Grandma Pasta House

達文郡義大利麵食店

No. 31, Minquan St, Xinxing Dist
高雄市新興區民權街31號
(07)226-9636

Monday-Sunday
11:30am-1:30pm
5:30pm-8:30pm

English friendly: yes
vegetarian friendly: yes
average cost: 200-300NTD

I'm a little reluctant to review this restaurant, because it means admitting that I was wrong... Good Italian food does exist in Kaohsiung. It does. It really, really does.

You'll have to work to get it though. Grandma Pasta House is open for very short periods of time each day, and you'll probably need a reservation to secure seats. We went at 7:00pm on a Monday without a reservation, and lucked out, but you're still advised to plan ahead.

It's quite a cozy little place. The inside is all decorated with actual art from actual Western countries, and that night's music playlist was in very good taste. Even though there were lots of other people eating that night, the ambience enveloped me like a happy Western cloud.

Rumor has it the owner of this restaurant is a Taiwanese person who spent time in Italy. I believe it, based on the menu alone. It's not one of those Taiwanese Italian monstrosities with a thousand nearly identical choices of topping and sauce for you to mix-and-match with the pasta of your choice. All the dishes have been carefully thought out, and are prepared from scratch. They even have specials that change with the day/season.

I only took a picture of part of the menu, but rest assured the rest of it is just as alluring. It's not too big, either--but you'll still have trouble deciding.

For an extra 80NTD you get bread/salad and a soup. (And for an extra 120NTD they'll throw in one of their appetizers as well!) The bread comes topped with "shrimp paste" and looks a little suspect but was actually really, really good. It was actual Western bread: crispy, airy, yeasty, and no slightly sweet aftertaste. 

The soup of the day was neither corn soup NOR pumpkin soup!!! An actual different kind of soup! Indeed it was cauliflower soup, and it was delicious. Creamy and satisfying, but not too rich.

The pitcher's worth of free drink, which you can see in the upper right corner there, was also delicious! I think it was some sort of iced tea with honey or something. Either way it was completely addictive and I had like four cups. If you do the same, you can get a second pitcher for the low low price of 10NTD!

Here we have fettuccini in tomato sauce, with sirloin steak and vegetables. Take a look at that sauce and you can tell it was prepared fresh, not poured out of a can. I thought the noodles in themselves were not super spectacular, but they had at least been cooked well. Meanwhile the sauce was amazing, and the beef possibly even more amazing.

After an arduous decision making process, I decided on the spaghetti in pesto sauce with shrimp and hot peppers. You can see the peppers in front there, but I couldn't taste them. Not one bit! I'm sort of used to that by now though.

It took me so long to decide in part because the waitress kept telling me that my selections "didn't have any sauce" and Was I Okay With That. I persisted in the end, and got this. I guess Taiwanese people don't consider the above to be sauce. Well whatever it was, it was GREAT. It absolutely made the dish: cheesy, salty, pesto-y... perfect. The noodles were ever so slightly undercooked, and the shrimp were not the most awesome shrimp I've ever had (though they came deshelled which was nice), but whatever I don't even care. This meal made me. So happy.

An extra 80NTD also gets you an after-dinner drink, so I chose lemon and pomelo tea. In retrospect it was a pretty odd choice on my part, since I don't usually like either of those fruits... But it was great! The pomelo came in sweet marmalade form at the bottom of the cup, balancing out the sour from the lemon. I finished it all, even though I'd already had like seven cups of free iced tea.

In conclusion, I am overjoyed to admit that this restaurant SHATTERED my expectations. I can't wait to take everyone I know here, and show them how real Italian food is supposed to taste.

OVERALL RATING: 5/5

Escape 41

海洋天堂歐風餐館

No. 41-2, Chaishan Da Rd, Gushan Dist
高雄市鼓山區柴山大路41-2號
(07)525-0058

Monday-Sunday
12:00pm-11:00pm

facebook: https://www.facebook.com/escape41.tw

English friendly: yes
vegetarian friendly: yes
average cost: 300-400NTD

To get to this restaurant you have to take a long journey through NSYSU on terrifying twisty mountain roads, wild dogs (and monkeys?) popping up on either side, then turn off onto a series of terrifying steep little streets that drop you unceremoniously at the ocean's edge.

So actually, getting here was the best part of the evening. One could even say, it all went downhill from there... Ho ho.

I didn't take a picture of the incredible outside seating, but FYI it is incredible. The tables look RIGHT over the ocean; there were even a couple of times I was afraid the waves would splash up onto our table. Smarter people than I should come here in the early evening to watch the sunset.

I'm extra glad we were able to sit outside, even though it was way dark and a little cold, because the playlist they had going on inside the restaurant was terrible. Its terribleness was further emphasised by the fact that there were NO other customers there. At 7:00pm on a Sunday. So. If you want to come here, better make it sooner rather than later. I think Escape 41 is not long for this world.

For those of you who haven't heard, the owner of this restaurant is an Australian guy famous in many circles for owning a restaurant while being Australian. So it's a Western restaurant, and is obliged to serve pizza and pasta. I was also intruigued to see a selection of scones(!), smoothies, and lasagna, all of them pretty rare in this hemisphere.

Most important for you all, I think, is their wide selection of drinks (alcoholic and non-)! Indeed I would recommend coming here to drink over coming here to eat; you'll see why in a second.

The best part of this meal was probably the soup of the day: a tart tomato vegetable thing with chucks of delicious garlicy croutons (surely handmade, because they were good). The croutons, the sharp flavor, and the soup-like consistency were all spot on. A western soup they might actually serve in a western country.

If only it hadn't been so good, I wouldn't have gotten my hopes up for the rest of the meal...

Here we have seaweed flavor French fries (and the ocean, hello!). These were definitely not bad; if you like blocky thick-cut fries you should be perfectly satisfied. The seaweed coating was also totes addictive.

But this. Oh, this. I ordered the "owner's special", a vegetarian pizza with pesto, mushrooms, onions and all other sorts of things that are supposed to be delicious. This pizza was so bad I actively disliked eating it. The crust was completely tasteless/textureless, the onions were undercooked (as white as freshly fallen snow), the cubes of fried potato... were cubes of fried potato (whyyy), and there was something SERIOUSLY WRONG with the pesto. It probably had basil in it, somewhere, but the sour kind that goes with beef noodle soup. NOT the type you put on a pizza.

The ham and cheese lasagna my friend ordered was slightly better, but still pretty bad. Think "soggy microwave lasagna" quality. It was waaay too mushy to be served in any respectable Western restaurant--but of course this is Taiwan.

I want to give this place a 2/5, based soley on the horror that was that pizza, but I think the location and the drink menu can make up an extra point. Just don't get your hopes up about the food.

OVERALL RATING: 3/5

Happy Life

生活樂子

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

Pasta235

235巷

Alley 235, No. 4, Ziqiang 3rd Rd, Qianjin Dist
高雄市前金區自強三路235巷4號
(07)241-6607

Monday-Saturday 
11:30am-9:30pm

facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pasta235

English friendly: yes
vegetarian friendly: yes
average cost: 150-250NTD

Tucked into a charming little alleyway off of Ziqiang 3rd Rd the informed visitor will find the (supposedly famous!) Pasta235.

Their menu is crazy big and diverse (English version offered upon entry for us foreign-looking folks). There are a few main flavors of sauce--red sauce, white sauce, and 香草 which apparently in this case means pesto, who knew?--which you can pair with a noodle of your choice: spaghetti, bowties or penne. They also offer pasta au gratin, Italian hot pot (random?), as well as those oh-so-neat squid ink noodles. 

Each sauce-noodle pairing has another seven or so variations of toppings/ingredients, with things like mushrooms and chicken and seafood and whatever else one puts on pasta... Be prepared to spend a lot of time looking at the menu.

I think the prices are unexpectedly reasonable, for a restaurant of this quality! The atmosphere is pretty upscale (while still cozy, a great place for a date) and the service was pointedly excellent.

If you choose a set meal (for an extra 60NTD) it comes with bread, your choice of soup or salad, and your choice of drink. 

The salad was fine! The bread had that faintly sweet taste that we all must come to expect from bread baked in Asia (sigh...) but it was still very edible--multigrain, even!

I think the pumpkin soup was the real winner here. The flavor was solid, if not life-changing, though it was less thick then I was maybe hoping, something between a bisque and a regular soup.

(Watch me pretend I know what a bisque is.) 

(Just kidding I just looked up a picture of a bisque, I think a bisque would describe it pretty well actually.)

I ordered pesto bowtie pasta with assorted seafood. It was what I would consider a standard pasta dish from a Taiwanese (key word) Italian restaurant, which after much contemplation I've concluded has two defining characteristics: slightly chewier pasta than I would expect from an Italian restaurant in America, and slightly thinner/less flavorful sauce than I would hope. I miss cheese everywhere, is what I'm saying. The sauce never sticks to the noodles... This is probably better for one's health, in retrospect, but it always feels kind of unsatisfying.  

...BTW I found the cheese you guys. This dish--lobster pasta au gratin, only 200NTD!--was pretty awesome. Aaaaaaall that cheese, so shameless. Highly recommended for those among us missing dairy products.

Anyway, if you're a foreigner who enjoys eating at Italian restaurants in Taiwan, I do recommend this place. Also, I recommend you contact me because I'm not positive that you actually exist.

OVERALL RATING: 2/5