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

Shaved Ice - Taipei

One of the things I had been craving for and had been intending to eat lots of in Taipei is snow ice (雪花冰). This is super thinly sliced shaved ice, shaved soooo super thin that it feels like your eating powder at the snow except with flavour. Upon my research, one of the famous places for eating snow ice is in the Shilin district (in amongst the busy Shilin night markets) at a place called Xin Fa Ting (辛發亭冰品店). There is a line for this place and the cafe is packed with youth all eating shaved ice. We had always been curious as to how they make snow ice, and seeing these rather anxient machines near the entrance provided us with answers - it's just a drill-looking thing - but oh so so so yummy :)

anxient looking drill machine

There are sooooooooo many flavours at this place, it's crazy! Peanut, green tea, strawberry, almond - pretty much you name it, they have it. For this night (after sweeping the markets), we had decided on pudding snow ice and strawberry snow ice (only because they ran out of mango >.<). Pudding snow ice is basically a milk-flavoured snow with 2 egg puddings on the side. One bite into the snow ice is like... mmm... powdered snow.

pudding snow ice

The strawberry one was drenched in strawberry sauce, making it slightly too sweet for my liking. Again, it's very melt-in-your mouth lightness. Like you're just eating a cloud~

Strawberry snow ice

After missing out on mango shaved ice, my taiwanese friend got us to Mango Cha Cha (on a different night). As the name suggests, they have mangoes galore~

As we walked in, the boss was super super friendly and although my friend had only been to the store once before, we were treated like regulars. You hear him saying "welcome to mango cha cha!" over and over again in a sing song tone all night! He welcomes and serves the guests whilst his wife is behind the scenes making all the delicious snow ices.

Mango Cha Cha

On this particular night, the boss recommended two of his latest inventions. One was a "salty" mango shaved ice, and the other was the 'rose' shaved ice. Both were gigantisimo! Topped with lots and lots of (unfortunately slightly frozen) mango cubes. The salty shaved ice was the olden normal style ice (and not snow ice) topped with this prune-like topping which makes it slightly salty. There were heaps and heaps of marshmellows and incase they wasn't enough marshmellows, the boss gave us another huge plate filled with marshmellows (as we were regulars, right?).

Salty shaved ice

The rose petals were imported from France and since they are organic, they were edible. The boss told us to savour the flavour and texture of the rose pettle in our mouths as the snow ice melted in our mouths. I tried. I disliked. I'm not a fan of eating flowers. The mango snow ice on the other hand... heavenly!

Rose petal mango snow ice

So the verdict? Snow ice is soooo much nicer than normal ice. Mango flavour is better than any other flavour. And non-frozen mango is much easier to eat than frozen mango. Mango Cha Cha's servings of snow ice are heaps huger than Xin Fa Ting (but also more pricey). Definately need to eat more snow ice - but remember, it's snow ice that you want to eat, not shaved ice.

Xin Fa Ting
No.1 Anping Street, Shilin District
Taipei, Taiwan 111
Tel: 02-2883-1123

Mango Cha Cha
光復南路
台北市大安區光復南路562號
Tel: 0966-477-177

Kings Crab - Taipei

Kings Crab

All you can eat Alaskan King Crab?!?!? You gotta be kidding right? Nope - for just NT$750 (approx $25 ish) you have all you can eat hot pot with unlimited Häagen-Dazs and this other german brand awesomeness icecream and all you can drink (including beers). In taiwanese language, they call it an "eat til your full" venue whereas my friend said that it's more of an "eat til you die" place.

hot pot

Unlimited starters were available for the taking including the seaweed salad and the lobster potato salad. Both were quite good and I would easily have gone for seconds if I was not preparing my stomach for things to come.

seaweed salad

lobster salad

One of the most unfortunate things about this restaurant is that the menu ticking thing is entirely in Chinese. So if you're completely chinese illiterate, you'd be stuck ticking random things from the list. Luckily for us, we could kind of guess what those scribbly characters are and hence, ordered lots and lots of plates of seafood, mushrooms and meat.

lots of huge scallops

Alaskan king crab

lamb

beef and pork

fish balls, corn, hand-made fish paste

mushrooms

We ordered these and much much more. The one thing we ordered most of was ofcourse, the crab. The legs are HUGEness and when you crack open the legs, you get a fat plump juicy stick of crab meat. It really quite sweet and tasty. Mmm...

alaskan king crab

After all the main foods were polished off, I dug straight into the icecreams. Both brands of icecream were divine. There were multiple flavours to choose from but I chose to eat the green tea, cookies and cream and mango icecreams. I would have eaten more, but we were going to eat huge gigantic mango shaved ice afterwards LOL

green tea icecream

mango and cookies and cream icecream

My partner decided to try to puddings. There was the egg pudding and the coconut pudding. I liked the coconut one more :)

egg and coconut pudding

All up, the food was good quality. It did take a while for the waiters to deliver the food to our table (especially the crab), but it did get here eventually. You get a 2 hr limit to eat and drink everything you can, but we got slightly more than that. We were completely stuffed after dining here. Will definately return for unlimited king crab and icecream :)

Ratings:
Food - 8.5/10
Service - 6.5/10
Ambiance - 7/10
Value for money - 8/10
Overall - 30/40

Kings Crab
台北市光復南路240巷50號
Tel:(02) 2741-7152
Web: http://www.kingscrab.com.tw

Danny & Company - Taipei

Stepping into Danny & Co in Taipei leads you into a luxurious yet simple atmosphere. The walls are black and shiny and the lights are slightly dimmed. Stylish. We were all sat in front of the teppan plate and our menu was personally picked out by our friendly waiter.

The restaurant is French influenced, as evidenced by the awesomely fresh baked bread. Super hot, super crunchy on the outside, super soft and fluffy on the inside. This freshly baked bread was extremely appetising alone, but when accompanied with the truffle butter, it was really out of this world~ And to prove it, my partner ate like 4 bread rolls whereas my friend polished off 3. Yes - it was that good that we eat that much bread even when we're having a degustation.

Bread with truffle butter

An appetiser of vinegary fig. I personally do not like fig. If we were not in taipei, I would have given this a miss. But - just in case the figs in taipei were different, I dared a taste and... well, it just tasted like normal fig.

Fig

An oyster was to come. Big and plump with crushed garlic, onion and vinaigrette. Mmm... yum. I could polish off atleast half a dozen of these :)

Oyster

Next to come was the mushroom cappuccino. Small cup of creamy porcini mushroom soup, a substantial height of foam and topped with a porcini mushroom piece and a gold flake. It was very aromatically creamily yummy.

Mushroom Cappuccino

Our first dish which was freshly cooked by our chef on the teppan was scallops. The scallop was lightly seared with wakame and served with a brush of truffle miso sauce. This was amazing! The wakame was a good compliment to the just rightly cooked, subtly sweet and delicious scallop.

Seared Scallop with baby wakame and truffle miso sauce

Next came the foie gras. 3 pale looking innocent slabs of duck liver, sitting on a platter before it meets the hot teppan plate. The moment it hits the hot plate, something atrocious happens to it. It starts to melt and oil off - and I mean, it just constantly, without stopping, sheds the most ridiculous amounts of oil that the chef constantly scoops it up and bins the oil. It was soooooo much oil. This duck liver is super super fatty. It looks much more appetising when it is nicely arranged by our pro chef. The texture of the foie gras is light and subtle. Not an over-the-top intense flavour hit like some other foie gras I've tasted. This was good. Balanced almost. It sat ontop of a caramelised apple heap, but that didn't add too much to the dish.

Seared Foie Gras

Next came something unexpected. Slow cooked abalone from South Africa showered in shallot garlic butter sauce. The abalone is most tender and juicy which is lovely. The shallot garlic butter sauce is rich and super super strong. Give me some pasta and I'll most willinging soap this sauce up - it was delicious sauce! But the abalone and the sauce together? Hmm... not too sure about that one. It was a rather wierd combination. Maybe that's how the french do it?

Abalone in butter sauce

The main part of the whole meal is the beef. We got the New York Top Cap and the Kobe steak. The beef came with a range of condiments - Jap style vinegary type sauce, relish, thai-style sauce and a chilli mustardy type sauce. The reason why I'm a bit hazy about the sauces is because they didn't do much for me. The best condiment to these steak bits were really the salt flakes and the teppan-fried garlic.

pre-grill

on the grill

sauces

The New York Top Cap was delicious. Tender and super juicy, slightly on the fat side, but it was melt in your mouth yum-ness! Eat bite gave off a beefy fatty aroma. As I said before, the best condiment is to eat it with the salt and the garlic. Mmm.

NY top cap steak

My partner and my friend liked the Kobe more. This was tender too. But maybe because of the way it was cut, it was slightly more chewy and also less fatty which to me, translate to less melt-in-your-mouth goodness. But they're both guys. So maybe guys prefer more substance than melt-in-your-mouth stuff. Again, the steak was good :)

Kobe Beef

There were some super super fatty bits to the new york top cap steak and that was set aside to be a part of this dish. Onions, asparagus, truffle tossed potatoes (yes, truffle AGAIN), and fatty ends of the top cap steak. The highlight was the potatoes. This was superbly fluffy on the inside and filled with truffle aromas. I could eat many many many of these but unfortunately, each was just served with 2 little slices.

Onion, asparagus, truffled potatoes, NY top cap

Now for desserts. my partner chose the creme brulee. This was the yellow glob in the middle of the vanilla icecream and the espresso shot. Where's the caramelised toffee stuff?!?!?!?! It was pretty poor creme brulee - dense and didn't taste like much - but the vanilla icecream was nice.

Creme Brulee

My friend and I both opted for the chocolate trio. Strawberry icecream (with real strawberry pieces) sitting on top of a chocolate cookie, chocolate cake with super rich chocolate sauce, and chocolate brownie. YUM. All three were nice. The cake was my friend's favourite. It was rich and chocolately yet light and edible at the same time.

Chocolate Trio

Petit fours came in threes. This jelly thing, a meringe, and an almond glop. The almond thing was really yummy. Not too sweet and rich in nutty flavour. The meringe was also nice but nothing out of the ordinary. I didn't like the jelly thing much though. Don't even remember what flavour it was.

Petit Fours

All up, Danny & Co was pretty good. The waiter picks the menu for you so half the time, you might not know what exactly it is that you're eating. If you're lucky, you get the English speaking waiter to explain it. If you get a non-English speaking one, you might need to learn how to decipher Mandarin pretty quickly :) Dinner here is approx AUD $100 per person (or a bit more than that) which is pretty pricey for Taiwanese people's standards. So definately worth a try, but probably won't be a regular here.

Ratings:
Food - 9/10
Service - 8/10
Ambiance - 8.5/10
Value for money - 7/10
Overall - 32.5/40

Danny & Company
No. 33, Ln. 52, Siwei Rd
Da'an District
Taipei City, 106
Tel: 886 2 27059977
Web: http://www.dannyandcompany.com

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

The last couple of weeks have been extremely extremely stressful and busy and as such, I haven't had time to post any exciting cool places to eat. But don't worry - we'll be back in the new year with lots more awesomely yummy foods! :)

For now, hope you all have a FANTASTIC CHRISTMAS and an AWESOME NEW YEAR!!! xoxo :)

Cafe de HK - Carlingford

To compare honky style cafes, my partner decided to eat at Cafe de HK and see how it compared to Cafe Aroma.

At Cafe de HK, my partner opted for a set meal. There's a variet y of pork, chicken and beef meals (grilled or deep fried with a variety of cream, black pepper, or tomato sauce). There is soup on the house (Russian Borsch) which was actually really quite light but tasty. Less tomatoey compared to the one at Cafe Aroma. In terms of the meal, my partner chose the deep-fried pork cutlet with tomato sauce with spaghetti (rather than rice) and with chips. It also came with a drink of your choice. In terms of the pork, it was tasty and tender. Quite yummy indeed. The spaghetti and chips wer every average though.

deep-fried pork chop meal

I decided to order a stir fried instant noodles with chicken. This was a super HUGE mountain of instant noodles with chicken, chinese mushrooms, carrots, cabbage, and shallots and HEAAAAAPPPS of salt. OMG - if you want to die from sodium chloride shock, eat this. My partner said that it's what happens when you use the whole packet of seasoning when you cook the instant noodles. Despite the salt overload, I did manage to polish it off - guess you get used to the salt after a while! LOL

stir-fried instant noodles

All up, Cafe de HK is a place we've dined at for many many years. Over time, they've renovated and they've upped the prices but luckily, the food is still decent :)

Ratings:
Food - 7.5/10
Service - 6.5/10
Ambiance - 7/10
Value for money - 7/10
Overall - 28/40

Cafe de HK
Carlingford Village
Level 1, Shop 2, 372 Pennant Hills Rd
Carlingford
NSW 2118
tel: (02) 9871 1878