No. 106, Chaoming Rd, Nanzi Dist
高雄市楠梓區朝明路106號
(07)351-3322
Monday-Sunday
11:00am-2:00pm
4:00pm-1:00am
English friendly: no
vegetarian friendly: yes
average cost: 50-100NTD
This place is waaay far away up in the north of Kaohsiung County, just outside Kaohsiung City, so you're on your own as far as getting there. Still, as long as it's in Kaohsiung it's fair game I think. Besides, this place is famous!
Real famous, even. We went at 1:45pm on a Friday, 15 minutes before closing (and they do stop serving food at 2:00pm as advertised), and still had to wait in line. What on earth could all these people be so excited about...?
Well! This place is pretty much all 麵食 ("oily wheaty carbs") like I like: dumplings, pot stickers, and scallion pancakes in a plethora of forms. Plus soup! Unfortunately both their chicken and beef soups had sold out by the time we got there. I was told that these soups are famous, but I was also told that most things on this (admittedly limited) menu are famous so I don't know what to believe. Lots of food around here is famous, have you noticed? One of these days I'd like to get to the bottom of this. Like, is there a magazine everyone reads or something? Entertainment Tonight, but for noodle shops, and stinky tofu stands? And soups?
Speaking of tofu, I got me a little dish of tofu for a starter. It photographed really nicely, didn't it? It tasted almost as nice: extra-firm tofu glazed with some sort of slightly-sweet BBQ sauce. Good and protein-y. But near the end I accidentally mistook the anise for an oddly-shaped bit of tofu and would DEFINITELY NOT RECOMMEND making the same mistake. Bleuuuuuuurgh. For those of you who don't know, anise tastes like licorice and makes you want to vomit on the spot.
This here is their "pork rolled pancake." I am of the opinion that stuff rolled up in pancakes is the consummate form of food, even above food stuffed in other food, so I was really excited when these appeared on our table. The spiralled cylindrical form is satisfying in itself, viscerally (that is a pun that is a pun, oh just look at that pun), and it tasted pretty good too! There was another BBQ-type sauce inside that complimented the whole thing quite well. I don't think the pork was especially flavorful or anything, but the pancake was delicious like all scallion pancakes, ever.
I've found that soup in Taiwan generally comes in one of two flavors: sweet-and-sour, and corn. This is corn soup. It was not as sickeningly rich as that stuff I made from souppowder that one time in my house (but let's not drag my cooking adventures into this), so that was nice. Again, I would classify this dish as "good."
This thing was somewhat curious! What we have here is 烙餅. Apparently the only thing that differentiates 烙餅 from your traditional 蔥油餅 or scallion pancake is that somebody's messed it up a bit, at the cost of an extra 10NTD. Its shredded nature makes it almost impossible to share with others, because every time you pick up a piece in your chopsticks the rest of the damn thing comes along with it.
In a most peculiar turn of events, this thing had no flavor whatsoever. My friend suggested it might be sweet, and I was sure from looking at it that it was going to be salty and oily and awesome, but instead... nothing. We gave it a hearty sprinkling of Taiwanese MSG peppersalt, and by the end I starting dipping it in the sauce for my dumplings, but to little avail. A mess of wheaty disappointment!
I chose their "flower vegetarian" steamed dumplings. They came in a unit of eight, each one stuffed super plump with a mash of yummy green veggies; the skin was thin, with a nice flavor of its own. I was told that this restaurant's (famous!) beef and pork dumplings leak soup when you bite into them. These didn't, undoubtedly because of their veggie character. Still, when dipped in soy+ginger+spicy sauce, they were quite delicious! On the higher end of vegetarian dumplings, definitely.
APPARENTLY this place is SO famous that people outside Kaohsiung know it too. I don't really get what all the fuss is about... It was good, certainly, as well as cheap (yay!), but I wouldn't make the trip again.
OVERALL RATING: 3/5
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