We were feeling hungry after spending some quality time at the hospital. Although everything checked out alright, GF was still feeling twinges in her back, and it was still raining outside, so it wasn't a good time to be randomly wandering for restaurants. She noticed Koshiya along the alley behind the hospital, and she'd heard good things about the place, so we went by to check it out. We were lucky to squeeze into a table that just opened up while larger groups still waited outside, and the restaurant continued to be packed during our time there. The room is Japanese-utilitarian, with thick wood tables and texture-papered walls which wouldn't seem out of place on a Tokyo street corner. The crowd was young-professional, streaming in from the nearby office towers and fancy residences for a quick bite before a night on the town.
Being a katsu shop, just about everything was going to be breaded and fried, including the veggies (tempura style). There's the classic pork cutlet, jumbo prawns, fish filets, and various sorts of potato croquette. They offered a variety of fillings for the tonkatsu if a chunk of pork is too plain for you. The waiter recommended the cheese-tonkatsu (almost like a cordon-bleu, if you think about it), but we demurred. I decided to go with the ginger-scallion stuffed tonkatsu and prawn combo meal, and GF had the plain tonkatsu and prawn combo. The combo meal includes unlimited rice and miso soup, just to make sure you don't leave hungry, and an extra bowl of hot soup (more like hot miso-water, really) always goes down well with the GF.
While you're waiting for your meal, they offer you a small dish of toasted sesame seeds in a mini-suribachi (a.k.a. Japanese mortar and pestle) to grind up the seeds yourself to go with the strongly flavored, almost medicinal (tasted of dried orange rind to me), tonkatsu sauce. They also deliver up little bits of marinated kanbu and acidic pickles, along with a big bowl of shredded cabbage, all to help the oily mains from becoming overwhelming. Also ordered a veggie potato croquette, with bits of corn and cabbage in the standard creamy-potato cake. You just can't beat fresh-out-of-the-frier for something like this, which is all about the contrast between the crunchy panko breading and the soft creamy filling. Although fresh-fried does mean a serious danger of tongue-burns if you take a big injudicious bite. The croquettes were strongly enough salted to support the starch and make the flavor stand up on its own, which probably make them even worse for you. At least my blood pressure checked out just fine at the free check-up station in the hospital, so a bit of extra Na don't bother me.
The main dishes came quickly, arranged artfully on heavy Japanese-style porcelain-ware. The ginger-scallion tonkatsu was a pork cutlet pounded thin, rolled around the herb filling before being breaded, fried, and diagonally-sliced in attractive pieces almost like a sushi roll. A pepper-salt was provided as the dipping option. Was more used to the ginger-scallion mix as a dipping sauce for cold-cut chicken and I think it works better that way. The warmth of the meat doesn't cook the filling enough to concentrate the flavor but just warmed it up enough to take away the cool herbaceousness. But it was different and interesting, and the extra herbs do help to cut the oiliness of the tonkatsu quite a bit. The head-on but shelled whole prawns were breaded in a thick, eggy batter. Not as light as a good tempura and the prawn isn't as high-quality as at 吉園, but good for the price and it went perfectly with the tartar sauce, which I'm not usually a fan of. The rice was also quite good, almost Japanese-quality, and a judicious combination of the rice and shredded cabbage made it a balanced meal instead of just a fry-up.
A strong, bitter cold green tea accompanied the meal and a negligible after-dinner drink plus dessert to round it out. Pretty darn good meal for well under NTD1K.
晃士家炸豬排專賣店
台北市大安區仁愛路4段266巷15弄4號1樓
02-27022976
GF's grand-aunt gave her some money to help fund a get-together for the kids. Char-grilling meat around the hibachi is always a good time, and we had a good experience at Gyu-Kaku before, so we rounded up the usual suspects for a Sunday lunch at the location across from Sogo. The place was relatively sparsely populated for a weekend mealtime, unlike when we went to the XinYi location on a Saturday night. Once we got everyone together, it was time to light up the charcoal. The servers started bringin' the raw meat and we were off to the races.
The first round was all about the beef. The cow-tongue is a signature selection. The thinly sliced tongue had a slightly chewier texture without being tough, tasty either sprinkled with salt and dipped in fresh-squeezed lime juice, or pre-marinated and dipped in a heavier soy-mirin dipping sauce. For each order of meat, one can choose between just rock-salt, a soy-based marinade, or a miso-based marinade. Plain salt lets the flavor of the meat itself come through. The soy marinade gave it a more hearty flavor, and I found the miso marinade to be a bit too sweet for my taste. The sirloin was the best bang-for-the-buck, with a plateful of thick-cut meat which grilled up perfectly. Filet was tender, of course, but the cubes were barely large enough to not fall through the grill openings. The kalbi meat was tasty but a bit too fatty, although it may have helped if I'd the patience to let the grill render out all the fat.
One can't live by meat alone, and the restaurant offered some vegetable sides wrapped in foil packets which one can set on the side of the grill to steam in its own juices. Asparagus and bacon is a classic combo and the addition of shitake mushrooms worked well, too. A bit heavy-handed on the bacon which made the packet a bit salty but not overwhelmingly so. The shitake-enoki packet was dressed with butter and a bit of stock to give the mushrooms that creamy richness when the bundle of enoki is saturated with the juices. It's a trivial dish to do yourself at home, but it's still good eatin' even in a restaurant setting.
The savory meats would've gone great with a bowl of Japanese white rice if I had the stomach capacity. As it were, we ordered bimbimbap, which is the Korean-style stone-bowl rice which is plenty flavorful on its own. The rice pressed against the hot stone bowl forms a slightly charred crust which is broken up into crunchy bits when the rice is mixed with the fixings and the red-miso sauce. Not the best version ever, but then this isn't a Korean restaurant, and it was still plenty good. The kimchee-seafood hotpot was totally terrible, though. The seafood had the crap boiled out of it and the kimchee obliterated any potential seafood flavor but wasn't strong enough to actually assert itself in any interesting way.
Had some pork along with more beef in the second round. The fatty bacon-like cut wasn't really suited for the hot hibachi as the bubbling fat caused scary flareups. And by then we've all gone way past our daily allowance of char-grilled animal fat.
When we went to the XinYi location, the waiters had fancy PDA-things to record the order and they were attentive throughout the meal. No high-tech order-taking here. Maybe it was just because the room wasn't busy enough to rouse the waiters, but the servers at the Sogo location spent most of the time huddled in the back half of the dining area or in the kitchen when the patrons were sitting in the front room. They were tardy in clearing the emptied but bloody plates, and didn't bother refilling water, etc. without active summoning. They're not really paid well enough to care, but the lack of attention did annoy the GF and she let 'em have it when she filled out the diner-comment form. Maybe somebody will even read it before it gets disposed in the leftover hot coals.
牛角日式炭火燒肉 (頂好店)
台北市大安區仁愛路4段27巷34號
02-27514514
Other locations around Taipei
Don't usually visit the Far Eastern area much since it's not near an MRT stop, but GF was in the mood to go some place different, and we had plenty of time on a lazy Sunday. GF had longer to go, so I had time to do a quick search on the Net and walk around the densely-restauranted area a bit before we met up. Situated in a quiet residential alley, Herbs appealed to passer-by with lush foliage. The main room is light airy with large wall-windows and on this warm spring day the entire side could be opened to the outside seating. A second floor is available but not open during the Sunday lunch so we sat outside. Chairs were substantial and well-stuffed, more like lounge sitting chairs, and the tables were also covered in black faux-leather. The plants and burbling fountain kept the outside sitting area cool and serene.
They crack open a bottle of Evian as soon as you sit down, and charge NTD30 a head for the privilege of drinking fancy imported water in a smudgy glass. The Mediterranean menu was interesting with the emphasis on the herbs and spices, some of which is grown on-premise, although I struggled a bit with the Chinese names of the herbage. Ordered a glass of the house white to go with the food and was informed they were out. Can't they just open any old bottle and just call it the house wine? Decided to go with a Belgian fruit beer instead. Originally wanted the peach but they were out of that, too, but that's okay since cherry is really the classic flavor anyway.
I had the prix-fixe meal with soup, appetizer, main, dessert, and a drink. GF ordered a pasta and we figured we could share the rest. The appetizer was a cold cuttlefish dish. Strips of tender cuttlefish dressed with an inky vinaigrette. A bit of romaine, frisee, and white onion added color and texture. It was interesting and good, although there was the concern of ink-stained teeth. The soup was a tomato-ey broth with carrots and onion bits and flavored with chunks of sausage. Nothing special although the sausage spices did give it a bit more complexity than the usual cheap bowl of soup. Couldn't exactly share soup, so they comp-ed the GF a bowl of soup to keep the pace of the meal balanced, which was a real classy move. They also sent out a mini-scoop of peach granita before the main. The bit of icy sugar water hardly cost them anything, but the unexpected amusé was a good palate-cleanser before the entree and gave the service a high-end touch. Props to whoever designed the meal service.
GF had the seafood linguine in spicy tomato sauce. The sauce was a touch sweet for my tastes, but it wasn't overwhelming and in fact was quite balanced with the other flavors. The "spicy" was mild but no need to burn up the taste buds for a Sunday lunch. I had the snapper-wrapped scallops in caviar cream sauce. An impressive presentation of a stack of two fat scallops, each wrapped with thin filet of snapper with just a bit of skin on for color. Tender baby asparagus for scaffolding and greenage, all sitting on a white wine cream sauce. Dabs of red and black mini-caviar provided dramatic contrast to the mostly white dish. The seafood was fresh and well-cooked, the sauce was rich and the tiny fish eggs were little bursts of briny saltiness to punch it up a bit. Only oversight was that the serving dish wasn't pre-warmed, so the rich sauce cooled off quickly and congealed a bit by the end.
The dessert was suppose to be a brownie, but it ended up being a crepe roll filled with pastry cream. That was fine with me, although all that cream scared off the GF a bit. So we were all done with our fine meal, then we had to wait... and wait... even though it was getting later in the afternoon and lunchers were al well on their way out. I should've gotten rude with the waitstaff a lot earlier. Stupid me for expecting reasonable service around here, I guess. Nevertheless, despite parting on bad terms, the restaurant is a success in almost every other way, and we'll give it another chance sometime.
The Villa Herbs Restaurant
#32 Lane 11 Leli Rd., Taipei
台北市大安區樂利路11巷32號1樓
02-27323255
Was going to meet up with the GF at the hospital to visit her grandfather, but when we got there we found out that he's doing so well that the doctor actually released him to go home already. Made our way back toward the east-side on foot and by bus and wandered through the back alleys behind 忠孝敦化. I was wandering aimlessly in the alleys slightly overwhelmed by the sheer number of restaurants. It was the first real warm day of the spring, and the GF was tired of being dragged along, so she chose this place as we wandered by. The little courtyard out front, the dark interior, and the couches along the edges of the room helped to make the space appear inviting despite the bare concrete walls and cheap furniture.
The menu was ambitious-sounding and they manage to mostly pull it off. I had the duck confit in honey-wine sauce. It's a large portion with sliced half-breast and a leg sitting in the sweetened goopy brown sauce. Interesting contrast of textures as the breast meat was chewy, almost tough, while the leg was fall-apart tender. Wish there was a bit more to the sauce, but I got my money's worth with the meat. GF had a chicken dish with a leg breaded with a strongly herbed (oregano?) crust on a cream sauce. The crust was crunchy and flavorful and kept the meat juicy. Unfortunately the GF took off most of the crust/skin, but thankfully there was still the sauce to provide some additional flavor. So the main items were interesting and good, at least. Both were accompanied by a scoop of mashed potatoes and steamed veggies (button mushrooms, baby carrots, and a stalk of bok choy). Not too exciting, but we're not paying enough to be getting fancy sides.
They offered half-bottle of wine, which is always convenient, but I wasn't terribly impressed with Chilean Concha y Toro 2004 Casillero Diablo Cabernet Sauvignon. I found it a bit acidic and young without the easy-drinking-ness that comes with young wines. On the other hand the wine gets good reviews on the Net, so maybe I've just been spoiled the Bordeaux Premier Crus that I've mooched from uncle.
Casa
台北市大安區忠孝東路4段216巷27弄17號
02-87718799
