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Land of Plenty – 天府家常菜

Posted in Chinese on January 28th, 2008 by mei| | 1 Comments.

“Good spicy food shouldn’t leave the arsehole burning the day after,” so some say.

In that case I must’ve hit the jackpot at the Land of Plenty*.

Yours truly has been hearing quite a bit about this Shichuan restaurant out by the Dingxi MRT station through the grapevine and naturally, I just had to go and try it out for myself. In Mei style, let me give you my final judgement first – the place served solid, authentic Shichuan cuisine that would probably hard to beat in Taipei. Well worth visiting again.

However, and this is not necessarily a bad thing, I would probably go with the other dishes than the ones me and my masticating posse ordered.

Here’s what we had:
-husband and wife lung strips （夫婦肺片）
-steamed spareribs （排骨粉蒸）
-eggplant in garlic and peppercorn sauce（魚香茄子）
-steamed whole fish （I didn’t catch the Chinese name for this, but I believed that we had the seabass)
-seasonal greens (時蔡 – which happened to be 菠菜, or spinach)
-pickled vegetable soup with mung bean vermicelli (酸菜粉絲湯）

The first dish, the appetizer (pictured above), ended up being my favorite of the night. The thinly sliced lung pieces was drizzled with a spicy dressing (soy sauce, sesame oil and chili oil, methinks) and tossed with coriander and roasted peanuts. The heat packed a punch and was just perfect for getting my mouth juices (that’s saliva, you) running. I’m normally not the biggest fan of offal but I could have licked this plate clean.

The royal Mr. Tanenbaum wanted the second dish, steamed ribs with sweet potatoes and erm, mush. While it was good, I can’t say that I was altogether too impressed. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I could order this dish at dozens of restaurants in town, all comparably good, and maybe it has something to do with the fact I found the ribs too lacking in meat and too oozing in gristly fat.

I love eggplant. Especially, when it’s cooked fork-tender (chopstick-tender in our case, m’dears :>). I really can’t complain about this dish but I was done when I popped a Shichuan peppercorn in my mouth. It left the strangest numbing sensation ever. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

The spicy steamed seabass was the favorite among my friends. Why didn’t I chose it? Well, it was good. Noting at all wrong with it. It was just that my parents were in the seafood biz and I’ve been super-spoiled. I was like, “Nice! Filled my omega-3 fatty acid needs… Now, moving on…”

The spinach and the soup, while both irreproachable in quality, were buh-buh-boooorrring. Why venture out to Taipei county (cue, gasp) to have spinach and pickled veggie soup when I can order these run-of-the-mill dishes just about anywhere downtown? Okay, so we needed some greens. And a soup. But I wanted something uniquely Shichuanese and with more oomph.

I’m ordering the mouth watering chicken (口水雞）and the poached beef slices in chili oil (水煮牛肉) the next time I go. I might even have room for the kungpao chicken. (While also a staple in most Chinese restaurants, I am interested to see how much pizzazz the restaurant would be able to inject into this classic.)

Fellow Taipei bloggers Prince Roy and Spicy Girl have written excellent blog posts about the place. You can read them here and here respectively.

*On a slightly non-sequitur note, Land of Plenty is not the restaurant’s real name. 天府家常菜 does not translate very nicely into English but the closest I can think of is probably along the lines of “Food from the Celestial Land of Plenty.” Prince Roy wrote a bit about the name of the restaurant in his other blog post.

I’m having dinner tomorrow at 1010 Hunan Pop which is a favorite of mine (I am slightly surprised I haven’t blogged about the place yet). Hunan cuisine, like its Shichuan counterpart, tends to pack in the heat but if the adage proves to be true once again, my fanny will still be free from flames.

Land of Plenty 天府家常菜
No. 5, Renai Road, Yonghe City, Taipei County (Dingxi MRT – accessible within walking distance from either of the two exits)
台北縣永和市仁愛路五號 （捷運頂溪站）
02 8660 0190
Open 11:30am-2pm for lunch and 5:30pm-8:30pm for dinner, closed on Monday. Caveat – technically 8:30pm is the closing time but I’ve been warned that the restaurant runs out of food fast. Go early.

Moon Star Rotating Restaurant

Posted in Coffee and Tea, Desserts on January 22nd, 2008 by mei| | 2 Comments.

I may be cheap but who’d ever thought that I’d start eating out of a garbage dump?

If I could muster the courage to eat out of the loo (at Marton. Boy, was that a shitty restaurant. Pun very intended ) this should be a piece of cake. Or two.

Moon Star Rotating Restaurant is located on the 120th floor of the Beitou Incinerator (北投焚化廠). It is the only rotating restaurant in Taipei and I daresay it’s the only one in the world that sits atop a municipal refuse burner.

Yours truly missed out on lunch but made it there for Moon Star’s afternoon tea buffet. It’s all you can eat cakes, sandwiches, and miscellaneous nonsense (drinks included) for 299nt plus tax. As you can probably tell, I was not impressed. The tea sandwiches were ridiculously tiny and have as much substance as a piece of floor wipe. I had two bites of my chocolate cake but I did finish all of the pumpkin cheese cake. The latter was smooth and light and the pumpkin flavor was just subtle enough. I would have to say, however, that most of the cakes look unimpressive and could pass a the fodder available in any ol’ Taiwanese bakery. The selection wasn’t even that great and ran out pretty fast (I got there around half past two and supposedly the afternoon tea session only started at two).

My verdict – don’t go for the food, go for the view.

I even thought the service to be pretty dismal. You have to fetch your own cakes at the counter. Normally, so spake the waitstaff, sandwiches are displayed along side the cakes but since there were quite a number of people there that day the staff brought them to you as soon as they were made. Well, they took a darn long time making them and usually ran out before reaching my table. I also thought it rather rude to be asked to pay upfront. For somebody who used to work in restaurants, this is tantamount to shooing away your customer. And oh, forget having a romantic tête-à-tête here. The afternoon tea was a family affair with kids running around creating miniature melees.

The view was great, however. The restaurant is situated even higher than the observatory (which is four floors down, on the 116th). Even on a cloudy day, I was quite happy with the vista. The ambience really perked up in the evening when the streets below and the restaurant were lighted. I can’t say much about dinner since I didn’t get to dine there but a nice lady who was in the elevator with me on the way up told me that the food is terrible. And with prices from 500nt to 100nt for dinner sets, it hardly sounds like a good deal.

In fact, eating at this dumpster was pretty darn expensive.

Moon Star Revolving Restaurant 星月旋轉餐廳
www.moonstar2007.com for the restaurant’s site (still under construction)
www.ptrip.gov.tw for the Beitou Incinerator website
120F, No. 271 Chou Mei Street, Beitou
北投區洲美街271號120F
(It is about a kilometer away from the closest MRT station, Qulian.)
02 2837 7122

Yu’s Almond Tofu

Posted in Chinese, Desserts on January 20th, 2008 by mei| | 0 Comments.

Yes, I know. I haven’t been blogging. I’ve just been too busy with work. Truth be told, I’ve also been spending a wad of cash on another hobby of mine, photography, and so I’m lacking the wherewithal to grubstake my grub habits. (Check out my new flickr page here!) I’m also planning an uber big backpacking trip this year so that’s going to eat up mucho moolah and I’m going to have to live like a Jew. That’s not to say that I haven’t been eating out at all. Actually, I have but back to the whole spending too much resources on my other hobby… I simply don’t have time! However, props to my tech guy – Mr. Bobino – for reminding me not to abandon my fan base. So allow me to make my super smooth segue into today’s blog post…

Yu’s Almond Tofu. If you like almonds, you’ll love this place. The store sells almonds in its multifarious forms – almond crips (杏仁瓦片 – 129nt), almond nougat (杏仁牛軋糖 – 129nt), almond popsicles (杏仁冰棒 – 25nt), almond milk (杏仁汁 – 105nt/bottle; 42nt/cup), almond shaved ice (杏仁雪花冰 – 60nt to 80nt depending on toppings), almond milk with tapioca pearls (杏仁汁加珍珠 – 48nt/cup), purple rice porridge with almond tofu (紫米杏仁豆腐 – 58nt)… My personal faves are the almond tofu (杏仁豆腐 – 43nt) and the almond tofu in warm almond milk (熱杏仁豆腐 – 53nt; ad pictured top left). I just had the latter and it was awesome. It contained light but chewy pieces of almond tofu bathing in a delicious pool of mildly sweet almond milk. You can have the option of sprinkling the concoction with grounded almonds as well (I nixed that). You could also choose to add extra toppings for 5nt a pop. I chose my standard chinese dessert toppings : taro and sweet potato nuggets and pearl barley (I like to add these into my hot red bean and grass jelly soups as well).

Just writing about this is making me hungry again. Blarg.

Yu’s Almond Tofu 于記杏仁豆腐
Tong Hua Store – No. 109, Tong Hua Street 通化街109號 02 2378 1898
Guang Fu Store – No. 5-1, Guang Fu North Road 02 2756 5395
Heng Yang Store – No. 101, Heng Yang Street (Ximen MRT exit 4) 衡陽路101號 (西門捷運4號出口) 02 2370 1998
Le Hua Store – No. 168, Yong Ping Road, Yonghe (within Le Hua Night Market) 永和市永平路168號 (樂華夜室內) 02 3233 3933

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