We decided to start keeping track of all our meals out in Taipei, with pictures and short reviews. It won’t be as full-featured as other restaurant blogs, but there should be enough to get an idea of whether a restaurant is worth a visit. Our main goal is to just keep it active and running for as long as we can – we’re already 50+ posts and aiming for at least 5 a week!
Hey guys, it’s been a few weeks since we announced our blog, so we thought we’d give a writeup on our recent favorites!
Recently we’ve made a lot of trips to the Chifeng Street area, between the Zhongshan and Shuanglian MRT stations. This area is a nice contrast to the neighboring Zhongshan North Road area (the alleys around the SPOT film house) – whereas Zhongshan North Road features tidy rows of large, flashy cafes and hair salons, the Chifeng Street area is a mess of auto shops and hardware stores, with tiny hipster cafes and shops hidden in between. Our favorite in this area is Migo’s Cakes for their excellent chiffon cakes and milk teas, while the minimalist cafe iki is a hot newcomer to the area. For good (not great) food, check out Solo Pizza Napoletana for Neapolitan-style pizza and Gung Lok Union Grocery for an interesting mix of hipster cafe and Hong Kong bing sutt.
Another up-and-coming cafe district is in the alleys off Songjiang North Road near Xingtian Temple station – there are four or five cafes just on Lane 204 alone. Among them are the excellent Egg Host, which seems to be teeming with Instagrammers (guess that includes us!), and Refill the Love. Nearby Wood White is very nice as well.
For fans of French-style desserts (or perhaps it should be Japanese versions of French-style desserts), we recently ran across two unexpected gems, Zenzoo Patisserie near Zhongshan and Le Bleu Ballon Patisserie near Jiantan (albeit a bit out of the way).
As for actual food, here are a few standout restaurants we enjoyed recently:
Eddy’s Cantina in Tianmu has long been a favorite for Mexican food. This time we treid their second location, which we enjoyed being bigger and easier to access – guess we’re getting old!
Xiang Xiang near Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall is quickly becoming one of our favorite beef noodle restaurants.
La Mole between Xingtian Temple and Zhongshan Jr High stations has authentic northern Italian dishes at a midrange price.
Peacock Bistro on Dihua Street is one of the best at the Western/Taiwanese fusion trend, with a unique setting to boot.
Hope you find something you’re interested in – we’ll try to make these posts a regular thing going forward!
I’ve been reading the TPeats blog for the past 2 week. Thank for the food recommendation. Alot of the restaurants look lovely and good for weekend meals.
Any chance of reviewing and providing some recommendation for some more "every day"eateries (~150-200 twd per meal) for during the week?
Thanks both for the feedback! We’ve fixed the links in the post – thanks!
We will look into doing more <$200 meals – we often eat at those too! The problem is that it is hard for restaurants in that price range to stand out or be particularly blog-worthy. And the ones that have more of a reputation are likely to have very long lines, which we tend to avoid. But we’ll be on the lookout for more opportunities like that in the future.
By the way, we would definitely recommend you try the nicer restaurants during the week if you can, so that you can take advantage of weekday lunch specials. You can pay twice as much for dinner or on a weekend, but you probably won’t get twice as good of an experience!
Hey guys, here is another update on some of our favorite restaurants we tried over the past month!
February 14 might be long gone, but in Taiwan, there’s always another Valentine’s Day coming up. If you’re looking for a private, romantic setting with great food, check out 50/50 Cuisine Française in Minsheng Community or Hidden by DN near Taipei 101.
Notice a lot of Cantonese/Hong Kong restaurants popping up lately? Near Zhongshan, Dim Sum Line is a fun experience, with dim sum zipping to your table via an automatic tray. Also nearby is Ming Shiang Yuan Cafe (which also has a newer, nicer-looking location in East District) with rich but satisfying cha chaan teng fare. If you’re in the mood for something lighter, more refined, and much more expensive, then Ming Court at the Hotel Royal-Nikko has you covered.
Big Boyz Pizza near Nanjing Fuxing is surprisingly good for an American-style pizza craving. Might need to go back to try their deep dish (need to call in advance – or wait an hour – if you want to have it).
If the weather ever gets cold again before winter, Chin Huajiao near Zhongshan has flavorful hotpot and good meats at a mid-range price.
That’s it for this time – hope you see something you’re interested in!
Nicely done. It’s a pleasure to read some literate (and witty!) commentary on Taipei’s growing multinational dining scene. I take it you folks have lived in HK and/or Japan?
Yes, we lived in HK for a while (and mostly in the US before then). But most of our food experience with HK and Japan comes from travel since moving to Taipei. Thanks for reading and for the encouragement!
Hey guys, it’s been a couple of months since our last writeup, but we definitely didn’t stop eating! Here are some highlights as we work through our backlog.
After a brief break, we’re back to trying out cafes and dessert shops on a regular basis. Some recent favorites:
Looking for shaved ice during the hot weather? Mango ice might get more buzz, but our favorite shaved ice in Taiwan is definitely the almond shaved ice at Yu’s Almonds. There’s a couple of locations in Taipei, but the Dunnan Eslite location near Zhongxiao Dunhua is the most convenient for us.
Coffee Flair near Zhongshan Elementary School has a delicious matcha tiramisu and excellent milk teas.
Japanese-style souffle pancakes seem to be gaining in popularity lately. Our favorite is Koku Cafe near Da’an, but KOO Gelato in the Chifeng Street area near Zhongshan is very good as well.
Open Water is in a remote corner of Minsheng Community but has a wide variety of tasty French-style desserts.
Back to the restaurants:
Yangmingshan is a great way to quickly get away from the city, even if it’s only cooler by a couple of degrees. There’s quite a few places to spend a relaxing afternoon up in the mountains: Yannick Sweet Village (OK, this one is still a cafe) and Brick Yard 33 1/3 are both in converted US military buildings near the Yangminshan town center, and Jing Shan Restaurant is farther out in a camping and wood cabin area. As with most places up on Yangmingshan, go for the environment and the experience, rather than the food.
We celebrated our 100th post with delicious pizzas and Italian desserts at an old favorite, Zoca near Xinyi Anhe.
For more Italian food with one of the best city views in Taipei, Marco Polo at the Shangi-La hotel is hard to beat. The lunch set (which comes with an unlimited appetizer bar) starts at just under $1000 per person.
We had an excellent nigiri sushi lunch at Hayabusa Sushi in Minsheng Community, with an impressive variety and double serving of uni for $1000 per person. Ye Sushi near Songjiang Nanjing is a long-running sushi restaurant now on its fourth head chef, and has a very filling lunch set at a similar price.
For cheaper Japanese eats, the gyoza (and other filling carbs) at Osaka Ohsho is always a reliable option. The uniquely thin Inaniwa udon at Sato Yosuke at Nanjing Fuxing is refreshing choice for the summer. And of course, the ever-popular Ichiran has one of the best bowls of Hakata-style ramen in Taipei.
We have also made some trips outside of Taipei and will be blogging those as well – although we don’t claim to be an expert on any of these locations! More notable entries so far are Tokyo (mostly just the Tokyo Station area) and Jiaoxi in Yilan.
That’s it for this time – hope our next writeup won’t take quite so long!
Hey guys, it’s been a couple of months since our last writeup, and since then we’ve hit one year of blogging and over 300 posts! Since it’s been so long, we’ve got a whole bunch of recommendations to share this time around, so let’s get to it:
Taipei is going crazy for Japanese-style souffle pancakes! For once there’s a clear winner – Flipper’s, at the new Eslite Nanxi store, is as good as it gets in Taipei, if you can put up with the wait. Tip: Go before lunch on a weekday, register your spot in line, and then have a leisurely lunch – you should probably get your spot just in time for dessert.
Want souffle pancakes but don’t want to wait? Cafe del SOL at Breeze Xinyi is also quite good, with nicer (and pricier) drinks. Koku Cafe and KOO Gelato (which we mentioned last time) are also very good and have a cozier cafe feel.
Thanks to work (or blogging), we’ve been spending more time in cafes with power outlets lately. A great one is Komeda’s Coffee, which might look and feel more like a diner than a cafe, but is undeniably comfortable. Other good spots with power outlets are Voyager Cafe and Piccolo Angolo, both of which are around the same station but in different directions, Haha Cafe, Little Donkey, Nous Deux, and The Antipodean out in Neihu (but really kind of in the middle of nowhere). And for matcha lovers, Itohkyuemon stands out well above the rest.
One more cafe: A special nod goes to Woolloomooloo, both its original Minsheng Community location, and its bigger and busier Xinyi location. Not only do they have power outlets, but also great food, great drinks, and great desserts. If it’s not too busy, you can easily spend most of your day here (which we have actually done).
We’re also big fans of the restaurant/cafe-in-a-bookstore concept of Wired Tokyo at the Uni-UStyle department store (we still call it Hankyu) – now with some really tasty Japanese beef. The newer Wired Chaya in Neihu offers an equally great experience, with simpler teishoku sets for individual dining.
Finally onto some restaurants: We’re always on the lookout for good sushi meals around $1000, and Tsukiji Sushi and Mine Sushi are both recent favorites and excellent values in that range. For something cheaper, simpler, and fun, Sushiro is our favorite of the conveyer belt sushi chains. For higher budgets, Chu Yu’s new Xinyi location is very enjoyable – not so much for pure sushi, but for a nice mix of small hot dishes throughout the meal.
For other great Japanese food, No Name Curry is cheap and incredibly satisfying – we order almost everything on the menu whenever we go. Both Kaneko Hannosuke and Kitchi have good tempura. Our favorite soba restaurant closed, so now Nigatsuhan Soba is the best soba in Taipei by default – but thankfully it is also very good. And we can never go wrong with the ramen at Ippudo – you might get a slightly better bowl at Ichiran, but we usually end up at Ippudo because it has more flavors and more side dishes, all of which are tasty. If you’re looking for a splurge, try premium Matsusaka beef at Orange Shabu for hotpot, or Matsusaka Tei for yakiniku (although they have sukiyaki and now hotpot as well).
We definitely love Japanese food, but we eat Chinese and Taiwanese food also! After a couple of visits, we’re pretty comfortable in saying that The Guest House at the Sheraton hotel is very possibly the best Chinese food in Taipei. Other good places to go with a larger group are Chi Chia Chuang and Three Coins. For a smaller group, My Stove has delicious Taiwanese food in a vintage setting, 44 SV has very flavorful military village-style cuisine (with quite possibly the stinkiest stinky tofu we’ve had in recent memory), and The Carp has a more fusion approach. And if the weather ever gets cold enough for hotpot again, Shineful Seafood is a great value – but you also need to eat early to avoid the lines.
That was quite a bit, and we’ll try not to delay our next writeup quite so much! Hope you see something you’re interested in!
That’s really cool that you list the price of key items. As a value focused coffee imbiber and hater of service charges , I approve !
Also that you mention power outlets. I see you have maintained good output over the year too.
Sounds very interesting with many good reviews. But NT$2,980+ per person for dinner ain’t that cheap. At that price range, I wonder if its still one of the best options in Taipei?
My wife is going to a departmental team building on Friday which ends with a meal at Atelier. 4,500NT for a set meal before drinks. I advised her to choose the quail with fois gras. Company pays, of course.
At my monthly meeting today I got a lunchbox. I tell you, that lukewarm chicken drumstick was to die for.
