina rather than my bland lemon sorbet), but Kristie also had another idea. On television she had seen an advertisement for a free concert by one of her favorite Taiwanese singers promoting his latest CD. When else would she ever likely see 羅志祥 (“Luo Zhi Xiang,” who goes by Alan Luo in English) in person, I asked, and so insisted that we visit Ximending first.

Although the neighborhood covers many blocks, finding the concert proved simple: we just followed the huge crowd to the stage behind the Red House Theater (紅楼劇場). There I noticed nobody else in the crowd over thirty, nor could I see any other foreigner anywhere on the plaza. I suppose that explains why the comedian M.C. (a guy about my age, to boot) entertaining the teenagers while 羅志祥 got ready singled me out.
Read the rest of this entry »

Last night I took the bus to Chiang Kai Shek Airport for the second time without intending to catch a plane. My former colleague and Bellaire Asian restaurant lunch buddy had started a vacation in Asia the week before. While I partied in Manila, she, her sister and her Italian friend Andreas had toured Japan. The friend hadn’t taken an interest in Taiwan, but Kristie and Pauline wanted to tour the island, and I had agreed to help out during their days in Taipei. That promise starting with collecting them from the airport.

Kristie had never thought to mention my ethnicity, and Pauline had not imagined that anyone but an Asian would relocate from the United States to Taiwan, which resulted in a startled expression on her face when I waved at Kristie as she walked into the arrivals area.
Read the rest of this entry »

After bemoaning the lack of authentic Vietnamese food in this city for so long, I had given up on finding anything better than what I can get from Tinh Viêt Phong Quán Ăn Viêt Nam, situated in a residential zone north of the Taipei City Hall MRT station. That location unfortunately requires too much effort for me to eat there casually, so usually I just pine for Pho Binh’s Pho Ðac Biêt whenever I get the urge for Vietnamese soup.

I don’t know how my colleague Michael found out about this tiny Vietnamese restaurant, but I can walk there from my apartment building in about five minutes. If you know the traffic circle where Heping East Road meets Keelung Road, follow the lane radiating northeast (keep Taipei 101 on your left, if you can see it) and look for a small shopfront with a sliding glass door on the left side of the street. Reaching the Circle K convenience store indicates that you have gone too far.
Read the rest of this entry »

Even after living here six and a half months, I didn’t think that little restaurants in the neighborhood of my office could still surprise me. I still don’t know the name of this place, which really amounts to not much more than a ten foot gap in a brick wall where a woman boils dumplings in a big pot, mostly for meals to go. She pairs those boiled dumplings with a thickened soy sauce loaded with garlic, strong enough to make me into a fan right away. You can find her in a small lane running north from Heping Road at the first intersection with a light west of Dunhua South Road. Just look for the “O Shiang Cart Cake” bakery on the corner if you’re not completely sure where to turn.

With help from a very kind Taiwanese co-worker, I have finally found a woman in Taipei whom I trust to cut my hair. If I remember the story correctly, Yu Li actually started “high vision,” which now has two locations not far from Linsen North Road. She has received extensive training in Japan, which counts as the gold standard for most Taiwanese, and doesn’t charge a fortune, so usually she gets booked weeks in advance. A last minute cancellation had opened up a gap in her schedule, however, and still I managed to arrive late. Even so, I got the full treatment, which began with submitting myself to a relaxing Japanese hairwashing machine (an Aqua Vibro, I think).
Read the rest of this entry »