11/08 New German restaurant @ Qianshuiwan, Sanzhi - Am Strand 在海邊

Cuisine Greater Taipei Restaurants
1

There is a new German restaurant open directly at the beach, away from the crowds. Stunning view combined with authentic German dishes from a German cook. The kitchen is Bavarian with a lot of delicacies from other areas of Germany. All food is handmade with a strict focus on taste and quality, modern fine dining cooking methods are used. The place offers arrangements including room with seaview, catering and entertainment.

Enjoy real good food while you watch the beach and ocean, lounge with a beer or coffee and let the location make you feel like being in holidays. The German chef fulfills all culinary wishes that you didn’t dared to have yet.

Find out more about location and pictures on the website faceboook.com/Am.Strand.Sanzhi .

Tastefully,
the cook

Am Strand Ltd.
新北市三芝區後厝里北勢子12-7號
12-7, Beishizhi, Houcuo, Sanzhi, New Taipei City 25242
(02) 2636 6250

Google Maps: goo.gl/maps/w6D25

2

Thanks for letting us know. The restaurant looks quite promising, and it’s in a lovely area that definitely needs better dining options.

I do have one suggestion about the menu: perhaps you can think about adding some vegetarian options. I know in some ways that’s not very “German”, but it’d still be nice to have choices for those who don’t want to eat meat.

Best of luck with your new venture!

3

Nice looking menu. But I suspect that the many stated “rules” about no sharing, no desserts without a main course, etc may be off putting to some potential customers. I get it that from a business perspective you need to make this work financially. But some of these “rules” may not be received warmly!

Best of luck with this,

Guy

4

Good luck …

5

Thanks a lot for your warm wishes.

@lostinasia We are trying hard to find more quality vegetables to create vegetarian dishes, as we see a big demand in this area. We still learn what the local and foreign customer expects to find in such a place, it’s a learning process.

@afterspivak The menu in FB and website have been updated today to reflect these changes. We try to balance between adapting to the local restaurant offerings like set menu and shared dishes while preserving a minimum of authenticity in our dishes. We keep on updated new dishes and adapting concepts according to customer feedback.

6

Just some suggestions, in no particular order:

Try to get your place listed on some local Yelp-like websites, I think this one is the largest: ipeen.com.tw/ and also get some people to review it.

On your website, on the “Contact Us”/“連絡我們” page you could put an embedded Google map.

Just FYI, when I search for your address on Google maps, it shows a totally different place. It’s Google’s fault, not yours, but for some people it might make it difficult to find you. Consider also giving out the numeric co-ordinates, I think these are: 25.254969581606, 121.47421074436. This way Google can show your actual location.

Also, while you only give the driving directions, there’s also a bus stop nearby called 北勢溪口, with the following buses: 821, 860, 861, 862, 863, 864, 865, 867, 879, 882, 892, of which 860 and 863 seem to go reasonably often. This information might encourage more people to visit and it costs you nothing to put it somewhere on your website. Bus schedules can be checked here: e-bus.ntpc.gov.tw/

If you don’t mind the publicity, putting your photo somewhere on the website could do wonders to attract the local clientele.

There’s the German Chamber of Commerce in Taipei which might be useful to get in touch with: taiwan.ahk.de/ (but I guess this you already know).

Good luck!

BTW Last Sunday I went to Paulaner at the Arts University in Guandu, basically to have a beer. While the beer is good there, I also got a few slices of moulded bread with it for about $200, which were replaced with 4 diminutive nondescript rock-like pretzels after I complained. Add to that the standard Taiwanese (lack of) quality of service and zero ambience while the grand total shot up to nearly $2k for two people. Really wish I paid you a visit instead.

7

[quote=“Doraemonster”]Just some suggestions, in no particular order:

Try to get your place listed on some local Yelp-like websites, I think this one is the largest: ipeen.com.tw/ and also get some people to review it.

On your website, on the “Contact Us”/“連絡我們” page you could put an embedded Google map.

Just FYI, when I search for your address on Google maps, it shows a totally different place. It’s Google’s fault, not yours, but for some people it might make it difficult to find you. Consider also giving out the numeric co-ordinates, I think these are: 25.254969581606, 121.47421074436. This way Google can show your actual location.

Also, while you only give the driving directions, there’s also a bus stop nearby called 北勢溪口, with the following buses: 821, 860, 861, 862, 863, 864, 865, 867, 879, 882, 892, of which 860 and 863 seem to go reasonably often. This information might encourage more people to visit and it costs you nothing to put it somewhere on your website. Bus schedules can be checked here: e-bus.ntpc.gov.tw/

If you don’t mind the publicity, putting your photo somewhere on the website could do wonders to attract the local clientele.

There’s the German Chamber of Commerce in Taipei which might be useful to get in touch with: taiwan.ahk.de/ (but I guess this you already know).

Good luck!

BTW Last Sunday I went to Paulaner at the Arts University in Guandu, basically to have a beer. While the beer is good there, I also got a few slices of moulded bread with it for about $200, which were replaced with 4 diminutive nondescript rock-like pretzels after I complained. Add to that the standard Taiwanese (lack of) quality of service and zero ambience while the grand total shot up to nearly $2k for two people. Really wish I paid you a visit instead.
[/quote]

Thanks so much for your sharing ideas, for general information, this project is done by one foreigner only, there is no local involved and beside a weekend-volunteer doing some translation work we run this place as a one-man company.

The location has the problem, that it has no address, or better saying it has many addresses. (Letters arriving have all different naming). Sanzhi government has one definition, New Taipei City has another, the locals have a third one. And Google? We are working on getting this POI registered finally for 3 months now, it stills doesn’t appear. It is there but you have to search for it with the German name “Am Strand”. Your advice to show on website is being processed currently like the mentioning of bus routes.

We want to have local TV channels to review us, report about and promote us, there are steps done to make this possible even without knowledge of Chinese language. We are listed on platforms like Openrice, TripAdvisor but continue to get listed in more, local platforms.

When the boss, cook, server, website designer, buyer, dishwasher and blogger has shaved finally we will post an inviting picture of him online, be sure. :laughing:

Your last remark is the most interesting, as it matches our experiences, and is one of the reasons to run this business in Taiwan. We believe there is a demand for a change in how people eat and drink. Current scandals show how much there is a need for changes, a return to the basics, a return to slow food, a return to enjoying times of eating. The taste is still the most natural proof you are eating good. We just unlearned how to taste, which can be relearned again. We believe that we can show, and teach people this ability again. We hope to see you one day At The Beach to make this bad experience about German food be wiped out, yet leaving your budget on a reasonable level.

8

I hope you’re right on that one … my experiences differ.

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[quote=“Am-Strand”]
Your last remark is the most interesting, as it matches our experiences, and is one of the reasons to run this business in Taiwan. We believe there is a demand for a change in how people eat and drink. Current scandals show how much there is a need for changes, a return to the basics, a return to slow food, a return to enjoying times of eating. The taste is still the most natural proof you are eating good. We just unlearned how to taste, which can be relearned again. We believe that we can show, and teach people this ability again. We hope to see you one day At The Beach to make this bad experience about German food be wiped out, yet leaving your budget on a reasonable level.[/quote]

That’s a great idea! But you would need to really tell people about it in a very loud and clear way. And find some way to give evidence that you really are. For example, you could identify vegetable, meat, oil, and dairy suppliers and ingedients, so that it was a matter of public record, almost daring people to check up on you. Then they might believe it. If you just said discreetly somewhere on your menu or website “We use natural ingredients” then people might be less prone to believe you.

BTW, I live in Danshui so I hope to stop by your place quite soon!
Good luck!

10

[quote=“BigJohn”]

That’s a great idea! But you would need to really tell people about it in a very loud and clear way. And find some way to give evidence that you really are. For example, you could identify vegetable, meat, oil, and dairy suppliers and ingedients, so that it was a matter of public record, almost daring people to check up on you. Then they might believe it. If you just said discreetly somewhere on your menu or website “We use natural ingredients” then people might be less prone to believe you.

BTW, I live in Danshui so I hope to stop by your place quite soon!
Good luck![/quote]

By “People” I mean a suspicious public, stung by multiple scandal. If you are into the real and fresh, well-sourced food scene, your time is NOW. MIlk that cow!

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Who still knows how milk really taste, especially in combination with other tastes. I agree to the need of awareness, promotion and in fact teaching of the necessity to eat today. I understand that there are people who don’t feel a need for different food, as what they eat fulfills there needs, but does it fulfill the need of their body? The lost awareness for the direct influence of nutrition and health and it’s consequences only make scandals like the current ones, other scandals around the world and our general “convenient” approach on everything we put into our body possible. And there is not much to change, but to change it yourself.

We could have an easy restaurant life ordering processed food that we only have to warm up and proceed for the customer, the main reason we don’t do this is not the quality of the product only but how it was treated before we open the plastic bag. We prefer to buy from sources that are controlled all the time, as they import most products, or we know the farmer and butcher personally. The result is food you can taste what it is made of, not what it should taste like after the menu description. Pork tastes of pork, not sauce, potatoes taste of potatoes, not deep-fry oil.

We collected all your advises and comments and integrate them into our business right now, as we need more people to enjoy this project and participate in it not only by finishing our plates until the last sauce drop. So far our experiences and customer feedback shows us we are on a right way, but it is not at all a convenient one. We take hours to create our products, the customer needs hours to join these products in a special place.

@BigJohn Thanks a lot for your input, we hope to see you soon, it’s only 15 mins from Danshui.

@Belgian Pie We are very interested to learn about your experiences, and how they differ from ours. I am sure we are not the only one doing healthy food in Taiwan, but we definitely want to learn and share with those who have more and longer experiences in this sector.

12

I need to comment on this one because it feels like what I wrote is leading you the wrong way, and I certainly wouldn’t want it, as I wish you success. While I do care about what I eat, and I also care about the ambience of a restaurant, that’s just me, and I’m not Taiwanese. As much as I’d like to congratulate you for what you wrote, hoping that you don’t compromise on quality and retain your authenticity, I need to warn you that (according to my observations) this is all of secondary concern for the local market, and you need to focus on the local market as there are not enough “foreigners” to keep your business in the black.

In other words, I think you need to market your place differently to the local audience, and you can’t really depend on your intuition for that. I’m not an expert on how to do this either but generally I believe one way is to “sell yourself,” hence the photo suggestion I made earlier. Another objective should be to get the word-of-mouth going not just here, but also among the local community (I guess you’re doing it already, but just checking).

Also, while it’s commendable that you use high-quality ingredients and I certainly hope it stays that way, it’s completely possible, if not prevalent here, to run an expensive restaurant using low-quality ingredients, as long as you make unsubstantiated claims about how high-quality they are. Some of these places repeatedly get busted during the subsequent food scandals yet they seem to be doing just fine, the only logical conclusion being that it doesn’t matter what’s inside, as long as it’s nicely wrapped (excuse the parallel). These are the places you’ll be competing with.

Good luck again, and I certainly hope to visit you one day!

13

[quote]Who still knows how milk really taste, especially in combination with other tastes. I agree to the need of awareness, promotion and in fact teaching of the necessity to eat today. I understand that there are people who don’t feel a need for different food, as what they eat fulfills there needs, but does it fulfill the need of their body? The lost awareness for the direct influence of nutrition and health and it’s consequences only make scandals like the current ones, other scandals around the world and our general “convenient” approach on everything we put into our body possible. And there is not much to change, but to change it yourself.

We could have an easy restaurant life ordering processed food that we only have to warm up and proceed for the customer, the main reason we don’t do this is not the quality of the product only but how it was treated before we open the plastic bag. We prefer to buy from sources that are controlled all the time, as they import most products, or we know the farmer and butcher personally. The result is food you can taste what it is made of, not what it should taste like after the menu description. Pork tastes of pork, not sauce, potatoes taste of potatoes, not deep-fry oil.

We collected all your advises and comments and integrate them into our business right now, as we need more people to enjoy this project and participate in it not only by finishing our plates until the last sauce drop. So far our experiences and customer feedback shows us we are on a right way, but it is not at all a convenient one. We take hours to create our products, the customer needs hours to join these products in a special place.
[/quote]

Done that for 6 years … came to realize that only a minority cares, most don’t … that’s why WOW prime and most coffee shops/eateries sell western food having a good business … all industrial kitchen prepared, heated up and plated … canned soups and sauces … well … :frowning:

It’s the same in the west … staff cost are to high or you can’t just get kitchen staff or bakery staff.

14

Amidst the doom-and-gloom, I venture to say that things are (slowly? unevenly?) shifting. After Joel Robuchon set up shop in Taipei, there has been a subtle ripple effect, with some of his staff moving on to other ventures, and some of his chefs opening their own places… Bit by bit, western food is changing here–and for the better. There’s not many forumosans around the island, but if we can support these people, we can at least try to help keep things moving in the right direction.

Guy

15

[quote=“afterspivak”]Amidst the doom-and-gloom, I venture to say that things are (slowly? unevenly?) shifting. After Joel Robuchon set up shop in Taipei, there has been a subtle ripple effect, with some of his staff moving on to other ventures, and some of his chefs opening their own places… Bit by bit, western food is changing here–and for the better. There’s not many forumosans around the island, but if we can support these people, we can at least try to help keep things moving in the right direction.

Guy[/quote]
It’s still a minority and probably pricy … and how many of them go out of business?

16

Indeed such food is not cheap. But the Robuchon spin offs (at least the two I know of) are still around. All this is a roundabout what to say that I hope Am Strand can make it on such terms too–though I don’t presume to say it will be easy!

Guy