The Ups!
Eating Indonesian food in Taiwan?! Yup! You read right!
Our early lunch at the Michelin Bib - ‘ Sate House ‘, an extremely hard to book, renowned and popular neighbourhood hidden gem, was a meal to remember! Voted best Indonesian food outside of Indonesia, this decades old institution serves up top notch, true to form authentic Indonesian fare. The menu included a stupendous, awesome tasting, award winning Beef Rendang!!..So much so that, whenever there’s a state function being held in the Indonesian Embassy, the chef/owner will be requested by the ambassador to cook this to-die-for dish for the event!!
Indeed, this ‘oh-so splendid tasting’ exotic Rendang dish, with its complex and flavourful sauce, all smothered and infused into those gelatinous, melt-in-the-mouth, beef shank chunks, was hands-down one of the 5 most enjoyable and memorable dishes I encountered and tasted during my entire Asian food crawl trip! So amazingly, it prompted Rosy to order a second helping…….an extremely rare phenomenon!
Other ordered dishes like the Indonesian Ga-Doo, Ga-Doo salad, Chicken Satay and Fried heads-on Ocean Prawns with extra dark sweet soy sauce were all wonderfully seasoned and dressed and cooked to near perfection. Soooo good!!..though the chicken satay IMO, could be cooked a touch less done.
Service was attentive and the owner, most hospitable and friendly!
The Downs!
Dinner at ‘ AoBa Zhingshan Restaurant ‘, a historic Taipei institution, serving up traditional Taiwanese cuisine, was, on the other hand, disastrous and totally forgettable! Easily ranked as one of the WORST meals I have had in the Orient if not the world!!
The few dishes we ordered were so surprisingly bad in presentation, taste and price. Staring down and forcing oneself to eat them almost made me weep!!
Case in point, the lacklustre, sad looking plate of plainly boiled country-side Pea Shoot……sans dressing, sauce and seasoning and priced at a whopping CAD 22!! …..are you kidding me? You call that a restaurant product? ….How could they??!!
The plate of stir fried beef and morning glory with Taiwan’s famous BBQ sauce was so lame, watery and bland, the beef, chewy and tasteless … .It was an insult to paying customers!
The steamed ‘ Lions head pork meat balls’ wrapped in Grouper filet and topped with minced preserved pickled mustard greens was acceptable in taste but the fish was way over cooked, rendering the texture cardboard like!
The time between meals was spent visiting the National Palace Museum. Walking the lengthy path and steps leading up to the museum entrance, under a fiery tropical sun and 38C weather, was BRUTAL!! Upon arrival at the entrance, we learned that we would be missing out on seeing the ‘ National treasure - Jade Cabbage ‘ because it was touring overseas in Czechoslovakia. This was like making a special trip to the Louvre only to find the Mona Lisa on loan overseas! What a partial waste of our precious time! Sigh!
