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台湾游記 Dec. 6 – Dec. 16, 2009, Day 3, Part II February 27, 2010

Posted by hslu in China, Chinese, Chinese Food, Food, Restaurants, Taiwan, Travel.
Tags: 石花凍, 食養山坊, Live-Forever, Taipei, 內湖五指山, 台湾, 九孔
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台湾游記 Dec. 6 – Dec. 16, 2009, Day 3, Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Taipei, Part II

The restaurant was called 食養山坊 “shi1 yang3 shan1 fang3” or Food for Nourishment Mountain House. It was previously located in 陽明山 “yang2 ming2 shan1,” or Yang2 Ming1 Mountain, a very popular place to spend a weekend with your family and friends hiking and picnicking just north of the city of Taipei.

About a month before our visit, the restaurant was moved to this private location closed to 內湖五指山 “nei4 hu2 wu2 zhi3 shan1” on 汐萬路 “xi4 wan4 le4,” section 3. It was about half way to the Air Force Cemetery in a neighborhood with no other house or resident. There was no sign at the small alley to indicate that there was a restaurant in the alley except a small wooden sign on a wooden post which said “350巷 “xiang4” or Alley 350.

Our taxi followed two other cars down a steep slope and after a couple of turns arrived at a non-paved parking lot. At that time, about 6 or 8 cars have already arrived. After we got out of the taxi, a couple of young ladies guided us through a walkway filled with pebble rocks, cross a bamboo bridge over a small creek, a 40-step meandering trail paved with slabs of flat stones under trees of various heights, climbed a small hill and then finally reached to the foot of a large wooden building. As we got closer to the building, I heard faint sound of flowing water in the distance. Because the restaurant had just moved to here, I was assuming that the landscape and lighting had not completely finished yet. I could see through the flash light of my camera that some trees may have been recently planted along the pathway. In the distance, there was a small man-made island with tall banana trees. There were many landscape lights under trees and shrubs in the garden. The shadow of trees under the dark sky, the lazy glow of lights, light breeze on my face, faint sound of flowing water, the clouds in the distance sky and a shade of crimson red from the sunset made this a wonderful and relaxing place to have a good meal.

坊

I couldn’t wait. I was ready to be pampered.

At the side entrance of the wooden building, we were instructed to take off our shoes and put them in a box. A young lady took us through an alley between dinning rooms where incenses were burning in a big clay pot. Our room was about 12’ wide and about 24’ long decorated with a couple of white Chinese lanterns hung from the ceiling. On one side, there were several panels of ceiling to floor windows. On the other side, a wall divided our room from the room on the other side. In the middle of our room, there were two see-through curtain made from 1/8” round, 3’ long bamboo skewer rods strung together to form a 6’ wide divider. Our hostess told us that we have to be careful not to bump into the windows because their customers frequently forgot that there was a window between the room and the deck on the outside. She showed us a sliding door which could take us to the deck. She also showed us where the bathroom was and reminded us not to forget to use the slippers provided at the other side of another sliding door not too far from our room. The floor of the room was covered with 榻榻米 “ta1 ta mi3” which was very comfortable to walk on without shoes. In the middle of our room, there was a simple wooden table which could seat six and a couple of benches on each side. Near the window, there was a pot of water being heated on a small clay pot. The room was lit using several Chinese lanterns supplemented with a few spot lights and some candles on a dark-colored cabinet on the floor. On top of the cabinet were several paintings of 山水畫”shan1 shui3 hua4” or Chinese landscape paints of trees, clouds, creek, stones and mountains. Everything was simple with mostly black and white colors. In fact, the setup of the room, and for that matter the whole building, was very easy on your eyes and mind. It was apparent that the owner wanted to nourish our body with his food and nourish our minds with a relax ambiance.

There was no time limit. Meal started at 6 PM and usually last three or four hours. Every guest got the same dishes and we were told that the guests had no idea what they’d get for any given night because it wasn’t finalized until morning of that day after a trip to the local markets. The price was fixed: 1,000 NT per person plus 10% tips. There was no wine served at this restaurant.

We opened the sliding door, walked onto the deck, looked around the outside, took a few pictures and admired the beautiful and calm night scene. As we walked back to our room, a group of six was taken to the other side of the same room we were in. As we sat at our table waiting for our meal, we heard a loud bang and then realized that people did actually walk into the window like our hostess had warned us.

Around 6:15, our dinner started with the first course: 草梅百香果汁 ”cao3 mei2 bai3 xiang1 guo3” – Marinated Plum and Passion Fruit Juice.

If you have tried 百香果 before, you knew that it has a special taste and aroma that’s unique to the fruit. The smoothie-like juice was properly chilled with sour and mild sweet taste in your mouth with a strong passion fruit flavor. It was meant to refresh your taste buds and open your appetite for more exciting dishes to come. The presentation of the first course was beautiful too: four small pottery cups fitted perfectly on a light colored rectangle tray, the color of the juice matched nicely with the color of the cup, a few pieces of passion fruit seeds allowed you to chew on them while you drank the juice. The whole thing was garnished with a simple white mum. I guessed the chef wanted to project a peaceful image to sooth our mind from the beginning. I liked the first course very much. The only thing I’d do differently was to fill each cup with the same amount of juice like the third cup from the left. With the same amount of juice in each cup, the whole thing would be balanced by itself.  I’d also chilled the cups and tray too. Minor details!

The second dish was an appetizer: chilled deep-fried egg plants garnished with stalks of celery and a few slices of dried fish; a piece of silky tofu on peanut sauce topped with soy sauce, wasabi and something I didn’t recognize; and salmon eggs on top of roasted ells.

Again, it was an artfully composed starter: multiple colors, three different textures and three distinctly different food groups not to mention multiple tastes from the egg plants, dried fish, crispy celery stalks, roasted eels, salmon eggs and wasabi. Great!

The third dish consisted of several things: large prawns, pumping wedges, inarizushi (stuffed deep-fried bean curd sushi pockets) with some kind of fish and sushi rice, pineapple juice and 石花凍 “shi2 hua1 dong4”. 石花凍 literally means stone flower jelly which was made from juice extracted from seaweeds.

This was a sushi dish which we enjoyed very much. Our waitress told us that everything in this dish was lightly seasoned so that we could enjoy their original tastes. The only trouble I had was I couldn’t decide what to eat first. I liked inarizushi more than prawn because of the salty yet sweet taste of the deep-fried bean curd pocket itself. I liked pumpkin more than inarizushi because of its sweetness. Seaweed jelly was something I never had before. Well, after only a brief hesitation, I grabbed a prawn and started to suck the juice out of its head. Inarizushi was good except that I liked to have a little more rice with the fish. Seaweed jelly had a very mild taste similar to that of kelp which didn’t surprise me. The pineapple juice provided a good ending to this dish and served to cleanse our palates for our next dish.

After the empty plates were cleaned from the table, our young waitress bought us a teapot and some 西湖龍井茶”xi1 hu2 long2 jing3 cha2.” She said that we can fill the teapot with hot water ourselves and left. Before our next dish arrived, I noticed that our young waitresses usually didn’t stay very long after they took away empty plates, put down new sets of utensils or told us what we were getting. I then realized that they purposely wanted to leave their customers alone so that they’d be more comfortable with their friends and family members to enjoy the food. The fact that a pot of hot water was left on the clay stove in the room also suggested that the owner wanted us to enjoy ourselves without the watchful eyes of the wait staff.

The next dish was a hot dish: steamed egg custard with scallops. The key of this simple yet elegant dish was again: simplicity. Egg custard in its own juice topped with a pinch of shaved dry fish and a few small flower buds garnished with a pink flower. If I had to nitpick, I’d say the flower and the plate were a bit too large for the size of the clay bowl. I also would use a matching, smaller spoon; one about half the size of the white spoon provided by the kitchen.

The egg custard was great though: refreshing, smooth, creamy and warm, with a subtle hint of scallops. And there was no scallop in the bowl. Hmm, it was very yummy and very good for a chilly night except I could use two more bowls. A bigger bowl would also do the tricks though.

Before our next dish was served, our waitress bought in three small condiment trays: soy sauce, wasabi and a sauce made from fish sauce. While we were waiting for our next dish, Xiaobao was playing with his cell phone and his sister was watching him with great interests. We didn’t know what they were watching but it was a wonderful sight to us as if it was 20 years ago when they were playing in the living room again.

The center piece of our next dish was four small 9-hole abalones served in their unique 9-hole shells (九孔 “jiu3 kong3” or nine holes) on a bed of crushed ice. They were served with steamed broccoli flowers, white mushrooms (銀耳 “yin2 er3” or literally silver ear, a fungi mushroom grown on dead trees) and 石蓮花 “shi2 lian2 hua1”(literally rock lily flower.) In the middle of the plate was a small bamboo basket which contained slabs of corns and two kinds of sashimi: tuna on squid and some kind of white fish with nori.

Wasabi and soy sauce of course were for the sashimi. The fish sauce was for 石蓮花 which came from a low growing plant call houseleek or live-forever.

I had cooked 9-hole abalones before but they turned out a complete disaster. It had the texture of an eraser and as tasteless as a piece of 2-day old chewing gum. Since I had waaaay over cooked them, they were promptly discarded into the trash can. The abalone I had here was tender, moist and tasted like, well, like abalones. I wasn’t sure it was done, but it was way better than what I had offered to my guests. The sashimi was good, unique but far from excellent though. I also didn’t get the reason for serving blanched 銀耳 with the seafood dish probably because I was used to having chilled 銀耳 in thick, tangy rock-sugar syrup. Corn was a nice addition but it didn’t add any special flavor to the dish. One thing I did like was the succulent 石蓮花 in fish sauce.

石蓮花is a evergreen plant called houseleek. The Romans started consuming 石蓮花 petals in the eighth century. Mexicans planted 石蓮花 on their roofs allegedly to avoid thunders and lighting. According to Chinese medicine, 石蓮花 has various medicinal properties such as treating burns and skin diseases. It was found to be rich in dietary fiber, calcium, potassium, iron and other minerals. It has also been used to treat high blood pressure and constipation, among others.

The petals of 石蓮花 in our plate were simply blanched in boiled water and then served with fish sauce infused with sugar, onion, red pepper and wine. The petals were succulent and juicy and its tannin taste was partially removed by blanching and the remaining tannin taste was masked by the sweet and sour fish sauce.

To top this off and to serve as a transition to our next dish, black dates juice was offered to cleaning our taste buds again.

The chef again stayed with simplicity in presenting our sixth dish: cabbage blanched in chicken stock topped with mullet roe mochi or daifuku and deep-fried sweet potato. The chef again got his inspiration from simplicity using three types of food having three different textures, three different flavors and three different consistencies.

The cabbage was a down-to-earth type of food usually served to blue-collar laborers in the field. It was among the cheapest vegetables in Taiwan. The cabbage was blanched in chicken stock which still retained its crispiness and slight sweetness. The mullet roe mochi (sweet rice cake) was a pleasant surprise. The salty mullet roe was used as filling for sweet rice mochi which by itself had a neutral and bland taste. They however complemented each other nicely with a chewy outer skin and a somewhat grainy interior from the dried mullet roes. The golden brown and crispy sweet potato (yam) was cleverly done because its texture presented a stark contrast to the chewy chilled mochi and warm cabbage. However, this dish again stayed with the seafood theme of our dinner because mullet roe was an expensive delicacy prized by Taiwanese and Japanese people alike.

Our next dish was modified 油飯 “you1 fan4,” or sticky rice, topped with pepperoni sausage and garnished with shitake mushroom.

油飯 was a common dish favored by many Taiwanese people. The sticky sweet rice was first steamed and then stir-fried with sausage, pork, dried shrimp, fried shallots, Chinese mushroom, a generous amount of sesame oil and cilantro. Our chef must have strayed beyond his usual recipe and use pepperoni instead. I didn’t like this dish because I found the flavor of pepperoni somewhat overtook or in competition with the flavor of soy-sauce based sticky rice. If I were to do this, I would substitute pepperoni with lump crab meat. I would keep fired shallots and sprinkle some cilantro to soften the dark-colored dish. The mushroom wasn’t too impressive either. Overall, this was one dish that I didn’t care too much of.

The next dish was interesting: wild mushroom and chicken soup with a lily flower twist.

The lily flower was first steamed to remove the tannin taste. It was then dried under the sun. Our waitress placed the soup on our table. She then immersed the lily flower in the middle of the soup. The soup was packed with a generous amount of various kinds of mushrooms, lotus roots and a subtle taste of Chinese medicines such as 人參 “ren2 shen1” or ginseng. The savory soup was laced with such an intense mushroom flavor that it might be called a mushroom stew instead. The mushrooms were only slightly boiled in the soup before it was bought to our table. The soup was light in seasoning and almost free of any chicken grease. It was a far cry from some of the greasy and heavy soups served in many Chinese restaurants in the United States. I had to admit though that the lily flower didn’t give out too much of a scent, at least I didn’t taste any of them.

By this time, I knew our meal was close to the end because Chinese normally serve soup near the end of a meal unlike American custom which feed you soup near the beginning. After the empty soup pot and our soup bowls were removed, our waitress gave us a new set of tea cups and a teapot filled with some lily flower petals. The lily flower tea had a mild fragrance but it was enough to cleanse our taste buds because we should be getting something sweet as dessert.

Sure enough, our dessert came next:

• A plate of fresh fruit consisted of small slices of papaya, apple and 蓮霧 ”lian2 wu4” and a small cup of mulberry juice. The fruits were great and the mulberry juice was excellent except I liked to have second or third serving, please.

• 薏仁 “yi4 ren2” (barley) and taro roots paste in warm red bean soup with Chinese dates. It was topped with decorative and, yes, edible, thin gold foils. The texture of the paste was somewhat coarse and slimy (It was supposed to be slimy.) It had a neutral taste if not for the somewhat sweet red bean soup and red dates. The gold foil of course had no taste and was an inner metal. I had a few pieces but couldn’t even tell that I was eating them or the taro root paste. Frankly, I preferred the taro root paste a little sweeter because it would be more satisfying after a heavy meal.

While we were enjoying our dinner and finally our desserts, a couple of dogs showed up near our window. Their names were 小不點 ”xiao3 bu1 dian3” (The small thing) and 小黑 “xiao3 hee1.” There was a black cat too. All three animals were very playful and not afraid of people.

Our bill as expected came to $4,400 NT. I considered it a steal for that price. Although not every dish was top notch and, to me, too much seafood was served, it nonetheless provided a very satisfying experience and memorable evening. The service was casual and not intrusive which gave me a comfortable and cozy feeling. The ambiance of the restaurant was inviting. The tall trees, small hill, big boulders, running water in the woods, various shrubs, banana trees, narrow pathway among flowers and a calming atmosphere certainly made me wanted to go back here again, perhaps during the day. Our waitresses were warm and purposely left us alone. It made us feel very comfortable as if we were at home enjoying ourselves. All in all, I liked it very much and I will go back there again with Bao next time when we are in Taiwan again.

Our ride back to 忠孝復興 “zhong1 xiao4 fu4 xing1” was quick because the streets were quiet even though it was only a little before 10 PM. I was also impressed with our driver who was professional and courteous at all times. He told us that he was a victim of 9-21 earthquake 10 years ago and his house was totally damaged. He had since received only 20,000 NT from the government and till that day, his house was not repaired or rebuilt. He was understandably very bitter about the government. Three years ago, his office job with a big company was eliminated because the company moved its operation to China. Taiwan in his view could not compete with China and the government hasn’t done enough to reverse the situation. Without a job, he turned to driving a taxi because it was easy job to get in. He said that unfortunately many out of work white collar workers turn to taxi driving which hurt everyone in the business. Many taxi companies gave 30% discounts if you call the dispatcher for a taxi. 捷運 jie2 yun4 gave every person in Taipei a good reason not to call taxi for long distance travel in the city. Very few people called taxi to airport anymore with airport shuttles so convenient for everybody. He said that people liked him had no other option but to stay in the business. This was because office jobs were scarce and more companies considered moving their operations to China because that’s where the businesses and opportunities were. Before we said goodbye, he gave me his card and asked me to call him directly if we wanted to go somewhere next time when we were in the city. For the seven-hour service since 2:30 PM, I gave him 3,000 NT for safely drove us to and back from the cemetery and dinner.

At the end, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. No wonder the taxi drivers were all very nice to us because of fierce competition for a smaller pie. Just a short ten years ago, taxi drivers would stop briefly to find out where we wanted to go. They might speed away without saying a word because they didn’t like us for whatever reason: 外省人 “wai4 sheng3 ren2” or short hop in the city. It was interesting to me what a shrinking economy would do to various businesses. My memory of rude taxi drivers, who didn’t give a damn about our feelings last time when I was here, faded away quickly. I was amazed what capitalism could do to taxi drivers’ attitude whereas years of public education couldn’t make a difference.

Well, it has been a long day yet it was very interesting too. Tomorrow’s Wednesday and we’ll have another fun-filled day in Taipei.