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

East Meet West Kitchen

原鄉新味小館

No. 27, Lane 28, Xinguang Rd, Lingya Dist
高雄市苓雅區新光路28巷27號
(07)334-7637

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

English friendly: yes
vegetarian friendly: so very not
average cost: 300-400NTD

Oh my gosh you guys, are you in for a treat!

Alone in a dark and twisty alleyway (conveniently located right outside the Sanduo KMRT stop) stands what must be one of the best kept secrets of Kaohsiung: East Meet West Kitchen, a small foreigner-owned restaurant operating in Austrian and German cuisine. What even is Austrian cuisine?!?

...I guess it's basically German cuisine. Their menu is seriously hideous, and a little difficult to decipher, but that can add some interest to your pre-dinner wait. Good thing, too: when we went around 6:00pm on a Wednesday, there was just us and one random group of German people but it still took a pretty long time to get our food. Probably because the owner (one assumedly Austrian dude named Alex) makes all the food himself.

All the main courses are MEAT with some other stuff, and the sides are mostly variations of sausage.

They also have a nice selection of beers and wines, and some good teas, all of them quite exotic in this part of the world. The mint tea I ordered came with real crushed mint leaves in it. How cute! That in the back there is actually iced (read: lukewarm) ceylon tea in a beer glass. You can get it with sugar or without; I'd probably recommend with.

I got the "meat cake" student meal, which comes with drink + small dessert for the low low price of 200NTD. When it first appeared at our table I was like oh no this will not be nearly enough for me! But things turned out okay. You'll see why in a second.

There's a lot to go over here; let's just say all of it was pretty good. The vegetables were well-cooked (still trying to figure out what sort of radish thing that was up there next to the mashed potatoes), the lotus root was a nice touch, the pickles were pickly and the saurkraut was saurkrauty. The meat cake was basically a hamburger made of meatloaf; paired with the mashed potatoes, it was really satisfying. Definitely a nice break from the ordinary.

That pig blood cake-looking thing in the upper right was actually a dense German bread-like thing with a faint flavor of prunes to it... The huge slab of butter on top was pretty much tasteless, but maybe that's a cultural thing. It was interesting, to say the least, and underneath was a bowl of equally interesting vinegary coleslaw stuff.

One member of our party ordered the peppermint lamb, and what a great decision it was! I stole a rib and enjoyed it HEARTILY. I haven't had ribs in a looong time, and could tell these had been lovingly prepared.

The other member of our party got the soup of the day and a cheese sausage appetizer, which came with saurkraut and a soft pretzel! We were all thinking that together this would be enough food, based on the prices, but it was Not Quite. Take note.

You can't see it here but the soup had a generous serving of vegetables and meat hiding at the bottom, and was pretty tasty.

A good way into our meal, the waitress surprised us with potato wedges! They came with either ketchup, mustard, or more tasteless butter (on potato wedges???), so we got them all. The mustard was good sharp mustard, none of that plasticky yellow Kraft business.

Then, later still, the owner stopped by our table and was like, "Do you want pretzels?" And I was like, FUCK YES I WANT PRETZELS. They were just your standard supermarket pretzels but I suppose they're pretty exotic here.

And then the waitress came back, with this! What we have here is basically gas station shoelace jerky cut up into little slices, and I loved it. The hint of BBQ sweetness made it a good lead in to...

...dessert! My student meal came with a little scoop of ice cream in an adorable dish. I only wish it could have been bigger! I think it was rum vanilla flavor, or something equally alcoholic, and could just as well have been made by hand. It was dreamily smooth, sweet, and had a happy touch of alcoholic aftertaste... ABSOLUTELY delicious, 100%.

For an extra 180NTD my peppermint lamb friend got a set meal with a bowl of soup, choice of drink, and (way better) dessert: either handmade cake or "pancake ice cream." That latter option is Germanglish for the above, a honey almond crêpe with whipped cream, chocolate sauce, powdered sugar, and more incredible ice cream on the side. I stole a bite of crêpe and JUST LOVED IT.

AND THEN, AFTER ALL THAT, the owner came by with complimentary gingerbread cookies. I almost cried. I don't know if it was because he could tell I was going to write a food blog, or liked the fact that I am white, or is actually Saint Nicolas is disguise, or what, but I don't care. It was the best present I've gotten in a long time: the taste of Christmas.

If you're at all homesick for your Western homeland, I especially recommend this restaurant during the holiday season. But you should go anytime! I'm sure you'll be glad you did.

OVERALL REVIEW: 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

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

Dashoushao Japanese BBQ

大手燒

No. 18, Wufu 3rd Rd, Qianjin Dist
高雄市前金區五福三路18號
(07)331-1521

Monday-Sunday 
5:00pm-2:00am

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

I have had the good fortune(?) to eat at two separate Japanese BBQ places within the past three days, and now I get to tell you about them! Spoiler alert: the other one was better.

Dashoushao has the sort of location and interior design of which roaming hordes of frivolous Taiwanese food-bloggers love to fill whole blog posts, every detail photographed from a million different angles... It's cool, guys. They're going for a vintage Japanese feeling: low wooden tables and stools arranged in the open air, a wooden cart serving a selection of freshly stewed items, a refrigerator full of old-timey Japanese drinks, etc. etc. A very nice atmosphere, and you're going to pay for it.

When you're done with your meal, you just have to walk a few steps around the southeast corner of Central Park (this place is right on the edge of it) to get to the Brickyard "beer garden," famous rendezvous point of the legions of foreign English teachers and exchange students you somehow never see in the daylight.

This place also has a nice selection of beer and sake, however, for those prefer to get drunk sitting down instead of standing up.

The menu is divided into two main parts: 燒烤, or BBQ, and 關東煮, which I just learned translates into Japanese oden, which itself apparently translates into "[stuff] stewed in a light, soy-flavoured dashi broth." The waiter informed us upon sitting down that the BBQ takes 20+ minutes, and encouraged us to order some oden to stave off our hunger. The oden took like 10 minutes, and the BBQ more like 30 (all this after having to wait 20+ minutes just to get seats), so keep in mind: this place can get BUSY. Of course it doesn't help that we went at 7:00pm on a Saturday.

The oden is ordered directly from the adorable wooden cart mentioned earlier. Whether floating around in the cartsoup or delivered to one's table sliced into bite-sized pieces and accompanied by wasabi, all the oden options are of an eerily similar color, texture, and taste. Part of that is the horrendous orange lighting (also responsible for these horrendous pictures), but still. What we have above is two scallops (yummy!), some radish thing (radishy), a mushroom (a mushroom), and three other unidentifiable objects of different shapes that may as well have been carved from the same block of brothtaste. I think we got a tofu thing as well. I don't even remember.

The BBQ was a step up, but not a huge step. Here we have pork wrapped around mochi and sprinkled with ground peanuts. Sorry for the orange.

I would have thought the mochi + ground peanut combination could NEVER go wrong, but it certainly didn't go right... I am almost impressed that such a combination of dessert and meat managed to be neither sweet NOR salty. If I had to describe the flavor I guess I would say "chewy", except chewy isn't a flavor you guys.

This guy, though! Chicken wings, stuffed with 明太子, or mentaiko, or "the marinated roe of pollock, and cod [yummy!!!]"--who'd have thought? Foods-stuffed-in-other-foods innovations are one of my favorite things ever, and this time around it worked quite well. The chicken was tender and stuffed to bursting, the mentaiko all gritty and visceral and nom-nom-nom. Yeah.

Our meal concluded with some sort of meat (I think pork, I forget) covered in tons of cheese, which was whatever.

All this for two people qualifies as a light dinner, and we didn't even order drinks, but it still came out to like a million NTD. Even with the cool atmosphere and lack of bugs (how do they do it!), I dunno if it was worth it. The location is convenient though, and if you have a pack of friends that wants to split the bill + beers and wile away the nighttime hours beneath giant trees and aggressively orange lights, I could see it being a pretty fun time.

OVERALL RATING: 3/5

Ace Gaming Restaurant

ACE休閒主題餐廳

No. 155-1, Renhe St, Renwu Dist
高雄市仁武區仁和街155-1號
(07)372-7676

Monday-Sunday 
4:00pm-2:00am

facebook: https://www.facebook.com/acelgr

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

Ignorant foreigners such as myself might be surprised to learn that gambling of any form is illegal in Taiwan. Of course Macau is but an hour or two away by plane, but there's always the risk of finding oneself unable to afford the flight back... Lucky for us, some clever restauranteurs have come up with a way to scratch your gambling itch without ever leaving the city.

...At least technically, anyway. This place is WAY up in the north of Kaohsiung, about a 100NTD taxi ride away from the nearest KMRT stop (Zuoying), so those without private transportation are advised to take advantage of their friends. All the better if said friends are good at navigation, as it's somewhat hard to find. You'll know you're there when you see the gaudy blue replica Eiffel Tower on the horizon. (I'm pretty sure they built that JUST for the restaurant, so. That should tell you a lot.)

The following review is barely a restaurant review, because this place is barely a restaurant. Not to say that the food is *too* horrible or anything, but it is definitely not the focus.

The last time I went they were offering a selection of fried goods, set meals (like steak and grilled pork), our favorite "Italian noodles", and hot pot, but this time the menu had been reduced to fried goods and hot pot... I'm not sure if this was because they were holding a special event, or if they've actually decided to narrow down their menu because quality > quantity.

This is a good idea, in theory, but having ordered the hot pot both times I am forced to wonder how terrible the other menu items could have been, that they would want to make hot pot their specialty. The above is my neighbor's lamb and clam hot pot, which unfortunately doesn't sound nearly as charming in Chinese.

Definitely edible, but not going to change your life or anything. They also sell beer and cocktails, but from what I can tell the latter come in two flavors: watery juice ("half moon") and mouthwash ("mojito"). I am serious, it tasted EXACTLY like Listerine. Go with Budweiser.

I ordered the chrysanthemum tofu hot pot, which looked sort of cringe-inducing upon arrival...

I guess that's the natural result of choosing such a combination of ingredients, but the platter of things for putting in the hot pot didn't look so great either: 

The assorted fake meat shapes were absolutely frozen solid and my little sesame-filled mochi was still in its wrapper. Now I'm not a hot-pot expert or anything, but I wasn't very impressed, nor excited to eat.

Once things got bubbling though it was pretty alright! The meal was saved by a mysterious delicious dark-red salty paste sauce (not pictured here) and the RICE, which was somehow AMAZING.

Sooo good, this rice.

Don't come here for the rice though, come here for the gambling! A certain amount of your meal price will be automatically converted into ~20,000NTD of chips (you can also buy more separately) used to play a wide selection of casino games including the familiar Blackjack and Texas Hold'em and some others that I had to have explained to me. When you've won a nice pile of chips (or sold your house to fuel your burgeoning gambling habit) you can exchange them in turn for dinner coupons or cute little prizes like iPad covers, whiskey shots, or poker sets (only 1,200,000NTD!).

I was a little busy trying to win a toy dinosaur so look here for pictures of the casino area: http://www.ipeen.com.tw/comment/496662. The dealers are extremely professional and there are a few regulars that play a MEAN (read: terrifying) game of Texas Hold'em, so don't be expecting to go in and take the place for all it's worth.

But if you do go, plz win me a toy dinosaur. :( 

OVERALL RATING: 3/5