Teresa's Restaurant

黛麗莎

No. 146-2, Wufu 4th Rd, Yancheng Dist
高雄市鹽埕區五福四路146號之2
(07)551-3233

Monday-Sunday
11:00am-10:00pm

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

The most interesting part of this exotic Spanish/ethnic restaurant storefront is their incredible door:

Seriously though, where did they get that? Exquisite.

This was advertised to me as a Spanish restaurant, but as you can see here they have LOTS of foreign food--Italian, American, Mexican, everything. There is definitely something for everyone, especially because their menu is gigantic. The whole last half of it is a very enticing (and cheap!) selection of cocktails and wines and things. ONE FUN EVENING IN THE MAKING.

I've forgotten the names of everything we ordered by now, so I'll just sort of describe it. This, as you can probably tell, is a squid and rice thing with black "squid ink" sauce. I feel like the majority of the options in this restaurant are Western variations on rice (and/or meat), though I do think I saw some pasta options. Anyway. I'm not a huge fan of rice, but I liked this. The squid was chewy, and sooo adorable, and the sauce was subtly seafoody and good.

And here we have brown rice with chorizo. Oh man, it was GOOD. A little plain, but the Spanish sausage flavor was excellent.

THIS, I think, is pork (??? but actually I've completely forgotten the type of meat) wrapped in bacon, topped with onions and green peppers and paired with a thin tomatoey sauce. It was perfectly fine! I'm not really into bacon though (I kno rite why am I even here), and I thought the meat in the middle could have been a lot more tender, or at least... interesting.

This is supposedly potatoes au gratin, but I was unconvinced. It was more like plain slices of potato covered in cheese and baked. The sauce was not nearly saucy enough, and the potatoes should have been sliced a lot more thinly (in my inexpert opinion). No one at the table really liked it. 

I will say, though, that the cheese did not suck. It seems hard for restaurants to find good cheese in Kaohsiung, so this is a great accomplishment.

The cheese REALLY featured in this guy, the cheese-filled empanadas off of the extensive vegetarian options page. I guess I sort of forgot what empanadas are, because I wasn't expecting this, but it was a happy surprise. EVERYONE at the table liked these.

They aren't completely filled with cheese (a good thing, I think we can agree), but there was definitely enough. The perfect amount, even. The crust was light and flaky, and the cheese was gooey and delicious. Wonderful.

So to sum up, this is a good place. It's not too expensive, though each plate is a little on the small side (we had five for three people and it was just about right), and it's lovely to have all those cheap drink options! (I'm not sure if they are good but whatever it's alcohol.) The food was definitely edible, even if it didn't exactly suit my tastes; I think it quite likely that it will suit yours!

OVERALL RATING: 4/5

Xinglong House

興隆居

No. 186, Liuhe 2nd Rd, Qianjin Dist
高雄市前金區六合二路186號
(07)261-6787

Monday-Sunday
4:00am-10:00am

English friendly: no
vegetarian friendly: yes
average cost: 25-50NTD

Taiwanese breakfast doesn't get better than this.

All you have to do is get yourself up before 10:00am in the morning, and stand in that huge line there.

You'll also have to go through the process of ordering, which can be a little stressful if there are a lot of people (there will be) and you don't speak Chinese. Luckily most of the stuff is laid out on the counter and you can just point at what looks good--everything's really cheap, so the risk is minimal.

And everything's really good, too! They've got your traditional spread of breakfast foods: egg pancakes, potstickers, sweet buns, breakfast sandwiches, radish cake, etc., plus a nice wide selection of drinks.

However, this place is MOST famous for its unique breakfast soup dumplings, pictured above. They are more like soup buns than soup dumplings, which brings them nicely over into the breakfast category. 

They even provide a helpful illustrated guide on how to eat them (take a bite and spoon "hot" sauce--it's really not that hot, don't worry--into them), which I followed to the letter with very positive results.

And here, the money shot! The filling was deliciously meaty and cabbagey. What's more, on the first bite the soup juices BURST out and all over my hands, just like a proper soup dumpling.

In a fit of inspiration I ordered the "salty soymilk", which came out in a big bowl and looked like this. (The normal soymilk also came in a bowl, oddly enough.) It had an oddly sour taste, and whatever else they put in it also caused a disconcerting curdling effect on the surface. That being said, I kind of liked it! I mean, I hated it at first, but it grew on me very quickly. Still, I would only recommend this for the more adventurous sorts.

We also got this 燒餅 (fried pancake), which came with an omelette AND a 油條 (our friend the Taiwanese churro) inside--another inventive creation you will only find here. IT. WAS. DELICIOUS. The outer pancakeish wrapping (the actual 燒餅) was the best incarnation of 燒餅 I have EVER had. The outside was crispy, and the inside was steamy soft and super flaky, with layer upon layer upon layer of goodness like a Pillsbury biscuit. The egg was good, and the 油條 was a nice crispy touch. Again, delicious.

In conclusion, definitely come here! I don't even like Taiwanese breakfast--I think I've had it in Kaohsiung a total of two or three times--and I loved this. The perfect mix of local flavor and tasty ingenuity.

OVERALL RATING: 5/5

Thai House Thai Cuisine

泰豪泰式料理

No. 199, Zhonghua 3rd Rd, Qianjin Dist
高雄市前金區中華三路199號
(07)261-4907

Monday-Sunday
11:00am-2:30pm
5:00pm-10:00pm

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

I'd like to say a little something about this restaurant here, but all I can think of is, "It's the Thai place right by my house." 

And if I keep saying that restaurants are right by my house, eventually someone is going to figure out where I live... Let's look at the menu!

It's English friendly, and even has some pictures, but loses points for being overwhelmingly massive. Each dish is about 100NTD or so, which makes this place seem like a pretty cheap lunch option, until you realize that the dishes are so small you have to get at least two per person.

They serve you rice in fancy beaten silver pots though. The whole atmosphere is pretty classy, actually, though when we were there (lunch on a Saturday) it was filled with people (some of them screaming children) and sort of lost that feel.

We got tamarind juice to drink, and it was really interesting! Nicely sweet with a unique, nutty aftertaste. I liked it!

Here we have some sort of garlicky chicken over cabbage. The skin was well-cooked, the meat was tender, and all of it was fairly bursting with flavor. Plus it came with a flower!

This here is 山蘇, a plant used often in some Taiwanese aboriginal cuisines. It was good, certainly, but just because it was so oily and garlicky; as to whether the plant itself is actually good or not, I'm guessing not, or else they wouldn't have had to go to so much trouble to dress it up.

Here we have green papaya salad, with peanuts and a weird purple green bean thing you can't see in this picture (and flower). After I ordered this I was informed by my lunch partner that green papaya is widely known to have breast enlarging effects, and that is one of the reasons Vietnamese and Thai women have such (comparatively) large breasts, because they eat lots of green papaya when they're growing up. ...I am skeptical about all of these statements.

The salad was great though! Crisp and tangy, very refreshing. And of course I love anything with peanuts sprinkled on top of it.

And finally we have a tofu vegetable soup. It was basically exactly as pictured here, with no strong flavor besides vegetables and soft tofu. Good, but not a knockout.

I think I sort of messed up the ordering this time (I mean, we didn't even get any greasy noodles or anything...), so I'm basing my judgement on the last time I ate here too. Ahem. In conclusion, this place has pretty delicious Thai food and is not too expensive, depending on what you order. It is a solid choice for lunch or even dinner, if you're not looking to really impress someone.

OVERALL RATING: 3/5

Shangpin Vegetarian Noodle House

上品齋素麵坊

No. 128, Qingnian 2nd Rd, Qianjin Dist
高雄市前金區青年二路128號
(07)215-2582

Monday-Sunday
11:00am-2:00pm
5:00pm-8:00pm

English friendly: no
vegetarian friendly: yes
average cost: 50-100NTD

Most vegetarian restaurants in Kaohsiung are of the buffet variety, where you take what you want from a line up of watery vegetable and tofu dishes while strumming chanting music plays gently in the background, and the person at the counter estimates the cost of your plate using some unknown Buddhist wizardry.

That works great for a typical Tuesday lunchbox, but it doesn't really make for a good food blog, or an actual dining experience. Luckily for me I have the internet, and the internet showed me this: a vegetarian noodle house, not far from my house.

Their noodles are basically rice or flour noodles with sesame paste or ground "meat", with or without wontons, within or without soup. They also have some other soup soups, plus a selection of small dishes and organic/revitalizing/etc. drinks that will surely cure you of all those pesky free radicals.

PLUS they have vegetarian 滷味, or "stuff stewed in soy sauce"; you put what you want into a basket, then they help you stew it and it comes out looking like THIS:

At least it does if you order the thousand leaf tofu, mushrooms, and radish. This was really good, chock-full of 滷味 flavor (but really there is pretty much just the one flavor), especially while still warm.

I got miso soup, pictured above. I have to be honest, I was not a real fan of this. I suppose miso is usually made with fish paste, so this vegetarian version was lacking that fishy punch. That doesn't mean it had to be so bland, though. I mean, they could have at least added a bit more salt. (She mumbled, hopelessly.)

Instead of meatball soup this is happiness ball soup, apparently. I didn't taste it but I think we can all get a pretty good idea of it from the picture alone.

My friend got noodles with wontons, which looked like this. Almost identical to my...

 ...noodles without wontons! When they first came out I was like "huh", but that was because all the sauce was at the bottom. If you massage them with your chopsticks for a little bit they end up looking like this:

Ahhh, much better. I really liked these noodles. They weren't the best sesame paste noodles I've ever had (that honor, so far, goes to Yuanxiang Beef Noodles), but they were yummy. The sauce was subtly sesame-ish, and the noodles had a good consistency. The serving looked a bit small at first, but I actually found it to be quite filling.

I'm so glad to know about this restaurant. It gains billions of bonus points in my book for having a satisfying selection of tasty vegetarian options--and noodles, nonetheless!

OVERALL RATING: 4/5

Mountain Daughter Sapporo Ramen

樂山娘札幌拉麵

No. 92, Zhonghua 3rd Rd, Qianjin Dist
高雄市前金區中華三路92號
(07)272-8499

Monday-Sunday
11:30am-2:00pm
5:30pm-9:30pm

English friendly: no
vegetarian friendly: yes
average cost: 150-250NTD

If you like ramen, and you live right where I live, you are in luck! This "approved by real Japanese people!" ramen restaurant has a branch right next to my (your) house. 

The sign doesn't light up though, and it's sort of tucked away between two giant banks, so you might have to search a little bit before you find it.

The dirty, dark outside is matched by a dirty, bland inside. Also there was a SERIOUS funk in the air when I walked in. I refuse to accept this from any institution not in the business of selling stinky tofu!

Their menu is not English friendly (though it's got some pictures), and actually more Japanese friendly than Chinese friendy. All that hiragana and katakana kind of made me 眼花... 

It's a little expensive for noodles in these parts, but not too bad. At the bottom of this side of the menu they have a 170NTD vegetarian ramen option. They also offer Japanese curry on rice, and a nice selection of interesting appetizers.

I ordered the 強棒 ramen, on the assumption that I would receive "strong awesome" ramen. Well! This ramen was fine, but nothing spectacular. The egg was sort of overcooked and the pork was SERIOUSLY overcooked (or just... tough and chewy). The noodles were alright, though probs not handmade, and the soup was pretty okay. It wasn't REAL Japanese ramen though.

I... I think I've been having too much (too many???) noodles lately. The virtue of noodles being noodles is no longer enough. 

My friend got some sort of pork ramen thing that looked incredible, but was probably about the same.

We got their fried oysters appetizer, which was awesome. They were about 70% fried, 15% air, and 15% oysters, and the tartar sauce or whatever it was was more like a salsa in that it did not permit dipping whatsoever, but I managed to enjoy them in spite of these difficulties. They tasted like fried. Alright.

Their potstickers, or gyoza for the more culturally enlightened among us, were pretty much exactly like your standard supermarket freezer section potstickers, or those sold at your standard culturally unenlighted American Chinese restaurant. The skin was too thin for me, and the filling uninspiring.

I was initially inclined to give this place a 3, but as I write about it now I'm hard-pressed to remember anything I really liked. Their other menu options could very well be much better (it is supposedly famous, after all), but I don't want to go back to test my luck. Maybe if I get really, really hungry one of these days...

OVERALL RATING: 2/5

Lemongrass Restaurant

檸檬香茅火鍋專賣店

No. 283, Zhonghua 4th Rd, Qianjin Dist
高雄市前金區中華四路283號
(07)201-0152 ex.53

Monday-Sunday
11:00am-11:00pm

website: http://www.lemon-grass.com.tw/

English friendly: yes
vegetarian friendly: yes
average cost: 250-300NTD

I was originally attracted to this restaurant because it has the same name as this classy Asian fusion place in California that my grandparents like to frequent. Every time someone is shocked that I can use chopsticks, I tell them that my grandparents can too. I mean really. This is the 21st century! 

Spoiler alert: they are not the same restaurant.

It is easily recognized for being giant and orange. The inside is clean, and was practically empty at 1:00pm on a Sunday... Each of the many tables has four individual stoves and a little divider to spare you the horror of looking at the person across from you; once our food came things ended up a little bit cramped, as you'll see from the cramped quality of the following photos.

Ah yes! This place is a hot pot restaurant. Because it is winter now (roflmao), we should all be eating hot pot! How nice for us, that one of a million more hot pot restaurants such as this exists.

Coincidentally, I went to see Hunger Games right after eating here and learned from the subtitles that 麻吉 (májí) is slang for "match." (Because it sounds... the same...?) So up at the top left of this menu you will see that Lemongrass offers you a selection of soup bases to "match" all seasons, not just winter.

All the options with a little green star by the side are vegetarian. Interestingly, only the top five options under the "Vegetarian Main Dish" are vegetarian... I initially thought this was because only the top five fit the Taiwanese Buddhist definition of vegetarian--also excluding salt, spices, and other "strong" flavors--but my friends said it was probably because they were guaranteed "pure" while the others may have come in contact with meat somewhere along the line. I guess that's what the extra 30NTD gets you.

ANYWAY, I think the large variety of vegetarian hot pot options makes this a leading choice among the roiling millions of nigh identical Taiwanese hot pot restaurants, at least for some of us.

I chose the first option, because the waitress came by way before I was done deciphering the menu and seemed a little impatient... This is the "Perilla Greengage Vegetable Dish." I would have translated it instead as plum (梅子) and wild herbs hot pot, if they'd asked me, but alas no one ever does. As you can see, all the fake meat bits are still frozen like popsicles. This time I even got two giant lima beans frozen together...!

Here's another picture for perspective. The spread of ingredients for the vegetarian hot pot was MASSIVE, though later inspection revealed it to be mostly half a head of lettuce.

You have a choice of rice, rice noodles, or all sorts of other noodles (even instant noodles!) for your starch. For your sauce you can get this restaurant's signature lemongrass dip, 沙茶 (shāchá, so named for its resemblance to the word "satay" and not because it has little pieces of tealeaf in it like I used to think...), or a mixture of both. I chose to get both, because I'd already taken forever waffling over my main dish and when I answered, "What sauce would you like?" with a another prolonged "Uuuuhhhhhhhhhhhh," the waitress could take no more and decided for me.

The sauce was really good! Flavorful, without being too salty or oily, and definitely unique. We also got free lemongrass tea (hidden in the back of the photo above) which was nicely sweet and unique. 

If you choose the beef hot pot you don't get such a bountiful cornucopia of vegetables...

...but you do get a nice spread of suspiciously red meat. Like regular raw beef, with the saturation levels turned up to maximum.

Here's a picture of things all nice and bubbling. I actually really, really enjoyed this meal. It's rare to get as many fresh vegetables in one meal around these parts, so I think it's worth coming here for that alone.

If I went back though, I would definitely choose a different soup base. Up above I've taken a picture of the "plums" (梅子) for your viewing pleasure. These things are common in Taiwanese cuisine--plum soup is a popular drink, as is plum wine--but they have reputed health benefits so you know something must be up... I really can't get used to the taste: waaay too sour, with the slightest hint of sickly sweet. I once asked a Taiwanese friend why on earth anyone would drink plum soup of their own volition, and he responded, "It's very thirst-quenching," which as it so happens could be said about pretty much every drink ever. The plums didn't affect the soup too terribly here, unless I drank it straight, but all the same. Next time I want to try the "fruit miso" option...

OVERALL RATING: 3/5

Tanqiao Japanese Kebab Bar

炭樵日式串燒居酒屋

No. 241, Rende St, Qianjin Dist
高雄市前金區仁德街241號1樓
(07)726-6803

Monday-Sunday 
6:00pm-1:00am

facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sumikikori

English friendly: no
vegetarian friendly: no
average cost: 300-400NTD

This is really just another Japanese BBQ place, but I am always one to take advantage of the opportunity to say "kebab" when presented with it.

Our kebab bar finds itself located in a random alleyway off the main roads, just like I like it. There are no other real restaurants or shops open in the area at night, at least from what I could tell, so it feels like your own little secret. Yours and my little secret, now.

It is not actually blurry in real life! And once again the interior decoration is pretty damn cool, this time going for more of a Japanese pop-art/comic book style, with brightly colored Japanese advertisements and posters plastered all over the four walls. About half of the restaurant (pretty small overall) is taken up by the sit-down kebab bar, and the rest is given over to low tables and stools for larger parties.

Their menu is full of creative combinations of meat and other things, some of which you won't find anywhere else, as well as a nice selection of beers and other alcohols. Take my hand, and let us explore some choice menu options together...

We got three free side dishes for knowing the owner, ho ho ho. Be sure to tell them Kaohsiung Gastronaut Handbook sent you if you go visit. It will definitely get you nothing at all.

Their kimchi, in the upper left, is an incredible triumph of science! It has all the bright redness and sour flavor of Korean kimchi without being spicy at all... modified to suit Taiwanese tastes, of course. The radish and pomelo in sweet syrup in front were really refreshing (I thought they were sliced pears!) and the "drunk" cherry tomatoes in the upper right were also really good: just the right amount of sweet, and bursting with juices.

Woohoo! Here we have "five flower" pork (still trying to figure out what part of the pig that is) kebab'd and smothered in scallions. REALLY juicy, really good: the scallions melded perfectly with oils from the pork to make a sort of sauce. Just look at the picture and you know it was good.

Whatever fish they had on had that day (apparently all their meats are bought fresh in the morning, so fish options depend on that day's catch), cooked to a beauuutiful golden color. Difficult to eat for all the bones (they made up like 30% of the total mass of the fish), but good.

This. Chicken. Was. SOOOOO juicy, oh my goodness. Very well cooked, approval all around.

And here we have an interesting garlic and clam soup, purported to help ladies (also gents) keep up some aspect of their health, or something. You know how it is. All the spiciness has been stewed out of the garlic cloves so you can eat them straight; they are soft and mildly potato-y, and will still make your breath smell the following morning. The soup tasted... sort of exactly how it looks in the picture. Kind of greyish. A little salty, a little garlicky. Not terrible. Still, any time someone tells you a certain dish is good for your health (or, even worse, your ladyhealth) you should be a little wary.

Noodles!!! Only I would end up with noodles at a kebab place. (It wasn't even me who ordered them!!!) I sort of wish they hadn't been smothered in that stinky Japanese dried shredded ham stuff, which wriggles like it's alive when put on top of any thing hot, but even as much as I dislike the stuff I still liked the noodles. I don't know if that says more about this restaurant or my love of noodles... The sauce was thick and smoky, as were the noodles. Nice.

Last up, and on one plate because I was tired of taking pictures, we have pork wrapped around mochi again and chicken balls with an egg yolk dipping sauce. I think the mochi pork was an improvement on that of Dashoushao, mostly because the pork was thicker and juicier. The mochi itself was still pretty flavorless (though chewy as always!). 

The chicken balls were really entertaining--before eating them you mix up the sauce in the bowl and roll them around in it--but tasted mostly like chicken meatloaf. Juicy chicken meatloaf, but chicken meatloaf nonetheless. This is partly because they included bits of ground up "soft bones" for texture. So if you think you would be into that, great!

Unfortunately, this place is also realll damned expensive. IF, however, one were--for the sake of objectivity--to discount the price as well as the fact that one (personally) is not a huge fan of eating tons of meat at a time, I think--objectively--it is pretty close to a perfect version of what it wants to be. An interesting, fun, and delicious dining experience. Highly recommended.

OVERALL RATING: 4/5