Alley 193, No. 25, Senlin 3rd Rd
高雄市苓雅區林森三路193巷25號
(07)336-1122
Monday-Sunday
11:00am-1:30am
website: http://072011131.tw.tranews.com/
English friendly: probably
vegetarian friendly: yes
average cost: 150-200NTD
"How did I end up here again?" you ask yourself as you walk into yet another blandly cozy Taiwanese Italian restaurant, "Why is it that my Taiwanese friends only want to take me to eat white people food? Could it be--" Best not to think too much on it.
The actual conversation had that day:
"Where are we going?"
"Italian food!"
"...Oh."
"What, you don't like Italian food?"
"No, I just... think most Taiwanese Italian food... is perhaps... not very good."
"Pfft, what, you want to eat Chinese food?"
"... :("
So here you are, the possibly famous "Happy Life" (perhaps more accurately translated as "Life's Pleasures" but they didn't exactly ask you did they?), tucked inside the Xinjuejiang Shopping Area. "Ah," you think, when you're done with your pasta maybe you can buy a pair of shoes or something. As if they'll have anything in your size, you monstrous foreign devil!
The menu is even more gigantic than the last time around. This shouldn't make you angry but somehow it does. The entire left side is different types of tea/coffee/milkshakes etc., undoubtedly because this establishment doubles as a quaint afternoon tea spot. You can order a set meal or a single pasta dish of your choice, in which case your drink will be half-off. Though at 150NTD for a pot of tea it should probably be half-off anyway.
Your friend orders a latte but you don't try it because when you drink coffee in the evening you'll have trouble falling asleep. You secretly believe that everyone is as sensitive to caffeine as you are, but most haven't figured it out yet. If you had one NTD for each of your friends with mysterious "insomnia"...
"People should take responsibility for their own lives," you reflect, as you sip slowly on a steaming cup of lavender tea. The smell is incredibly soothing, the taste sort of like chewing on a sack of lavender.
In retrospect, of course, that is essentially what it is. You have regrets.
The restaurant sells everything from waffles to sandwiches to "Italian pasta", but apparently is most famous for its "Italian hot pot" (you have yet to figure out what's exactly Italian about the whole thing) and its 焗烤, which you originally translated as "pasta au gratin" but are increasingly convinced has no accurate English translation at all, possibly because it is not an actual Italian dish.
After a time spent gazing bleakly at the menu, you decide to get something au gratin. You narrow in on the cheddar seafood row, and finally check the "pasta" box, instead of getting it over rice or whatever other thousand things they have hiding in their kitchens. If you got it over rice it would probably be some approximation of a risotto, the same way the washed out, earth-toned paintings of children/other baby animals frolicking on the walls roughly approximate a rundown European motel room.
Your pasta arrives complete with two clams, one shrimp, a piece of broccoli and one neatly hidden sliver of imitation crab which you initially mistake for a carrot, all of them for some reason occupying the same side of the dish. It looks a little sad, but the flavor is legitimately good. If you put that much cheese on top of a potted plant it would be good, and good it is. The pasta is not as unnervingly firm as you're used to, which is a plus.
For some reason you also get a free cup of "soup," which is so watery and salty and swimming with seaweed that you sort of suspect it was directly scooped from the ocean. You secretly love it. You purposefully neglect to take a clear photograph.
Your friend orders spicy chicken but is disappointed by the level of spice, which for a Taiwanese person is saying something.
Would you recommend this restaurant to others? Probably. After all, not everyone has as much of a prejudice against Taiwanese Italian restaurants as you do. If nothing else it *was* relatively cheap--around 330NTD for two dishes of pasta and two drinks.
And yet the very thought of having to revisit this place in your mind at some later point depresses you. It is not a bad restaurant, it really isn't. It's just so... obvious. Everything from the potted plants to the second floor balcony seating. The Taiwanese dream of European style. Happy life.
"Cultural voyeurism," you nod to yourself, and as you exit the restaurant and stumble upon a scallion pancake stall right outside, you sigh and think about what could have been.
OVERALL RATING: 2/5
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