Kiki Restaurant - Taipei

Sichuan food? Really?
That was my first reaction.

After 4 nights of extravagent eating, our last night in Taipei was met with "I'm too tired to enjoy a degustation". And hence, my friend decided to take us to one of his favourite hot spots. The reason for my initial reaction was because I don't do spicy food and when you say the word "Sichuan", I basically think about super hot mouth burning spicy food.

However, my friend assured me that it was OK and since he's not a crazy chilli lover like my partner, I decided to trust him and see what came out of it.

First off, this Sichuan restaurant was a chain and the chain entailed different cuisines in different locations - and it was packed full of loud rowdy customers - yes, we had escaped from the quiet tranquility of high-end food and entered the land of the commoner's food (which is kind of good really). My partner and I decided to let our friend do the ordering.

First off, we got this chicken with clear jelly skin. What I mean by that is, you have pretty awesomely tasting chicken, a clear layer of jelly/fat, and super smooth chicken skin topped with corianda, shallots and peanuts and slightly doused with chilli oil. Luckily, this wasn't too chili, but it was very tender and tasty.

chicken

Next was the homemade egg tofu. This was super super super smooth egg tofu cut in cubes and deep fried. This was OMG awesome (not just because it was relatively non-chili) because it tasted amazingly eggy and tofu-ey and amazingly smooth. You could drink this if you really wanted to.

homemade egg tofu

My favourite of the night was the bittermelon tossed in salty duck egg. The bittermelon was slightly crunchy and slightly bitter sweet but it was really the salty duck egg that bought the dish to life. So it can't be good for our cholesterol levels, but it tasted devine~ YUM. I could eat plates and plates of this!

bittermelon with salty duck egg

The noodles ordered were chili +++. I had maybe one little strand of this and I could taste chilliness. It was basically white flour noodles topped with chilli and chilli and chilli.

chili noodles

We had also ordered beans with mince and tiny bits of dried shrimp and chinese spices. This was quite tasty too.

four seasons beans with mince pork and chinese spices

Last but not least, there was the fish. Deep fried and topped with ominous-looking chili. However, when you brush off the chilli, the fish was very tasty, crunchy outside but soft smooth white meat on the inside. Not bad. I remember it being huge and rather cheap too!

deep fried fish

So all up, this place was not bad. Whilst hesitant at first, the meal was fine. And yes, we did manage to gobble everything up between the 3 of us. I think we were rather hungry :)

Ratings:
Food - 8/10
Service - 7/10
Ambiance - 6.5/10
Value for money - 7.5/10
Overall - 29/40

Kiki Restaurant
www.kiki1991.com