Paulaner Bräuhaus - German/Bavarian @ Guandu MRT / TNUA

It seems like recently (May 2009) a new German restaurant opened in Beitou, on the campus of Taipei National University of the Arts (TNUA):

Paulaner Bräuhaus

Paulaner is one of Munich’s traditioanal breweries, and so far (in several German cities, also outside of Bavaria) I’ve had very good experiences with their restaurants. I heard from a coworker that this one is owned by the same person as some of these venues in mainland china, but I have no idea about the quality of those.

Has anyone tried this taiwanese branch, yet?

Could this finally be the “real bavarian” restaurant I have been waiting for? I for one am looking forward to some things that don’t seem to be on the standard menu of the other German restaurants that I know so far, namely Helles (the “standard” bavarian beer), Obazda (a kind of cheese spread), Schweinshaxen (roast pig knuckle), and of course Weisswurst (white sausage). I dearly hope that their bread is much better than that at Smokey Inn / Alpine Cottage, and the beer is much better than at Wendel’s. Anyway, as soon as I’ve been there I’ll report back with news :slight_smile:

Here are some links regarding this restaurant:

TNUA page on the restaurant:
www2.tnua.edu.tw/etnua/modules/a … gs&lid=503

Their “homepage”, mostly chinese
wretch.cc/blog/paulaner

Menu:
wretch.cc/album/album.php?id=paulaner&book=3

Pics of the food:
wretch.cc/album/album.php?id=paulaner&book=5

I share your hopefulness and enthusiasm. TNUA does Moroccan food pretty well, but the Italian is very run-of-the-mill. Coffee shop has decent coffee. The view is incredible.

Here’s hoping! (I agree on the Smokey House bread, but the rest of the fare is really nice. I like it there very much).

Please don’t get me wrong, I really like the stuff I had there so far. And the bread even tastes good - it’s just stale :frowning:

Let’s just hope that someone finally gets it completely right :slight_smile: I totally love the Chinese and other Asian foods that I have here every day, but just once every few months I don’t mind a Brotzeit…

I seen their pic of the weisswurst and bretzel. I SEEN it! If its anything like the stuff I got at the Munich slaughterhouse, I’m there! Below is the quintessential weisswurst and bretzel with Paulaner what I ate every morning for two weeks in 2005. Breakfast ay fucking CHAMPIONS!

There is a whole bunch of them in Shanghai. I wonder if it is the same management.

For the ones in Shanghai the Beer is good but $$$$$. The food is just okay. They serve the weisswurst for dinner, if that is any indication.

Are places like Zumm Fass still there? I never went there, but everyone always said it was great.

Yes it is also run by the same NanChow Group, headed by Fei-Lung Chen. He introduced Haagen-Dazs to Taiwan. That line of business was since sold.

Among their other restaurant chains are Salt & Bread, Dian Shui Lou and, Shanghai Paulaner. Expect up-scale ambience, good service and edible food, at a steep price.

Bangkok got one, too. And Singapore.

Wasn’t excited about that place last time I went, which was back in 2002.

Actually, even in rural Bavaria the old rule “White sausage must be eaten before noon” isn’t strictly adhered to any more at all. With modern inventions like cooling etc. I feel it’s not really necessary any more either.

Also I think restricting some dishes like this to only breakfast might make you miss a lot of dinner customers - and the breakfast customers might need some convincing that eating sausage & pretzels and drinking beer is a proper breakfast. But come to think of it… probably it would be much easier to convince Chinese (who already eat noodle soup early in the morning) of that, compared to people from any other western / “civilized” country :wink:

As long as they don’t serve Northern German cabbage or any Ossie fare and as long as they don’t let this dingleberry sing there, then it should be good:

youtube.com/watch?v=kdIf4DIiNtI
youtube.com/watch?v=e6dp1Ib5 … re=related

Finally I paid the Paulaner a visit, and was not disappointed: It might not be perfect (as in “straight out of Bavaria”), but it’s a very enjoyable, though pricy and upscale, Bavarian style restaurant. All in all it’s the best German/Bavarian restaurant I’ve been to in Taiwan - but then I am not trying many here, since the chinese food is too delicious anyway :wink:

It is quite easy to reach: Take the red line to Danshui (not to Beitou) and exit at Guandu Station. Leave at Exit 2, walk right, after a short walk turn left and walk uphill for a few hundred meters. There you cross the street, turn left towards the gas station, and at the gas station turn right again and then keep walking uphill. Voila, after a few minutes walking the Paulaner is at the right side. You can also just take the taxi at Guandu station, the drivers know the name “Paulaner” and will bill you NT$70.

The restaurant itself is pretty big. Some seating is available outside, which offers a nice view and a bit more of a Biergarten feeling. On a Sunday evening the place was very full, so better book a table (02-2891-7677). A lot of Taiwanese were there, but only very few foreigners. Funny enough, many of the Taiwanese seem to order the chinese dishes that they offer, and only add a German beer to that. Saupreisn, chinesische :wink:

The menu was much shorter than what is shown on the pictures in their Blog, maybe it was because it was a “holiday special”. No idea what holiday that is, maybe Sunday? Or it could be the seemingly all-year Taiwanese Christmas, since even in this restaurant (opened May this yaer, mind you!) there is the obligatory christmas decoration - only in one corner of the Men’s room, though.

The staff is very fast, friendly, and helpful.

We didn’t ask for any off-menu items, though I am sure there must be some (like White Sausage “Weisswurst”, or cold cuts and cheese platters. We ended up with Kässpatzen (cheese noodles), Schweinshaxe (pork knuckle), Obazda (a spread made from cheese, butter and spices), Würstel mit Sauerkraut (sausages), and Brezen (Pretzels). As desert we had Apfelstrudel mit Vanilleeis (apple cake with icecream).

The food was really good, with only minor deviations from the “original”: The Haxn seemed to be fried instead of grilled and came pre-cut, and the Nürnberger sausage was a bit bland. With the Obazda came only two small pieces of bread, which was just OK ( already getting a bit dry). The Brezn were good, but a little bit chewy.

Apart from these minor things everything was very enjoyable: The Kässpatzen were great, the Haxn tasted very good (with even the skin crunchy and edible), the Obazda was very delicious, and the Leberwurst (liver sausage) that came with the Brezn was very nicely spiced, as were the Käsekrainer (cheese sausage) and the Bratwurst from the sausage platter.

Hmmm… anything I forgot? Oh right, the beer :smiley:

They serve a very nice dark beer, as well as a light beer they call “Helles”. The latter definitely is not a “Helles” as you would get as the standard beer in most of Bavaria, but instead seems to be a unfiltered (Naturtrüb) variety thereof. Great with me, though, since this is something I like a lot :slight_smile: The Beers come children sized (0.3l), small (Halbe / 0.5l) or normal size (Mass / 1l) and are not exactly cheap (NT$225 for 0.5l, and NT$400 for 1l). Same price forthe very refreshing Radler by the way (half light beer, half sprite).

For Taiwanese standards it was not cheap, around NT$1500 per person including ~2l beer per person - but we enjoyed this evening a lot, so it was definitely worth it.

(The sausage platter is not shown here)

1500nt per person but that includes a 800nt / person beer tab? :slight_smile: dont forget that.

So it was you who took our reservation? And now you kill me with that photo!

We called on Friday afternoon at 3pm to discover that the restaurant was no longer taking reservations for that night :frowning: . We ended up going to a Spanish tapas place in Guandu that we’ve gone to for years, and the idiots had downgraded the quality on everything from the pan-fried fish to the fanhou coffee. Why do restaurant laobans cut the quality of their food when they have a slight downturn in business?

Anyway, I’ve heard several stories about this place over the past week, e.g. some of my friends went there with a party of 6. The food bill was NT$5,000 and the beer bill was NT$10,000! They were there all afternoon and into the evening.

We’ll be headed there soon, if we can get in.

So sorry for that :beer:

But maybe it was the same thing that we were told, that they do NOT take reservations after 6:30… so we had to go there pretty early. Still, at least outside, at all times you could get some seats.

Celebrating my 1st Taiwan anniversary I went there again, and have a few small updates, which might come handy for some:

  1. Updated the description how to walk there further up, I missed that you had to walk “around” the gass station before going uphill to the Paulaner

  2. Seems like on Friday, Saturday and Sunday they have a reduced “Holiday” Menu. No White sausage, no cold cuts & bread (cheese and sausage) etc. Still, lots of stuff to chose from.

  3. The evening view over taipei from the terrace is really beautiful

  4. The wild dogs on the terrace and the surrounding grasslands are really nice

  5. The “Wiener Schnitzel” probably is rather “Schnitzel Wiener Art” from Pork instead of Veal. It’s breading looks pretty taiwanese, but the overall taste is good, and similar to what I would expect in germany. It is not the type of breading that I prefer (with more egg, not sticking so close to the mwat), but then you won’t get that at every restaurant in Germany either…

  6. The fries were great, but probably thats just my personal taste. They are a thin style that seems to be dipped in some dough… at least the surface is bubbly at some places.

  7. The Tomato Mozarella “salad” is good too, maybe too little vinegar, and the dab of “salad” in the middle is not really necessary. Oh, and the basil should be “real” basil, not Thai basil, but hey, we are in Taiwan :smiley:

  8. The Spezi is good (and I wonder why they don’t promote the typical German non-alcoholic drinks similarily as the beer, like Spezi as Coke + Fanta, and Apfelschorle as Apple juice + sparkling water)

  9. The Music was quite strange, yet fun (at least for me). I didn’t notic ethis last time, maybe because I was sitting in the “upper” part, not the “lower” part. Anyway, the mixture was hillarious (From Tote Hosen to Rudi Carell and Volksmusik + Schlager). So were the songs… From “Eisgekühlter Bommerlunder” (was a bit noisy at the end for the TWese crowd) to “Sag mir Quando…” - which remainded me of the Guandu station nearby. All time favourites (of the generation 70+ at least) were even played 2 times in the 2 or so hours we were there, like “Griechischer Wein” :wink:

:laughing: Die Toten Hosen :laughing: Somebody got a sense of humor.

I always like the song Zehn kleine Jägermeister off of Opium fürs Volk , I think. I heard it first smashed in some small hotel in Dusseldorf. I got home, (after getting yelled at for jaywalking at 2am), turned on the TV and there it was blaring back at me.

I’ll have to see how the TPE version compares to the Shanghai version. Shanghai also has an HB, which has better beer and worse food.

Yes, I really wondered who did this music mix there. Too bad no other germans joined me there… a few guys singing loudly to the other Hosen song they played, “Azzuro”, would probably have been a nice turn on the TWese KTV culture, which unfortunately hardly offers any non-english western songs :frowning:

Went there last night. After having been to the Xintiandi location in Shanghai several times I wasn’t really expecting much but the location seemed nice.

Was I surprised. The location is great for the customer with a nice night view over the grassy knoll. It is huge with two adjacent levels and outdoor deckkkkkkkks. The size of of the deck is larger than most restaurants.

The two of us ordered the mixed salad ($200), the pretzel tree ($120), and the mixed meat platter ($860).

I had a 1l “lager” beer ($500). Like olm said it is more of an unfiltered variety rather than a typical lager. No chemical flavoring present as with other locally brewed beers. The best locally brewed beer I’ve had to date.

The mixed salad had four salads; potato (sliced boiled potato), cabbage (vinegar and cabbage), carrot (carrot & raison), and green leaf. So-so but complemented the meat dish.

I liked the chewy pretzels. At four for $120 quite reasonable for this place.

The mixed meat platter comes with 4 kinds of sausages, pork knuckle, a slice of meatloaf and a slice of braised pork on a bed of mashed potato and sauerkraut. Much more than we could eat.

The sausages were good with a real “snappy” casing but the big winner was the pork knuckle. Now I’m not a big fan of the typical Taiwan style with the gelatinous outer but here they fry it after cooking. The end result is a crispy skin like “crackling”. The meat was a little dry but the skin made up for it. Next time I will have a full order of it. Really good.

Also worth mentioning is their mustard which they have in a pot on the table. I didn’t ask if they had a spicy one but this one was nice.

Total was around $1,800 and they gave us a 10% off member card. The restaurant was less than a quarter full but it was a Monday. We wanted to sit outside but that area was closed.

The upper area is a combination of booth/tables and the lower area is a bar and tables. I think the upper area is nicer but the best would be the outside deck area. Excellent for a party.

Apparently they have a location in Taoyuan. 35 Xingbang Rd. Guishan, Taoyuan County 03-3676321.

Oh, when the David Gates impersonator had a break they played Der Kommissar. :laughing:

Overall not bad. A fun time and well worth the trek although I wouldn’t walk from the MRT station. Take a taxi. If you are driving stay on the road past the university and you will see the restaurant on your right. Parking is on the opposite side of the road. Be very careful when crossing because the death-wish adrenaline junkie scooters come flying around that corner.

It is a little expensive if you like beer but would make for one hell of a happy hour if sitting outside.

And a great date place if you can sit outside.

Did I mention sitting outside?

So did you say to sit outside? I wasnt sure.

Doesn’t look like they have enough salt on their brezel, but I’m still game for a visit. Any takers next week? This sunday?

Actually this is very true, their Brezel has just a little bit of salt on it. At least me and the people with me so far noticed, but didn’t mind at all, because we thought it mainly saves you the work of removing the excess salt before eating :wink:

If I recall correctly a discussion with one German baker here in Taipei, they also are quite afraid of using too much salt, or sometimes even salt at all, here. Because of the extreme humidity, the salt would draw a lot of water and make mushy spots on the Brezel surface. This is why you sometimes even get them without salt at all, and with sesame instead. But in case of Paulaner, I would expect they could find a way around… what about making Brezeln fresh every hour or so, and store them in low humidity areas near an AC? Well, maybe someone can ask there whats up exactly with their salt…

Apart from that the Brezeln there are quite good in my opinion, and relatively fresh. But of course nothing beats an oven-warm, REALLY fresh Brezel :lick: - which I didn’t find in TW yet.

Which reminds me, last time I went there (last saturday) the bread that comes with the Obazda was still way too little, but the 2nd serving we asked for came oven warm any very yummy - Great!