R.I.P. Steve at Mr. Paco's Pizzeria

Sorry to hear of the passing of Steve Hsia, the friendly and charismatic guy who ran the Mr. Paco’s Pizzeria restaurant. Reportedly, he passed away during a nap on April 5. I and my wife had been there many, many times over the years – our first time was showing up with a bunch of friends in the aftermath of our Taiwan wedding party. (We had it at a lounge club instead of as a banquet.) Mutual friends soon introduced us to Steve and his wife, and we’d normally had him over to our table for glasses of wine while catching up on his son going to school in Melbourne, his wife, and, recently, his efforts to get a restaurant up and running in Shanghai.

And I don’t think we ever ate there without him giving us something extra, ranging from an extra appetizer and bread through to the night we all cranked through the greater part of a bottle of Absolute Mandarin. When my kids were born at Cathay Hospital nearly 3 years ago, I stopped by during my first brief outing from the hospital to tell him the news and he kindly made up a mid-afternoon pizza from scratch for me to celebrate.

For a photo of him in characteristic smiling mode, here’s a link: taiwanfun.com/north/taipei/d … MrPaco.htm

The memorial service for Steve will be at the Taipei Second Funeral Home, XinHai Road, Section 3, No. 330, April 18th, starting at 5:30 p.m. 夏旭生先生公祭 地點:台北市立第二殯儀館, 台北市辛亥路3段330號 時間:民國九十九年四月十八日, 星期日下午五點三十分

He was a good, kind and generous friend who brought a lot of enjoyment to me and my family over many years. We’re sorry to see him gone so young. I realize Steve had a very broad circle of very good friends, so I’m posting this info on his funeral service having asked already if it would be ok to let others know.

Never met the man, I think I only ever to Mr Paco’s once, but that’s a very touching wee in memoriam you wrote. My condolences on the loss of your friend.

I agree with Sandman’s post - that was really touching. Makes me wish I had met the man.

That comes as a shock to both my wife and myself. He was a great guy that always made us feel at home there. But wasn’t he really young (late 40s at most?)? What did he die from? It seems really strange …

That’s really sad news. Steve was one of the nicest guys I ever met in Taiwan. I played in bands in various iterations of his restaurants in the 90’s and no matter how bad our bands were (we generally sucked) he was always super welcoming to us. And whenever I went back to eat at Paco’s over the last decade he always made a big fuss over me and my friends. Unfortunately I’ll be cycling down in Taidong on the 18th but my thoughts will be with him and his family.

My condolences, mofangongren.

For anyone who was thinking of attending Steven’s memorial service on Sunday, it has been cancelled until further notice.

I’ll post any information as to change of dates if I hear it over the next few days.

Niall