Christmas food to go (in Taipei)

Taiwan Where Can I Find...?
1

We’re going to be having around 10 people over next week. We were thinking about treating them to turkey bought from Jake’s Country Kitchen. Anyone have any comments about the quality of the turkey we would be getting from there? And the ad I cut out from one of the English papers here mentions a list of sides (mashed potato, broccoli with cheese sauce, turkey dressing, etc.), but that seems to go with the turkey dinner they serve in the restaurant. Does anyone know what sides come with the turkey that you buy to go?

Finally, does anyone have any other recommendations? Or is Jake’s Country Kitchen the way to do this Christmas/holiday meal with mostly Taiwanese? Thank you!

2

[quote=“marasan”]We’re going to be having around 10 people over next week. We were thinking about treating them to turkey bought from Jake’s Country Kitchen. Anyone have any comments about the quality of the turkey we would be getting from there? And the ad I cut out from one of the English papers here mentions a list of sides (mashed potato, broccoli with cheese sauce, turkey dressing, etc.), but that seems to go with the turkey dinner they serve in the restaurant. Does anyone know what sides come with the turkey that you buy to go?

Finally, does anyone have any other recommendations? Or is Jake’s Country Kitchen the way to do this Christmas/holiday meal with mostly Taiwanese? Thank you![/quote]

I’ve done Jake’s turkeys many times, so I can share my opinion with you:

  1. They are good. The turkey quality is not bad at all.

  2. The stuffing is OK, the gravy is (or at least was) quite bland. If you can jazz it up by making a very strong tasting chicken / mushroom / wine based gravy base and add it, it is OK.

  3. The mashed potato is OK. The broccoli suffers from the fact that it gets overcooked with residual heat between the time it is on the stove and on your plate.

What I do is make my own gravy base to add to theirs, by some cans of cranberry sauce, and make my own potatoes and other sides.

But overall for Taipei, Jake’s is very good!

3

If you’re interested in delivery for some side dishes, I would recommend checking out foodpanda.com.tw/. They deliver from a whole selection of pretty decent restaurants around Taipei. They have an English version of the site as well if you need it.

4

Thanks for that BigJohn! I’m going to order from them. I’ll let you and anyone else that might be interested know what I think. cloud808, that’s very good to know. Maybe not this time around, but might find that handy in the future.

5

I see that KFC has whole turkey for 1,299. Looks roasted instead of covered with crap and deep fried. They will deliver in most areas.

6

I jumped to check out that offer and it turns out to be a roast chicken, not a turkey… :cry:

7

Thanks for that. The flyer I got had what appeared to be a turkey. I even asked the delivery guy and was told that it was turkey. Another good idea gone south. Isn’t that like $500NT per pound?!

8

Had the turkey from Jake’s last night. It was very good and I highly recommend them. Since our order was large (over NT$5,000) they provided free delivery. We live in Xizhi so that was nice. Everything was good and the pies were excellent. All the Taiwanese we had over had never tried turkey before and they really enjoyed it. The gravy and the cranberry sauce we ordered helped with the dryness of the white turkey meat. I’ll definitely order from them again.