==So what you are saying is that you don’t know what is ‘good’ or ‘recommendable’ until you have lived in Taiwan for at least 5 years. Interesting…sounds like a major case of Chinese logic.[/quote]
What n00bs think is of merely passing interest to me. It’s amusing sometimes to hear what they think of this or that. I would never go eat at a restaurant or make a travel plan based on the opinions of a relatively new arrival. Yes, you may like the food and it may be that I’d like it too, but I’m more likely to follow advice from one who’s eaten at 1,000 noodle places rather than 5 or 6. I might miss some good advice by filtering out n00bs I don’t even know, but that’s a risk I’m willing to take. As a newcomer anywhere I don’t expect anyone to place any importance on my subjective opinions of my new environment.[/quote]
I do think what n00bs have to say about restaurants purporting to offer non-Chinese/Taiwanese/Asian cuisine might be of interest here.
For instance, none of the four Italian places I went to in Taipei last month offered anything resembling the cuisine of northern Italy, nor did they have the New York, Chicago, New Jersey, Washington, DC, Seattle, or Boston takes on Italian cuisine. (One of them did have good pizza that was exactly like France’s take on Italian food). If you eat at these places and think you’re getting “Italian” food – well, no. It was interesting to eat, some of it was tasty, and some of it was value-priced, but none of it was authentic. And I can see that after 5+ years of Asian-Italian food, it is possible to forget what real Italian food is like.
Similarly, 1885 burger was good but the food there has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Albany, NY’s cuisine.
I can also state that what Burger Stop is offering is a proper American burger. However, Chris has bowed to Taipei culture in one way that would be very frustrating to most Americans… toppings are OPTIONAL in the U.S. – nobody thinks anything is odd at all about ordering a burger with no sauce, no tomato, extra lettuce, extra pickles, or whatever. Chris humored me when I asked for “plain and dry” – only meat, bread, and cheese – but clearly, that was a total oddball order and annoying to his staff. As long as Chris will tolerate the occasional pain-in-the-ass American with a “special order”, I’d call it good. How would you know if it’s a real American burger if you’ve been in Taiwan for 10 years?
I will agree, and can confirm, that the McDonald’s food here is proper McDonald’s food… in Taipei, Seattle, Portland, etc. It is truly the same everywhere. Whether that’s good or bad… 
P.S. I am really grateful to all the old-timers for all they post and for putting up with all the dumb n00b questions. I’m a “senior fellow” of several online communities and I do the same thing there, answering variants of the same 10 questions over and over again, in one case for 14 years now. But I have to remind myself periodically to not assume that new people know nothing… I might miss something good, and sometimes new people are a breath of fresh air after you’ve had the same stale arguments with the long-timers ten or more times. (Of course, that never happens here…)[/quote]
:bravo: :bravo:
I was just about to post something similar to this. I can understand requiring a poster to have some amount of time in Taiwan before recommending something that is Taiwanese or unique to Taiwan, but for recommendations about things that aren’t unique to Taiwan, I think all opinions are valid.
