mei eats

O Sole Mio

Posted in Desserts, Food News on February 13th, 2008 by mei| | 0 Comments.

I really don’t hang out enough in my neighborhood. If I did, I shouldn’t have missed the opening of this new(-ish) gelateria in my side of town.

“Pistachio gelato? No way.”

Way.

I’ve been a fan of The Girl Who Ate Everything for quite some time now and she definitely knows how to make my life sound incomplete without experiencing pistachio gelato. Not surprisingly, that’s exactly what I ordered at O Sole Mio.

I’m no expert on gelato (*sigh* doctor’s orders not to have anything cold in fact) but here are my findings - O Sole Mio serves gelato that is very rich and creamy and at 97% fat-free it sounds too good to be true. The store also carries frozen yogurt which I thought was satisfyingly creamy and it is the type of fro-yo that actually imparts the yogurt flavor. Will definitely visit again.

The pistachio flavor could have been stronger but I’ll admit I have nothing to base this on. My senses could have been numbed after bite #3 anyways.

I was also happy to know that the milk used to make the icy treats is from Taidong (台東初鹿 company to be exact) and not imported. Eat local!

A small tub of gelato is 70nt and for the frozen yogurt, 60nt.

O Sole Mio
Tonghua Store - No. 14, Tonghua Street
通化街14號
02 2754 7979

Heng Yang Store - No. 57, Heng Yang Road
衡陽路57號
02 2313 1189

Taichung Store - No. 122, Yi Zhong Street, Taichung
台中市一中街122號
04 2229 3168

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 :P) 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

Gib Mot

Posted in Desserts on July 18th, 2007 by mei| | 1 Comments.

I heart Big Tom.

My attempts to cut out sugar and dairy has failed miserably and as my loyal readers may have noticed, I definitely have a yen for ice cream these days. I already have two quarts of Swensen’s ice cream to my name but that’s not keeping me from trying out fatty-gooey-dreamy-pore-clogging dairy delights from joints around town.

A few weeks back Levenade and I went to this place that I’ve always wanted to check out - Big Tom. We had the house specialty which was a brownie with vanilla ice cream flambéed with red wine. I thought the brownie was just enh (still haven’t found any decent brownies in Taipei… anybody who knows where I can get some let me know!!!) and the flavor of wine was too strong (although I’ll admit I did ask the wait staff to go heavier on the wine). The criticisms notwithstanding, I do like their ice cream. The vanilla ice cream was nicely specked and was rich and creamy enough that made me believe that there are still some zaftig cows left in this country of emaciated bovines.

We also had the Cookies and Cream (pictured near left) and what I believe to be some caramel swirly thing (pictured far left)(I plead guilty to memory loss as a result of food coma). I have to say I was happy with both choices. Happy? Mmmm. Maybe that was an understatement.

The interior of Big Tom’s is quite interesting. I’m not so sure what to make of the cow print upholstery but I sure like that there’s a al fresco dining area outside over looking a lake behind Sun Yat Sen Memorial. Levenade said that it looks like a “date” place. Date? Erm. With whom? With Tom? Mmm… Nevermind.

Anyway, my final verdict? I likey.

One lick and you’ll be scrambling back to Big Tom for another mouthful of his dream cream.
Amen.

Big Tom 美國冰淇淋文化館
No. 505 Renai Road, Section 4 (Next to the Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall Parking Lot. The entrance is actually on Guang Fu)
仁愛路四段505號
02 2345 4213