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

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

Black Dog Cafeteria

黑狗食堂

No. 115, Hexi Rd, Yancheng Dist
高雄市鹽埕區河西路115號
(09)20605876

Monday-Sunday
5:00pm-12:00am

facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/%E9%BB%91-%E7%8B%97%E9%A3%9F%E5%A0%82/193725557384619

English friendly: no
vegetarian friendly: yes
average cost: 100-200NTD

This is the only exclusively open-air restaurant I've been to so far in Kaohsiung.

Coincidentally, the two evenings I've eaten here have also been among the coldest I've experienced so far in Kaohsiung. Pro tip: if it's raining outside, go somewhere else.

From what I've seen, this place is always really crowded. We surrendered in the face of the crowds last Saturday, and this Tuesday still had to wait ten or so minutes for a table. On a Tuesday! A cold Tuesday!

The Black Dog Cafeteria sells Singaporean food, which it turns out is mostly soups with noodles, hot pot, crabs and shrimps, and assorted fried things. Their traditional Singapore fried 蘿蔔糕 (radish cake) looks DELICIOUS, and their fried 粿條 (flat noodles) is confirmedly delicious.

As you can see by all the red crayon above, though, they are often out of... lots of things... so cross your fingers!

We started with this traditional Singaporean treat, wheat bread sandwiching a thick slab of butter and some strangely green jelly. It was really yummy, as you might expect. I don't know what flavor the jelly was, but it tasted sugary and sort of fruity and I'm not complaining.

My friend ordered the 肉骨茶麵 or meatbone tea-noodles, and they came with little hunks of 油條, the sugar-free Asian churro.

After a period of great indecision, and several furtive glances at other people's tables, I decided on the Malaysian curry. Not exactly a traditional Singaporean dish, but I regret nothing! This thing was not merely delicious, it was extremely delicious. The sort of delicious that you have to continually remark upon even as you're eating it, and that stays with you all night afterwards. 

The noodles looked sort of like the crispy French onions you put on top of green bean casserole, and I do in fact think they may have been fried to a crisp at some point, but when they got to me they were soft and puffy and soggy with curry. Quite the unique--and delicious--noodle experience. The curry itself was wonderful, thin and flavorful with the perfect hint of warming spice. Just what one needs on a cold evening eating Singaporean food out in the open.

Each time I've been here (and actually gotten a seat), I've enjoyed it immensely. This is the perfect restaurant for taking a few friends on a fun evening out: delicious, exotic, not too expensive, and complete with selection of two or three actually good beers.

Also, the interior design is all vintage and cool, and there are two big furry black dogs that wander around and let you pet them!

OVERALL RATING: 4/5

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

Yayan Specialty BBQ

極野宴燒肉專門店

4th Floor, No. 789 Zhonghua 5th Rd, Qianzhen Dist
高雄市前鎮區中華五路789號4樓
(07)821-8080

Monday-Sunday
11:30am-3:00pm
5:00pm-10:00pm

English friendly: yes
vegetarian friendly: lol
average cost: 489/589NTD

Here we have another restaurant I ate at, left the city for two weeks, then came back and tried to write a review for. So this review is going to be heavy on the pictures and light on my distracted ramblings. That's probably better for all of us anyway.

It is also another high class mall chain restaurant! This time in the Dream Mall, and of the all-you-can-eat variety. That means you pay about $20USD and can stay there for HOURS (though actually I think they have a time limit of two hours...), gorging yourself on every item on their menu.

For some reason all-you-can-eat restaurants in Taiwan tend to be MUCH classier than those in the US, for a comparable price. I'm not a huge fan of stuffing myself with enormous quantities of food over the course of multiple hours, but once in a while it can make for a real nice treat. The number one thing that recommends this place over all other all-you-can-eat BBQ in Kaohsiung is this: all-you-can-drink beer.

I repeat: LIMITLESS BEER. 

All the ingredients required for a fun Thursday afternoon.

Their menu is pretty gigantic, with different sections for chicken, beef, seafood, etc, and full English (and Japanese) translations. And you can get anything you want off of it! Anything at all!

The waitress asked us if we wanted a pitcher of beer, coke, or roasted barley tea with our meal and we got ALL of them, because we could!

All menu items come raw, and you barbecue them yourself on the above charcoal stove thing. They put a grate on top of it, of course, and the waitress even came by after the first hour to switch out a new one not all covered in drippings. I tried to help her but I was pretty drunk by that point so.

All tables come with a free giant boat of raw seafood, which looks like this.

As well as some vegetables! We didn't dig into these until the end of the meal, when we started feeling guilty, but oh man! Those water chestnuts, the white things above, were totally awesome! Do not miss out on them.

Some sort of meat and stuff. By the way, each table comes with salt and pepper shakers (OMG, you can add SALT, the BESSSSST), as well as this soy sauce-looking sauce that does not taste like soy sauce, and goes quite well with meat of all kinds. Though not as well as salt does.

Thin strips of meat! Helpful tips for cooking these guys: lay them on the grill and watch a bit until you see their top sides start to "sweat", flip them over, and then take them off almost immediately. Devour them happily.

Scallops on ice! Someone who knows more than I intimated that these were fake scallops, because of the way they fell apart when you pulled at them or something. I'm no expert on scallops, but I thought they tasted pretty delicious all the same.

Fish in a dish! The aluminum pans you can put directly on the grill, and let the stuff inside slowly boil/bake. We also ordered their vegetables+cheese dish, which came in an aluminum pan too, but maybe we left it on the grill too long because when I finally tried it it was SERIOUSLY nasty. Like, sour milk kind of nasty. Not exactly sure what that was about.

Happy barbecuing. Everything here was really good. Those mushrooms on the right there were especially good. I love mushrooms.

Here is something funny. Their menu advertises a cheese-stuffed American beef dish, complete with sexy gratuitous pictures up there on the bottom right...

...And it turned out to look like this. False advertising! Except even with that little bit of cheese it was absolutely, absolutely delicious. Probably my favorite thing this entire meal. And we ate a LOT, can you tell? I don't think I even photographed half of it...

Cheesy beef rolls in action, and more shrimps. Yeahhhhh.

There are a few options for dessert, including this very charismatic Japanese mochi dish, meant to be barbecued for several minutes until crispy and chewy then drowned in condensed milk and peanut shavings, and eaten. DON'T MIND IF I DO. Each "order" comes with six pieces, so we got four orders because well.

I also got this VERY STRANGE pumpkin pie looking dish, with vanilla ice cream and random marshmellows. I forget exactly how it was advertised, but I know that when I bit into it I was definitely not expecting this:

Like, a sort of dry cake encasing a hunk of mochi and strawberry jam. What?

...What?

The ice cream was good though, and you can't go wrong with mochi I suppose.

Overall, I... I am mostly impressed that I ate so much. This was a really fun dining experience, not in the least because of the unlimited beer. So yeah, I definitely recommend it! It's not even that expensive, when you think about it. Several meals worth of food for the price of one.

OVERALL RATING: 4/5

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