Xi'an Noodle House

西安麵食館

No. 115, Shengli Rd, Zuoying Dist
高雄市左營區勝利路115號
(07)588-1517

Monday-Sunday
10:30am-8:30pm

English friendly: no
vegetarian friendly: yes
average cost: 50-150NTD

You might think I have already eaten every type of noodle sold in this city. Well, you are wrong! Or at least, you were wrong until last Sunday.

The Xi'an Noodle House is hidden away beside the giant parking lot off of Lotus Pond. It is thus the perfect destination for those who would like to enjoy an exotic Chinese lunch followed by a nice stroll around the lake etc. etc. There were lots and lots of people here that afternoon, all of them probably having had that very same idea.

The menu is concise and enticing. They have two main choices for noodles: 麵疙瘩, the "goosebumps noodlestuff" I discovered (to my delight) last year, and 皮帶麵, the new form of noodlestuff you are about to discover in a second. You can get these noodles in a variety of ways, most of them mysterious to me. They also have fried rice and soup, but, like, why?

Neither of us ordered this, but they accidentally sent it to our table so I took a picture of it before we sent it back. I do believe this is 哨子麵 or "whistle noodles", so named for the chopped meat and vegetable salsa-stuff you see on top. They also accidentally gave us a plate of noodles covered (and I do mean covered!) in scrambled egg and tomato, which is why I'm saying this place is vegetarian friendly. I don't know what it was, but it looked delicious.

But of course the whole reason I came here was for this: 皮帶麵, or "belt" noodles, with beef in soup. The origin of the name should be pretty obvious...

 ...Just look at that! Magnificent. These noodles were exactly as wide as I hoped they would be--and really, I think this is the perfect width for noodles--but they were a little too thick for my tastes. As my friend remarked, it really didn't feel like eating noodles anymore. Though they were most definitely made in-house, the texture was a bit lacking. I think being flatter would have helped this. Or maybe I just wished they came fried, instead of in soup.

The soup itself was good! (It could have been saltier, but I've pretty much given up expressing this viewpoint by now...) And the beef was absolutely delicious. Really, remarkably so. Each chuck, except the random chunk of tendon that I couldn't bite through no matter how hard I tried, was completely melt-in-your-mouth bursting with soupy flavor. (The soup was a little bland, but still.)

In conclusion, this place was cool! It was nice to have a taste of that northern Chinese flavor--it is pretty exotic in these parts. I would like to go back soon and try their other dishes!

OVERALL RATING: 3/5

Harmony Korean Cafeteria

哈摩尼韓國食堂

2nd floor, No. 408, Fuguo Rd, Zuoying Dist
高雄市左營區富國路408號2F
(07)556-9333

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

English friendly: yes
vegetarian friendly: yes
average cost: 250-350NTD

Someone walked out of this restaurant right as I was taking this picture...

And now here he is on my blog! Hello, sir. I hope you've enjoyed your first steps into the world of internet celebrity.

This Korean restaurant is hidden away on the second floor of a row of restaurants and bubble tea shops in the super hip Kaohsiung Arena district. You have to go up this flight of stairs to get there, if you can find the stairs in the first place. I wish you luck!

Can you believe I hadn't been to a Korean restaurant in Kaohsiung until last night? There aren't many in this city, and I hear that most of them aren't very good... Luckily I made the right choice in coming here to break my fast. This place was awesome!

It's a little on the expensive side, as you can tell from the high-quality texture of their menu paper. The menu is pretty extensive, but in a good way. It has pictures in it, too (not pictured here).

Each table gets a free spread of appetizers, which you can refill as MANY times as you WANT, if you want. These guys were alright! The pickled radish and cucumber with strange ketchupy sauce in the front were not my favorites, because--despite all appearances--they had no spicy Korean kimchi punch. That is, they were Korean food for Taiwanese tastebuds. Alas. I am so long-suffering.

The bean sprouts in the upper right were crispy, crunchy and addictive though, and the stinky tofu in the upper left was innnnnn-credible. It wasn't really stinky, it just had that nice salty "pungent French cheese" flavor to it. The tofu itself was chewy, and the outside was crisp. Awesome.

These are in fact two different drinks, though they look exactly the same. The drink on the left is my alcoholic cider thing, and the drink on the right is my friend's alcoholic yogurt thing (?!?). I really liked mine: it was basically slightly milky fruity sweetness, with a touch of hard liquor, cut with a hint of carbonation. My friend's was the same except it had an extra hint of chalky yogurt taste, which is great if you're into that... He seemed to like it, anyway. Either way, it was definitely COOL to have these exotic Korean drinks available!

Aaaaaaaaaa!!! I ordered the fried 年糕 dish, which also included instant noodles, fishcakes, tofu, cabbage, and an egg, topped with a lovely thick, sweet, slightly spicy sauce and a sprinkling of sesame seeds. 年糕, for those of you who don't know, is our best friend noodlestuff in yet another new and exciting form: they're the cylinders you see in the photo above. And they were awesome! They arrived perfectly cooked, soft and slightly chewy all the way through, not hard in the middle like when I make them myself sometimes. (Surprise everybody, I am a terrible cook.)

Here's another photo, because this guy was SOOO delicious. The noodles may have been the prepackaged kind, but they were also perfectly cooked and completely delicious. Which makes sense, because Korean instant noodles are famous in Asia for somehow being... actually incredibly good. I don't know how they do it, but really; this is no Walmart instant ramen we're talking about here. These particular noodles had a really nice heft to them, and they soaked up the sauce in the most sinful way.

Everything else in this pot was also smothered in sauce and totally delicious. It was also a LOT. We ordered three dishes for two people, thinking there wouldn't be enough, but I regret that decision very much (and so does my wallet).

My friend got this chicken and 冬粉 (rice noodles) thing, which came out looking a lot more like something you'd get in southern China than Korea--but then again I've never been to Korea, so what do I know. I just assume everything they eat there is bright red and kind of sticky.

The noodles were good though! I can confirm that much.

We finished our meal with this completely unnecessary seafood kimchi pancake. I was already stuffed at this point, but I just couldn't stop myself from devouring it (handily). It was crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside, absolutely stuffed with savory seafood and suffused with delicious oils. Oh man. Oh man oh man.

Sooo, even though I had a little trouble moving after this meal, looking back I have only the happiest of memories. You won't regret going here, really. It's a little on the expensive side (especially if you order too much), but the atmosphere and food is all of very high quality, so you really feel like you're getting your money's worth.

OVERALL RATING: 4/5

Master Flavor Ginger Duck

霸味薑母鴨

No. 172, Zhongxin Rd, Zuoying Dist
高雄市左營區忠信路172號
(07)557-7796

Monday-Sunday
4:00pm-2:00am

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

Winter is coming, or has already come, or will never come, or something, so it's a good time to get yourself some ginger duck hot pot.

This particular flavor of hot pot restaurant is ONLY available in the quote-unquote winter; in the summer they close up shop and do something else. Though you might see a lot of 薑母鴨 places around if you start looking for it, THIS particular place is the best. Or so I am told.

No matter how many people you have, you'll end up paying 280NTD for the ginger duck soup base, which comes with some ginger and some duck already in it, then however much extra for whatever else you want to put in.

I originally thought the 鴨佛 (duck Buddha) option second from the left was another, possibly vegetarian, soup option, but it turns out to mean duck testicles. Ummm. Some other things you can put in your hot pot include duck intenstines, duck heart, duck tendon, duck liver, duck blood, three varieties of mushroom, and two varieties of tofu.

We each got a plate of 麵線 as an appetizer, and boy am I glad I did! This kind of 麵線 you can ONLY get at this restaurant, or so my dinner partner informed me. To be fair, I have never had tasty 麵線 before now. They were soft and fine like extra-fine angel hair pasta, and didn't have that cheap powdery feeling that most 麵線 seem to have (though perhaps this was because they weren't in soup). The sauce was super garlicky and flavorful. Delicious.

Our soup base came to us with the tofu skin, needle mushrooms, and duck blood we'd ordered already stewing and steaming away.

The soup itself is an exquisite broth of meaty duck flavor and intensely warming ginger. It is the perfect thing for a cold quote-unquote winter evening, and I was slurping it up all night. Under the aegis of unlimited soup refills.

...Here is the congealed duck blood, since you can't see it in the first picture. I am not a great connoisseur of duck blood, so I cannot say if this incarnation was especially good or what, but there was nothing overtly objectionable about it. Even the best duck blood (or so I am told) has a weird, "congealed blood" mouthfeel, and this was no exception. The texture is sort of indescribable, though this blog calls it "unsettling yet provocative, both alien and comforting." I guess I'll go with that. Not bad!

Anyway. The key to your ginger duck dining experience is this special sauce right here. The waitress said it was made with 豆腐乳, which Wikipedia informs us can also be called "fermented bean curd, sufu, tofu cheese, or preserved tofu." Tofu cheese. It made everything delicious, especially the tofu skin from above because it soaked it up like a sponge.

Our more time sensitive ingredients came separately, so that we might cook them hot pot style, according to our own schedule. This here is the duck heart (top), liver (middle), tendon (bottom) special platter, which at three-for-the-price-of-two saves you a tidy 50NTD.

The tendon was really interesting, and quite tasty, and I was also a big fan of the heart. They both tasted basically like extra tough muscle, and the soup+sauce gave them a really nice flavor. The liver tasted pretty much like liver, which is fine. I don't think anyone really likes liver; at least none of my Taiwanese friends do. Every time I ask they give me a lecture about how Taiwan used to be really poor, so eating every part of the animal is a cultural thing as much as (or perhaps more than...) a culinary thing.

We also got cabbage. I don't know WHY I took a picture of the cabbage, or why I'm now posting it for all to see, or especially why I am going to end this restaurant review with it, but there you go.

I really, really enjoyed this meal, and I didn't even have beer. (They do have Taiwan beer available, if you're in the mood.) You may have noticed that as a general rule I sort of hate hot pot, and am not a huge fan of meat or other animal bodily parts either--all that being said, I thought this was great! Master Flavor Ginger Duck offers a special, delicious dining experience. I definitely recommend you try it while you still can. And bring some friends! The more people you have, the cheaper it is!

OVERALL RATING: 5/5

Not Old Sushi

不老壽司

No. 66, Fumin Rd, Zuoying Dist
高雄市左營區富民路66號
(07)348-4722

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

English friendly: yes
vegetarian friendly: yes
average cost: 400-500NTD

I don't know why I keep going to nearly identical restaurants within days of each other, but it certainly does help me make comparisons. I think this place is *slightly* better than the last sushi place, though it is not as creative.

The name actually does translate to "Not Old Sushi". It must be Japanese, for... something. I don't know, and I forgot to ask.

When I googled "Kaohsiung's best sushi" in Chinese, this place came up three times in the first five or so results. As you might expect, it is wise to make a reservation.

One of the first things I really liked about this place was how limited their menu is. I just hate going through page after page of stuff that can't possibly all be good.

This place sells only sushi, sushi rolls, and hand rolls, plus some assorted appetizers and soups and sake and things. The menu doesn't have any English but with so many pictures who even needs language, right?

We got the same complimentary appetizer as the last place, except this one was actually edible. I don't know why, but the raw onions didn't taste nearly as toxic; maybe it was because there was more sauce.

The wriggly smoked fish stuff (turns out it's made of fish) on top was still stinky and weird, but that's my own issue I think.

This is the "sea urchin roe muffin" hand roll, which I had not the pleasure of eating. (Supposedly it was really good.) Did you know that the word "muffin" in Chinese, translated phonetically as 馬糞, also means "horse shit"? This must be the major reason muffins have not caught on here.

The menu divides their sushi offerings into "raw", "vegetarian", and "cooked"; here is our raw sushi combo platter. I had the scallop, the squid (in front), one of the salmon, and the red tuna in the back. They were all... incredible. The scallop was super thick and smooshy, while the squid was chewy and hard in some places. It was enlivened by a distinct citrus flavor, some of which came from the adorable tiny slice of tiny lime on top of it. 

(For some extra dinner entertainment, try asking your Taiwanese friends the difference between a lime and a lemon. Most people I've met consider them the same thing.)

The raw fish sushi was also fantastic. The cuts of fish were extremely generous and oh-so-good... Sushi is so good you guys. So damn good. They also gave us lots of (real) wasabi and soy sauce for the table, which made it even better.

When we sat down the waiter was like, "Dish somethingsomethingsomething is today's special and we only have ten of them left!" So we seized the limited-time-only opportunity and it turned out to be this. It looks like those hunks of beef there should be tough and stringy, but they were actually incredibly... What's the opposite of tough? Tender? The piece I had really melted away in my mouth, it was so neat. The radish was also very well-cooked. No complaints here.

Here is our cooked sushi! Pretty sexy, yes? I had another scallop, charred on the outside and equally smooshy on the inside, and then some MAGICAL fish thing hiding behind that leaf (so delicious omg it was so delicious), plus some really good eel over there to the right.

And from the back row, I enjoyed a totally cute piece of mushroom sushi. You don't see mushrooms on top of sushi too often, but this place sells two different varieties! Mushroom lovers rejoice! This sushi really worked for me: nice and heavy and full of mushroom flavor. That white stuff on top of it was not cheese, but I don't remember what it was. It didn't have a huge impact on the overall taste.

Their miso soup was pretty standard. Nothing much to say here...

This one of their "famous" trademark sushi rolls. The pork in the middle was well cooked (a little stringy), but balanced out some by a mysterious squishy something a lot like raw fish... If you look closely you can see it glistening in the photo above. I have no idea what it was. There might also have been peanut shavings in there, or something... The whole thing tasted very much like one of those unorthodox Taiwanese breakfast sandwiches I used to buy on my way home from The Club. I liked it a lot! But it didn't really feel like sushi.

Our complimentary dessert was another bowl of slightly sweet bean soup, though this one was cut with purple rice and what I think were grapes. The latter gave it a fruity and refreshing twist, a little strange, but I think I liked it.

Even having eaten at them within a day of each other, it's hard to compare this place with Yilang Creative Sushi. They're both good! Sushi is good! Sushi is DAMN good! Treat yourself!

OVERALL RATING: 4/5

Yilang Creative Sushi

義郎創意壽司

No. 66, Fumin Rd, Zuoying Dist
高雄市左營區富民路66號
(07)558-2208

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

English friendly: yes
vegetarian friendly: yes
average cost: 400-500NTD

In Taiwan, you need only prefix a food group with the word "creative" and you can charge hundreds more for it. Sushi in particular. I only found out that this restaurant was creative after I got the bill... In retrospect, I dunno. I guess the plates had cool shapes.

Please forgive this horrible photograph taken in haste. It is actually a very beautiful restaurant, inside and out(side). Super Japanese, super elegant, all that stuff. 

The atmosphere was only less-than-perfect because there were so many PEOPLE eating there. Having fancy sushi for lunch on a Monday. I don't get it, but it happened. So pay attention to that phone number up there; you really should call ahead and reserve a table.

Their menu has like a billion pages, so I just photographed a part of it. Their selections vary based on the day/season though, which means you'll probably run into a lot of things on the menu that you can't actually order (and vice-versa). On this page, at least, the "in-season" sushi has been marked with a red check.

For vegetarians, they have a 445NTD set meal that I would have been ALL OVER if I were ordering just for myself. Instead we ordered pretty much everything else. So. Let us commence!

Here we have tempura giant shrimp and sweet potato. They were really well tempura'd: crispy, and not too oily. PLUS, the sweet potato was by far the best sweet potato I've eaten in Taiwan so far. (Where oh where did they get it?!?) The powders on the side are some sort of spicy thing (red) and some sort of salty thing (green). I thought the waiter said the green stuff was powdered wasabi but I must have misunderstood... They were both good though, and pretty... creative?!?

This sushi roll was so neat! That in the middle there is tempura soft-shelled crab, soft enough for you to eat it whole. 

--In the middle of writing that I realized soft-shelled crab is not the magical rare thing I thought it was... It sounded so incredible when my friend told me about it in Chinese. Ummm. The sushi was good though. I sort of wished it came with wasabi and soy sauce, instead of whatever that was at the bottom (no real flavor), but that's okay. The table had vinegar available.

OMGGG just LOOK at this masterpiece! As soon as I saw it in the menu I knew we had to order it. It's basically a bunch of raw fish piled onto some rice. That in the middle there is egg, and there's also scallions and ginger piled on the side as well. If you choose you can mix it all up to get...

...this! I really liked this dish, because it basically allowed me to stuff my face with spoonful after spoonful of sushimash. The fish was perhaps not as high-quality as the fish one would get atop of piece of actual sushi, and the flavor was a bit bland without wasabi or soy sauce, but I still really liked it. Raw fish nom nom nom.

Hand-rolls! These were so cute. They had lots of neon orange roe, a little bit of rice, and some mysterious thick white substance at the bottom that I was not expecting whatsoever and dripped all over my lap.

That soup below is the vegetarian miso, and it was awesome! There were tons and tons of vegetables and mushrooms in it, and it had a heavy vegetably, carroty-sweet flavor. Like.

Today's only incidence of real sushi! I don't remember what fish it was, but it was good! The wasabi was real, too--REALLL painful. Amazing.

Hidden in the back of this picture is our complimentary starter: a bowl of sliced onions in a vinegary sauce with seasame seeds on top. Not cooked onions, mind you. It was very refreshing &etc, but tasted like eating raw onions.

We tried to order yellowfish but they were out, so we got whitefish instead. It looked like this, with a little pile of MSG peppersalt off to the side. When it first appeared at our table I was like "aight" but when I took a bite I almost died. OMG, it was INCREDIBLE! Juicy, salty, MSGy, excellent. I think it was the most delicious thing in this entire meal.

Our final dish was tamagoyaki sushi, which tasted like a perfectly smooth, juicy and chewy, slightly sweet omlette with layers that fell apart in my mouth. I'm not sure how I feel about slightly sweet egg, but the preparation was exquisite. And just look at that leaf. Creative.

We also got a complimentary dessert, a cute little cup of sweet bean soup. It was slightly sweet and quite tasty. I was absolutely stuffed by this point (funny that never happens at sushi restaurants...) but I still finished it in like a minute.

Some final notes: the service was great. They even have a service bell, as well as this educational and entertaining guide on how to properly eat sushi. The waiters came by frequently to refill our 麥茶 tea, which was delicious.

Yilang Creative Sushi is of couse super expensive, so I won't be going here every day for lunch or anything. Even so, it was a really nice treat!

OVERALL REVIEW: 4/5

Andy's Pizza Garden

安迪的披薩花園

No. 273, Yucheng Rd, Zuoying Dist
高雄市左營區裕誠路273號
(07)557-2889

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

facebook: https://www.facebook.com/toaroach

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

The first Taiwanese food blog I opened up in order to copy+paste the pertinent information above (ahem) advertised this place as "高雄老外公認最好吃的家鄉味披薩喔": "widely accepted among Kaohsiung foreigners as the most delicious hometown flavor pizza!" That's what I concluded too, when on a whim this afternoon I googled "Kaohsiung best pizza" in English on The Internet. Well, *I* am a Kaohsiung 老外 too and I'm here to tell you that it is NOT the most delicious hometown flavor pizza in Kaohsiung. It can't be, it just can't.

It is definitely a foreigner's pizza place though: most of the reviews online are in English, as were a majority of the Tuesday night customers.

Their pizza is made by hand and cooked in a brick oven right in front of the shop. Just look at the American neon sign! The quaint pile of chopped wood! How could it possibly go wrong? 

Our first sign should have been the complete dearth of customers when we entered at 6:30pm on a Tuesday...

The do get props for having reasonable prices, and an actually English English menu. I say this place is "overly" English friendly because the waitress, assumedly the hot Taiwanese wife of the charateristic Californian expat owner (for the record all I'm going on here is his purple tye-dye T-shirt), was the type to respond to me in English when I talked to her in Chinese. This kind of behavior really pisses me off, but your mileage may vary.

Though it is Andy's Pizza Garden, we both ordered calzones. WHATEVER. I can no longer make dining choices based on what would be good for the blog. That way lies madness. A calzone is pretty much a pizza anyway, and a very rare creature in Kaohsiung besides. Apparently in Chinese it translates to 披薩餃 or "pizza dumpling", which is adorable.

The name was the best part about it though. I chose the "Niaosong Veggie" calzone, medium, with extra olives. Their menu has a wide selection of additional toppings for minimal extra charge, though they don't have artichoke hearts anymore because "no one orders them" (what did you think I was trying to do?!?) and I don't actually remember any olives ending up in my calizone. SO.

I was promised mushrooms, broccoli, spinach and other vegetables stuffed along with feta cheese (and olives, dammit!) into a lovingly homemade pizza shell; what I got was soggy broccoli, onions, other bland vegetables (maybe just more onions) punctuating giant gobs of tasteless mozzarella cheese inside a tasteless powdery pizza shell. If I hadn't seen feta cheese inside, I wouldn't have known it was there.

My Taiwanese friend ordered a meat calzone, purported to come with ham, beef, pepperoni and Italian sausage. On the Chinese side of the menu only it was marked as "relatively salty." How cute is that! I'm not making this stuff up you guys. It was in fact salty, or should I say sharp, due to the sausage. Overall I liked it more than mine, but it had the same issues I'm about to discuss below.

Ahem! I think the problem with this place is twofold. Number one: the dough. The dough has no flavor of its own, assuming you don't consider "overly floured" a flavor. Yeasty, greasy, flaky, crispy... Really, anything would be better than this powdery mass of disappointment.

I snapped this picture of a calzone baking in the brick oven on the way out. Look how cute and plump it is! (A medium was more than enough for one person, by the way. You won't feel like finishing it anyway.) But also notice its color. That, my friend, is the color of flourpaste.

Number two: the cheese. I am forced to consider that it may just be more difficult to purchase good quality cheese in Taiwan. This place doesn't use pre-sliced orange American cheese from Carrefour, but I almost wish they had... At least that stuff has a cheesy kick to it, chemical induced though it may be. I'm very unused to having consumed such large quantities of melted cheese and feeling so "ehhh" about it. It's almost frustrating, like I've been cheated somehow.

I realize this review is a little harsh, but I can't help it. My expectations were too high going in, and I came out utterly disappointed. I have no desire to go back here again. A shame, because I hear that they sell handmade liquid nitrogen ice cream on weekends.

OVERALL REVIEW: 2/5

Kaohsiung Shaved Noodles

港都刀削麵

No. 106, Zhengxin St, Zuoying Dist
高雄市左營區正心街106號
(07)556-5312

Monday-Saturday 
hours unspecified

English friendly: no
vegetarian friendly: no
average cost: 50-70NTD

Did you all know that 港都, or "port capital", is another name for Kaohsiung? Also 打狗, or "hit the dog", but that is another story altogether... This is a story about Kaohsiung shaved noodles.

Take one look at this place and you can tell it's the type of dirt cheap, dirt authentic, dirt-y hole-in-the-wall restaurant that Taiwanese people love. I hear it gets really packed during regular lunch hours, so we went at 11:30am to escape the crowds.

Aaah, just look at all that grime. The only things they sell here are handmade knife shaved noodles (if you don't know what that is you will in a second) and soup, and as you may have noticed all of it is SUPER cheap.

Well, okay, they also have a refrigerator offering the classic spread mysterious side dishes, though without as many horrifying choices as I've come to expect. We went with the most horrifying choice available to us, "phoenix claws" AKA chicken feet.

Woohoo, just look at me now Mom! I have, actually, gradually gotten over my distaste for chicken feet (what a sentence) and these were the best chicken feet I've had so far. They came deboned (thank god) and steeped in vinegar and ginger for a smooth, subtly refreshing flavor, with some crunchy cartilage bits for added interest.

The porkchop shaved noodles looked like this! A "small" is actually pretty small--I would suggest getting a large instead, to satisfy your gluttonous foreigner appetite.

The soup on this guy was pretty okay, again *smoky* without being salty. If you like salty food like me... well, you're probably in the wrong country. I'm thinking about investing in a flask.

I ordered the 大滷 (or "big stewed") shaved noodles which came in 羹 (that is, "thickened soup reminiscent of hot and sour soup, also sperm"--very popular in southern Taiwan!) complete with spit bubbles. It was basically like hot and sour soup, without the hot or sour.

When made properly, knife shaved noodles look like this. Because they've been shaved off by hand from a magical block of noodlestuff, the width and thickness vary considerably, which to noodle aficionados such as myself is the noodle equivalent of crack.

These noodles, though, were mushy where they should have been chewy (or "Q", in the Taiwanese parlance); I think they'd been overcooked. Which I could have overlooked, but they were also SUPER bland. Bland is an essential part of the Taiwanese palate... but I don't have to like it! To make things worse, the toppings--a random assortment of mushrooms, veggies, and I think a few slivers of meat--were bland too. Really, I ate the whole bowl but I would be damned if I could tell you how it tasted. It didn't really taste... at all. Haaah.

Also, a cockroach and a smaller insect of unspecified allegiance crawled onto our table before the meal. And the whole restaurant smelled faintly of urine. SO. 

All in all, I'm still glad I went to this place! Now nobody can accuse me of always ranking Taiwanese food above Western food.

OVERALL RATING: 1/5