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Authentic regional Chinese cuisine
Jiyuan Sichuanese Restaurant
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| There are always several dozen claypots bubbling away in the kitchen at Jiyuan, but you'll need to book 24 hours ahead if you want to enjoy their contents. |
Forty-eight claypots of free-range chicken are bubbling away over a high flame, stewing for the 12 hours that it takes to bring out the real essence of the dish before serving it forth.
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| A delectable dish of claypot-stewed free-range chicken. |
Proprietor Tan
Ching-feng, who hails from Shanghai, has always adored Sichuanese food. Twenty-odd years ago he opened the Jiyuan Sichuanese restaurant, bringing authentic Sichuanese dishes and Shanghai claypots together on the same table. Claypot free-range chicken is the restaurant's speciality dish, with more upscale versions enhanced by shark fin and abalone. The flavor of the ingredients gets sealed within the pot, and the soup continues to bubble away when the pot is removed from the heat, making for an enjoyable shared eating experience--ideal for special occasions.
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| Xianggen shredded beef. |
Jiyuan also has authentic Sichuanese dishes that shouldn't be missed, such as spicy pork intestines, dry-fried string beans, xianggen shredded beef, and shredded pork in Beijing sauce--great whether eaten with rice or wrapped in thin pancakes.
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| Spring-onion pancakes for wrapping shredded beef or string beans. |
Several dozen blackened old claypots form the restaurant's most valuable asset. These are a traditional part of Chinese cookery, used both for cooking and as containers, and like old teapots they are seasoned through use, improving in taste as the years go by.
No. 324, Tunhua S. Rd. Sec. 1, Taipei
Tel: (02) 2708-3110 |
Jiuru Restaurant
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| Jiuru is renowned for its Jiangsu-Zhejiang glutinous-rice snacks--meat zongzi, dumplings in fermented-rice soup, and compacted sticky-rice balls. |
Glutinous rice, which is what Jiuru Restaurant is really all about, is the essential ingredient for fried New Year pudding, Huzhou zongzi, rice dumplings in fermented-rice soup, and the various other treats of the Jiangsu-Zhejiang region that the restaurant specializes in.
Jiuru is deluged with orders for zongzi in the runup to Dragonboat Festival every year, and the aroma of zongzi hits your nose before you've even stepped inside, where plates of bean-paste filling and other ingredients are stacked high. Huzhou zongzi are longer in shape than the usual zongzi, and come in sweet bean-paste and savory pork versions, with the rice boiled until soft but not mushy.
Jiuru has been open in Taipei for several decades, and is the originator of Taiwan's sesame dumplings in soup, which can be served with a clear soup or with egg in fermented-rice soup. Fermented rice is made by allowing cooked glutinous rice to ferment. When re-heated it gives off a whiff of spirits and it leaves the eater feeling mildly tipsy. A number of top celebrities in Taiwan swear by fermented rice as a beauty supplement, in preference to commercial cosmetic products.
No. 69, Jen-ai Rd. Sec. 4, Taipei
Tel: (02) 2751-7666 |
Beiping Duyichu
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| Some of the clientele at Duyichu have been coming here since they were children. Continuity is part of the restaurant's appeal. |
Beiping Duyichu restaurant was founded in 1949, and in more than 50 years since then has continued to offer the original tastes of "Beiping"(now Beijing). This continuity is one of the restaurant's biggest draws. Many of its customers have been dining here since they were children, and now come with their own offspring.
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| Dalian pot-stickers. |
Some of the most popular dishes are: tofu skin, smoked chicken, beef or pork in sauce, sesame-paste grilled bread, cabbage heart salad, xiangchun tofu, jiuzhuan fatty intestine, deep-fried meatballs and green-bean millet gruel. They may not be particularly extravagant dishes, but the taste is more than good enough. There are also noodle dishes such as lotus-leaf cake topped with omelet, and Qing palace cold noodles.
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Duyichu's homemade sour plum cordial. |
Taipei is not wanting for northern Chinese restaurants, but Duyichu is always full, even though it's far from cheap. The secret of its success is "attention to detail.," Take a good look and you'll notice that the cold cabbage hearts are all perfectly cut, and that the tofu skin and the sesame-paste grilled bread are handmade by the chef. Even the pickled cabbage for the boiled pork hotpot, so popular during winter, is made using only the best white cabbage, and when added to the traditional copper pot of boiling broth it seems to suffuse the room with warmth.
No. 506, Jen-ai Rd. Sec. 4, Taipei
Tel: (02) 2720-6417 |
Jing Zhao Yin
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| "Rolling donkeys." |
Imperial delicacies originating from the Forbidden City in Beijing can be consumed in Taipei too, more exquisite even than those in the mock imperial restaurants of Beijing itself. Jing Zhao Yin restaurant offers a range of vegetarian dimsum based on palace recipes for healthy food, low in sugar, fat, cholesterol and calories--so you can chomp away without feeling guilty.
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| pea jelly |
"Recall the taste of the old capital, enjoy the gastronomy of the emperors." Mr. Yin, the owner of Jing Zhao Yin, who hails from Beijing, brought to Taiwan the pastry recipes of the imperial chefs of the Qing dynasty. He has made continual improvements, developing a repertoire of the finest sweet and savoury treats. As patrons of his restaurant, we need not be emperors, but we can indulge ourselves on snacks that are more toothsome than anything the emperors ever knew.
The menu includes sticky-rice balls brushed in peanut powder, melt-in-the-mouth pea jelly, haw pudding--sour but with a hint of sweetness--refreshing iced sour-plum cordial, and also walnut jelly and sesame jelly. From Monday to Friday Jing Zhao Yin offers a set Chinese afternoon tea of two pastries and a covered cup of tea, for from NT$198 per head.
Jing Zhao Yin has two branches in Taipei, with the main restaurant in Lishui Street and the second branch near Tunhua South Road.
Main restaurant
No. 2, Lane 16, Lishui St, Taipei
Tel: (02) 2321-9078
Jen-ai branch
18 Ssuwei Rd, Taipei
Tel: (02) 2701-3225 |
Black Samurai Lounge
--A place for mala and luwei
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| Wontons in chilli oil, Black Samurai's house speciality snack. |
In the thick of the culinary com-bat zone, amid the eateries large and small that line Tungfeng Street, the Black Samurai stands firm, confident in the owner's consummate skill in the dark arts of mala--a fiery combination of chili and tongue-numbing Sichuan peppercorns. It not only offers a mala hotpot that haunts the tastebuds, but also mala noodles that really hit the spot, and even a unique line in luwei foods dipped in special mala sauce.
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| The interior of Black Samurai Lounge is reminiscent of a foreign bar, with the TV set mounted high in a corner permanently tuned to a sports channel. |
The owner, Shih Ta-te, hails from a family of restaurateurs and maintains high standards when it comes to food. He uses Taiwanese beef stock for his hotpots, with top-grade US beef scalded in the pot. Customers can also choose from non-spicy alternatives such as the pickled vegetables and boiled pork hotpot, and the taro-and-spareribs hotpot.
Luwei, which Shih specializes in, is a uniquely Chinese method of food preparation. Various kinds of meat--such as beef tendon, tripe, and beef intestines--along with dried tofu, are stewed in a concoction of soy sauce, herbs and spices, producing a delicious flavor that makes a good accompaniment to liquor.
65 Tungfeng St, Taipei
Tel: 02-2706-9350 |
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