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Regional Chinese Cuisine
Yi-Yuan Restaurant (Westin Taipei)
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| The imperial decor of the Yi-Yuan Restaurant makes you feel like the Empress Ci Xi herself. |
It may seem a bit out of place to be sitting amidst stylish cosmopolitan boutiques scarfing roast duck in surroundings harking back to imperial China. But not at the Yi-Yuan restaurant in the Westin Taipei, which is the only Beijing-style restaurant in any international-class tourist hotel in Taipei. The decor pairs black marble with a gold-foil ceiling, making you feel like the Empress Ci Xi herself as you consume a juicy, crispy-skinned Peking duck.
The layout of the Yi-Yuan (which means "Nummer Palace" gives considerable attention to the privacy of the guests. The restaurant has private boxes for four, equipped with Ming dynasty-style chairs, Qing dynasty-style opium couches, and Tang dynasty-style lampions, creating an aristocratic atmosphere. The Peking duck is one of the trademark dishes at the restaurant. Not only does the chef come right to your table to demonstrate his duck-carving skills; one roasted Peking duck--served with pancakes, sweet bean sauce, spring onions, and soup--can feed four.
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| Peking duck is the most famous house specialty at the Yi-Yuan. |
In addition there is a dish you can find nowhere else: a stew of braised snake, shredded chicken, and bamboo fungus. The restaurant also boasts a variety of splendid dishes using Beijing's favorite fish, the yellow croaker, including deep-fried croaker with sweet and sour sauce, croaker with garlic and soy sauce, and croaker dumplings. Such unadulterated Beijing cuisine is a rare find these days, when most restaurants have hybrid menus. This restaurant is especially suitable for entertaining foreign guests.
Hours: 11:30--14:30 and 17:30--21:30
Address: No. 133, Nanking E. Rd. Sec. 3, Taipei
Tel: (02) 8770-6556 |
Celestial Restaurant
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| One of the most popular house specialties: "Celestial beancurd." |
The Celestial Restaurant, opened in 1971, is a representative Beijing-cuisine establishment. Its house specialties include roast Peking duck, "Celestial bean curd," tripe with brown sauce, mutton, baked bean curd, oxtail in brown sauce, and ox tongue in brown sauce. Nothing is missing here from the taste of old Beijing.
Celestial Restaurant founder Chen Wan-tse studied Beijing cuisine after leaving the military and then opened his restaurant. The restaurant has a history as a gathering place for top military and political figures. In 1993, the second generation, in the person of Chen Hu-tou, took over operations, but the focus remains unchanged on providing authentic Beijing cuisine, with no slacking off on the tradition.
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The roast duck at the Celestial Restaurant is juicy and tasty. |
At the heart of the spirit of the Celestial is the Peking duck. Three chefs work exclusively on the process, in which each step is essential: pumping up the ducks with air, soaking them with spices, coating them with honey glaze, blow-drying them, hanging them in the oven… The result is a plump, crispy-skinned, juicy duck, which, after some skilled carving work by a chef, is ready for serving in the traditional way (dipped in brown sauce and wrapped in a pancake with a section of spring onion). This dish has been a special favorite of Japanese fine-dining magazines.
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| The chicken strips with fresh peas provides a refreshing sensation. |
In addition, there are the dishes that require special expertise--like tripe in brown sauce, or oxtail with brown sauce--such as were served at imperial banquets. And the "Celestial bean curd" is a dish that requires even more extra time and care: Old tofu and free-range chicken are cooked for a long period of time, then the crusty sides of the tofu are removed and ham and abalone strips are applied. This is then steamed over high heat, and the tofu absorbs the oil from the chicken and combines with the saltiness of the ham and the seafood-aroma of the abalone to create a dish that gets better with every bite.
Hours: 11:00-14:00 and 17:00-19:00
Address: 2-4F, No. 1, Nanking W. Rd., Taipei
Tel: (02) 2563-2171 |
Hunan Garden Restaurant (in the Sheraton Hotel Taipei)
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The tablecloths at the Hunan Garden have lovely embroidery. |
The Sheraton is the Taipei hotel closest to the center of power: It is surrounded by the Legislative, Executive, and Control Yuan buildings. Many government officials and legislators come here to dine and talk shop. The Sheraton's Chinese restaurants include the Shangri-la Garden (Zhejiang cuisine), the Jade Garden (Cantonese cuisine), the Happy Garden (Fujian cuisine), and the Hunan Garden. Of these, the most popular for banquets hosted by bigshots is also the one most accessible to popular tastes--Hunan Garden.
The Hunan Garden mainly serves modified Hunan cuisine, with Sichuan cuisine in a supporting role. It tones down traditional Hunan features--in which food is often pickled, salted (as a preservative), dried, and spicy-hot--so that it is more acceptable to a larger audience. The restaurant emphasizes the fresh-boiled and wok-fry cooking
methods, with emphasis on both quality and quantity.
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| The furniture in the
Hunan Garden Restaurant is classical in style. |
The most representative Hunan dish is
General Tso's chicken, a combination of raw hot peppers and
wok-fried chicken pieces. Other specialties of the house include
"Noble ham" with honey syrup, sliced sea bream soup,
braised sea cucumber with oyster sauce, and swallow's nest with pea
soup. The menu changes every four months, so there is always
something new for customers to try.
Hours: 11:30-14:30, 17:30-21:30
Tel: (02) 2321-5511 ext. 8016
Address: 2F, No. 12, Chunghsiao E. Rd. Sec. 1, Taipei |
Ching Yeh Restaurant
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| Ching Yeh Restaurant specializes in home-style Taiwan cuisine. |
Thirty-seven years ago, Ms. Shen got tired of hearing Japanese visitors complain that they couldn't find traditional Taiwanese cuisine, so she opened a restaurant together with four friends, specializing in food known to every household on a daily basis: rice congee with side dishes. With this, the Ching Yeh Restaurant brought typical Taiwanese food out of the home and into the world of haute cuisine.
Besides the rice congee with sweet potatoes, house specialties include braised pork in brown sauce, scrambled eggs with turnip, cuttlefish balls, fried oyster with fermented soybeans, oyster rolls, boiled chicken, braised pork feet with peanuts, steamed rice with crab, spring rolls, and more.
Ching Yeh also serves banquet-style meals suitable for entertaining honored guests. Dishes include main courses like chicken, jellyfish and smoked goose, and stir-fried items like abalone, and minced crab with loofah. There are also steamed shark's fin in brown soup, served on a bed of shredded cabbage and mushrooms, and steamed fresh grouper. Before finishing off, it is essential to take a soup and a sweet, such as tremella (a fungus) with rock sugar and lotus seeds or a "four treasures" sweet mashed taro. This type of meal has its origins in old winehouse dining in Taiwan, and reveals the high level of artistry that can be found in Taiwanese cuisine.
Hours: 08:30-14:30 and 17:00-24:00 daily
Address: No. 1, Lane 105, Chungshan N. Rd. Sec. 1, Taipei
Tel: (02) 2551-7957i |
The Yunnan Renhe Garden Restaurant
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| Yunnanese fried cheese is another of the famous dishes on offer at Renhe. |
The Renhe Garden is a venerable establishment that has been open for 46 years. Not only can you indulge in Yunnan food, you can hear the owner, Yao An-chin, tell the story of the dish called "Rice noodles crossing the bridge." Yao, who has the trademark Yunnan spirit, serves up a whole culinary culture.
When the "Rice noodles crossing the bridge" gets to the table, it includes a hot soup that gives off no steam, a bowl of rice noodles which have been cooked but then dried, strips of raw meat, and Chinese chives. First you scald the meat in the soup, then drop in the rice noodles along with the condiments. Prepared in these stages, the dish preserves that fresh-cooked taste all the way through. Behind this dish is a moving tale.
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| Yunnan cuisine is slightly sour and slightly sweet. The "Pig ear"is a house specialty at Renhe Garden. |
There was in ancient times a young scholar preparing for the imperial exams. He shut himself away in a lakeside pavilion to study. His wife had to cross a bridge every day to bring him his food, and the food was always cold by the time she arrived. The clever wife put a layer of fat on top of the boiling broth, and prepared the rice noodles and other ingredients separately. The fat sealed the heat of the soup in, and the student could have his food as if it were just off the stove.
Yunnan cuisine is not built around large portions of meat or fish, but with strips of meat and many pickled, sweet, or sour vegetables, which are especially appetizing when the weather is hot. Renhe Garden specialties include thin strips of pig ear, thin slices of beef dried with aromatic spices, pickled-bamboo-and-chicken soup, pickled bamboo fish, and fish covered in crumbled baked soybean. Snacks include deep-fat-fried Yunnanese cheese, as well as the sweet and delightfully chewy posu baozi, which is layers of paper-thin dough encasing a paste made of sesame, orange peel, and ham. Moreover,
Renhe Garden specially imports various types of mushrooms from Yunnan, which alone are worth a visit.
Hours: 11:30-14:00 and 17:30-21:00
Address: 16 Chinchou Street, Taipei
Tel: (02) 2568-2587 |
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