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Last Monday night, as soon as I stepped off the airplane into the jetway at JFK Airport, a cloud of pressure swelled behind my eyes, driblets of despair juice threatening to spill out. It's over. You don't live in Taipei anymore. Sorry, America. I don't step foot on your soil for over nine months—the longest I've ever spared you of my presence—and this is the loving embrace you get.
I also felt like crying just after I boarded the plane in Taipei 16 hours earlier. And before then, while waiting in the security checkpoint line at the airport. And before then, when I was alone in my apartment, luggages fully packed to the point of hm-these-might-explode-on-the-plane-well-that's-a-risk-I'm-willing-to-take, with me sitting at the edge of the living room couch (green, fairly cushiony, standard IKEA) while staring blankly at the opposite wall (beige, flat, standard wall). I still had an hour before I had to leave for the airport, but I may as well have left then and there—the minutes drained away like seconds. All of that happened just in the afternoon before my flight back to the US. I won't delve into the week leading up to that flight. There was a good amount of stifled weepage, plus some real tears, most of which I sloppily wiped onto the clavicular region of my friends' shirts.]]>
What made leaving Taipei so much more painful than other places I've lived? I've missed plenty of people before; I've missed cities; I've missed schools. But I've never missed all three so intensely at the same time. And I don't mean to crap on my other friends, nor other cities I've lived in, nor other schools I've attended. The circumstances of my living in Taipei make it nearly impossible for anything else to match up to it. After seven years of of working at Serious Eats, I moved to Taipei to study Chinese, but it was more like a nine-month vacation during which I happened to be studying Chinese. I wasn't doing it for college credit, nor for future job prospects. I was just doing it for self-improvement, fueled by little more than self-imposed guilt for being yet another American with Taiwanese parents who couldn't speak nor read even a tenth-smidge of Chinese. I didn't have to work, and living in my dad's apartment meant I didn't have to pay rent. It was the closest experience I've had to living a dream, and very much like a dream I didn't know it was a dream until it was over.
Words cannot do justice to the awesome people I met in Taiwan. ...I...I really don't know where to begin. But here's my fruitless attempt. Imagine your favorite baked good—chocolate chip cookies, if you're me. You have an endless mountain of these cookies, fresh-out-of-the-oven, golden brown with soft, slightly chewy centers and crisp edges. The air is saturated with butter, sugar, and chocolate. You get to eat these cookies whenever you want, as well as perpetually breathe a cloud of sweet butter, without ever getting tired of them. Imagine the joy. Maybe a bit too much joy. You might get sick. It's a lot of cookies. Also, butter cloud. But whatever. I'm not a pro at translating cookies to human emotions, but that might be an approximation of what it felt like hanging out with my friends in Taiwan, as well as well as being greeted by the friendliest of shopkeepers at my favorite establishments. I didn't know what it felt like to be a regular until I lived in Taipei.
I definitely do not deserve to have made as many amazing friends as I did—friends who are far too generous, and funny, and weird, and silly, and sweet, and helpful, and caring. All of whom, thanks to modern technology, I can continue to virtually prod through LINE anytime I want. (Although I've only tried a handful of messaging apps, I do believe LINE is the best because it has the best stickers. Seriously. BASK IN THE GLORY, THEN DIE. Anyway, if you move to Taiwan, you have to use LINE. Seemingly 99% of the population uses it.) One of the best gifts a friend can give me is the gift of "making me feel totally comfortable being myself," which my friends in Taiwan were super good at. Sometimes this meant merely sitting together and doing nothing—sometimes that's all friends need. Their existence emphasized how lucky I am and showed me how to be a better person, influence I hope to exercise before my brain inevitably devolves into dry, feta-like crumbles (is thing a thing brains do, I don't know).
I wouldn't have met most of those people if not for my school, the Mandarin Training Center at Shida. When classes only have eight students at most, the quality of your teacher and classmates makes a huge impact on your will to continue studying Chinese when you constantly find yourself internally muttering, "Seriously, what...the...the fuck is this?" over and over again while practicing writing characters until your head flops into your textbook-cum-pillow. Thankfully, over my three quarters at the MTC I learned from three awesome teachers alongside the most fun, welcoming, and diverse bunch of classmates I could hope for.
As for Taipei itself, I think it may have ruined me for living in any other city. Sure, summer feels like you've been condemned to live in a sweaty toaster, the architecture sometimes inspires wails of, "BUT WHYYYY, WHY WOULD ANYONE BUILD THAT", the pollution might be giving rise to a lung cancer-ridden population, and you'll dream of a army of electric scooters to replace the inescapable din of their gas-powered elders, but I grew to love it. I miss the tiled apartment buildings that look like they're covered in bathroom. I miss the narrow, sidewalk-less alleys where pedestrians, cars, bikes, and scooters converge to ideally not maim each other. I miss cheap biandang lunches. I miss 7-Eleven and Family Mart, especially when they're right next to each other. I miss Matsusei's two-for-one NT$30 soft serve. I miss cute neighborhood parks. I miss the Slide of Death by Yong Fu Bridge (I'll show you a photo of it someday). I miss coffeeshop cats. I miss the night view of Taipei 101 from Xiangshan. I miss local pineapples whose cores taste as ripe and sweet as the rest of the fruit. I miss excessive souvenir stamps at every tourist attraction.
There's a lot to miss. I'll try to tell you all about it in a series of subsequent posts I failed to write over the last nine months. [I have many good LINE stickers that could go here, but for now you'll have to insert an emoticon of shame from your own imagination.]
I can't promise you'll have as good of an experience as I did if you move to Taipei to study Chinese. I met the right people at the right time through some serendipitous circumstances, and I have a family network in Taipei that's willing to help me. Looking Taiwanese was also beneficial (although I did often get mistaken for a Japanese tourist because my Chinese is shitty). But if Taipei suits you, you could have a magical time living there.]]>
File under "things I forgot to mention earlier because Mandarin is chipping away at my brain meats": I'm going on a trip to Seoul with Kåre in a week, from November 23 to 30. I haven't done much planning because of the aforementioned loss of brain meats, but at the very least we have a place to stay (near Samgakji station). If anybody out there wants to grab a bite with Kåre and me while we're in Seoul, please let me know! Surely you want to experience our awkwardness in real life!!! :D And if anybody has recommendations for what we should eat or do in Seoul, I'd love to hear 'em. Please leave a comment below or email me at email@example.com.
One important note: I can't eat spicy food. I like spicy food, but my immune system does not. It's like how one special toy can send a puppy into spastic fits of excitement. Spicy food is the special toy that sends my immune system into spastic fits of trying to kill me.
Thank you!]]>
Last week I hit the "Feeling Demoralized Because I Can't Speak More Mandarin Despite Learning It For the Last Two Months" stage of being a beginner at MTC in Taipei. On one hand, it's only been two months. If I had actually reached a modicum of fluency after two months, you would have to assume that someone killed Real Robyn and for reasons unknown went through the trouble to replace her with Impossibly Lifelike and Smarter Robot Robyn (aka Boppy-Bot), because that's the only reasonable explanation. On the other hand, I go to class for three hours every weekday and study for three to four hours almost every day (...in theory), I'm immersed in a Mandarin-speaking environment, and I don't have a job. My main responsibilities are feeding myself, maintaining an acceptable level of hygiene, taking out the garbage, and not failing class. You know, my single class. So I probably should be better at speaking Mandarin by now. Excuse me...[gathers jug of gasoline, a bag of bricks, and twine]
JUUUUST KIDDDING I wasn't about to burn all my belongings or throw myself into the river to rid the world of my failure, hahaaa, never! I'll just hurl myself through the air.
...By biking. I do that now. Very minimally. Slicing through the air helps clear my mind and give me respite from the subject of "HOW TO CHINESE???" I attribute biking's restorative powers of distraction to my ever-present fear that I'll collide with someone/something and spill a significant amount of blood, all while being hugged by a pleasantly cool breeze. So last Wednesday I made a lap around Da'an Park (you can't bike in the park, fffffuuu) before heading down to Picnic for a solitary study session.
The following night, I settled in at my favorite cafe, Cafe Kuroshio, for another solitary study night. I was still feeling a bit dumpy, even though I have no reason to feel dumpy, the realization of which only adds to the dumpy feelings. Remember, I have hardly any responsibilities—I just have to not die, pretty much. After two and a half hours of doing homework, the cafe's owner, Jing, comes by and places a dessert on my table.]]> "Here's a slice of chocolate caramel tart, it's new! I think you'll like it."
[Cue confused Robyn] "I...didn't order a dessert?..."
"Oh I know, this is because you're a hardworking girl."
[I'm probably not making a sound, but if I am it's something like, "Fffffwwwwwweeeeeeeeeeeee," which is the sound of an invisible string of lil' hearts squeezing forth from my throat.]
"There's no need for a utensil—this is best eaten by hand."
[At this point I hope I say, "Thank you!" like a normal person without looking too horrified by his surprising act of generosity, but I don't quite remember.]
You know what's better than eating a tart with a fork? Eating a tart by hand. A flaky-shelled tart holding up a thick layer of silky smooth chocolate ganache that tastes deceptively light even though it's something like 300% richness atop a thin ooze of caramel. I usually savor desserts at Kuroshio slowly to make them last throughout the night, but this time I kind of shoved it in my mouth, fueled by the disbelief of what just happened to me. Also, because it was delicious. I mean, I did savor it. Quickly.
Many, many, many thanks to Jing for his generosity (and delicious homemade desserts). A chocolate caramel tart infused with kindness is one of the best undumpifiers I've ever received, the memory of which will continue to ward off the dumps and remind me to be a nicer person.
Taipei and its residents has been treating me very well since I got here. My goal is to someday repay them without butchering their language. All I have to do is form complete, grammatically correct sentences in less time than it takes to boil a pot of water, speak faster than the speed of a slug crawling across a poorly maintained cobblestone road, and not fuck up every tone OH GOD IT'S HOPELESS [takes deep breathes, imagines chocolate caramel tart floating in front of computer] ok I'm all good now.]]>
I'm not one to demand recognition for my accomplishments, but there is one prize I deserve with utmost fanfare (a nice horn quartet ought to do it). That prize is an oversized gold chalice engraved with "Most Easily Surprised by Surprise Birthday Parties." Under that in a smaller font, "It's Crazy, She Just Never Sees Them Coming!" Under that in a smaller font, "How Did She Make It This Far in Life?"
Here's what I've learned over the last five years of being surprised/fooled by friends in New York City. This isn't a handy-dandy universal guide that lists all the steps by any means; there are other resources for that. It's not rocket science, nor a less impressive science. I'm just sharing my experiences to give people ideas. Use this knowledge wisely on your most unsuspecting friend who enjoys being surprised. You might make her feel like the luckiest person on earth to be blessed with such a thoughtful circle of friends...and after a few years, fill her with self doubt about her ability to think critically about anything.
In this post I refer to the surprisee as a woman because I have lady parts. But you can also surprise guys. It works on them too, probably.
Instead of planning a surprise party from square one, it might be easier and less suspicious to tack the surprise onto plans the birthday girl already made, if her plans are easily malleable. I've been that girl multiple times. I LEARN NOTHING.]]> Surprise Birthday Party, the First: August 29, 2009. My plan was to have a mostly unplanned, small, casual get-together at my apartment with one of my best friends and then-roommate, Lee Anne, plus some other people to be determined. But Lee Anne, privy to my plans (or lack of) and possessing keys to the apartment, secretly invited a group of our mutual friends and arranged for celebratory pizza and pizookies (that is, pie-sized chocolate chip cookies, fresh from the oven, piled with scoops of ice cream—one of the best desserts on earth, surely). The surprise attendees hid in my bedroom, ready to set off a confetti gun when I entered. You can read all the gory details here.
So if you're like Lee Anne and have many mutual friends (and their contact info) with the birthday girl...and keys to her apartment...then you too can pull a Lee Anne.
There's another reason the party was a huge surprise to me; I'll get to that in a later section.
More surprising than one surprise birthday party is a second surprise birthday party a year later. Because who would try that two years in a row? Who would fall for that two years in a row? Uhhhhh.
Surprise Birthday Party, the Second: August 27, 2010. Unlike in 2009, this year I had actually planned most of the party myself. I sent emails to friends setting a time (7:30 p.m.) and place (Madison Square Park Shake Shack). I ordered a birthday cake from Momofuku Milk Bar. I was ready. And Lee Anne wasn't in NYC at the time, so I figured I was in the clear. TRY AND GET ME NOW, SUCKERRRRRZZZ [thumps chest].
Oh yeah, there's this thing called the internet, and it allows people like Lee Anne to help plan a surprise party from anywhere in the world.
Oh yeah, Tristan, one of my bestest friends, threw me a red herring by telling me he couldn't come to my party. I was disappointed but didn't think it was a big deal nor anything suspicious. In secret, he and my friends beefed up the invite list and brought more party supplies: homemade manatee masks (because I like manatees), a piñata, and desserts. Read the recap here.
So...telling one of your best friends you can't make it to her party and then secretly planning a bigger party and then showing up to the bigger party in a crowd of manatee (or other animal) mask-wearing friends will surely surprise her and maybe make her eyes dribbly with happy tears.
The only hiccup was that there were a few stragglers whom I invited to Shake Shack but weren't in on the surprise part. I made things harder for the planners by BCC-ing everyone in my original email. Luckily most of my friends know each other.
Back to the first surprise birthday party in 2009. Part of the reason it was such a big surprise was that it wasn't my first surprise birthday party. I consider it Surprise Birthday Party 1.0, but there was a Surprise Birthday Party 0.5 over a month before.
Surprise Birthday Party, the Half: July 22, 2009. I made plans to meet up with four friends at Arirang, one of my favorite Korean restaurants. No special occasion. When I arrived, there were four more surprise guests and a chocolate cake from Sugar Sweet Sunshine frosted with the message, "Manatees <3 Robyn." Hell yeah, I was surprised. Because it was 36 days before my birthday. Read all about it here.
You can turn any run-of-the-mill dinner into a surprise birthday (or unbirthday) party with cake and extra friends. ...EVERY DINNER CAN BE A SURPRISE BIRTHDAY PARTY!
Ok, don't do that.
Besides throwing a party before your friend's birthday, you can also hold it...after your friend's birthday. I know. It's gettin' wild in here. This might work if your friend's birthday plans fell through (as was my case) or if she's not in town on her birthday.
Surprise Birthday Party, the Third: September 1, 2011 (not that long after my birthday, admittedly). This party wasn't "supposed" to happen. It only came about because Hurricane Irene shut down public transportation on my birthday and the original plan to have a joint party with my friend Melissa fell through. I don't remember the exact plans that worked up to me being completely brain-mushed surprised at this party, but I'm guessing I wanted to do something with Lee Anne and she suggested having a small dinner at her apartment with a few friends—nothing out of the ordinary, as she likes to cook. (This party may also fit under the last category, "Make Your Friend Think It's Her Idea." According to the post I wrote about the party, I thought the dinner was my idea.)
LEE ANNE CANNOT BE TRUSTED WITH LETTING BIRTHDAYS PASS IDLY BY [waves left finger wildly in the air, the force of which causes my imaginary monocle to bounce off my face]. Of course, she invited a buttload of people and helped make sure there were plenty of decorations and good things to eat (such as homemade bacon mac and cheese from Noah and a homemade chocolate cake from Melissa). Here's the recap.
This is related to hijacking your friends birthday plans, but if you can't hijack, you can try to push her in the direction of the plans you've already made. If your friend is as dumb as I am, she'll think it's her idea.
Surprise Birthday Party, the Fourth: August 21, 2013. This two-parter party is also filed under "Throw Her A Party On a Date That's Not Her Birthday" and "Hijack the Birthday Plans Your Friend Has Already Made." After watching a movie at IFC Center with a few friends, we had some time to kill before our occasion-less dinner reservations with a few other friends, including Lee Anne [insert dramatic musical cue], at Kinshop. Eric mentioned being interested in trying nearby L'Arte del Gelato (now Dolce Gelateria), one of my favorite gelato shops in the city. I didn't register that he was pushing me in that direction; to me it was the natural choice for a quick pre-dinner dessert in the West Village. If he hadn't said anything I probably would've gone there.
And what was waiting for me at L'Arte? Balloons and a brioche gelato sandwich and friends—including the ringleader, Lee Anne, of course. FOOOOLED AGAAAAAIN. It took me a too-long while to realize that it was Eric's idea, not mine, to go to L'Arte. I am dumb and he is smooth.
Part Two of the surprise was that Lee Anne had invited a few more people to our dinner at Kin Shop and converted it into a birthday meal I didn't have to pay for.
To summarize:
If this post actually helps anyone plan a surprise birthday party, I'd love to hear about it! Especially if these tactics work repeatedly on the same person. I'm happy to share my trophy with someone else.]]>
When I visit a new city, I like to glom onto a good, local friend (like a human lamprey but without the jawless mouth hole full of pointy teeth and nightmares) who can take me around the city and show me the best places to eat, shop, and look at important historical stuff, all while filling me in on interesting facts and details about what we're eating and looking at, all while having fun, all while retaining positive feelings about me and the future of our friendship after the day is over even though I drained them of all their energy and they're sick of looking at my face.
Going on an Istanbul Eats or Gourmet Holidays culinary tour is as close as you can get to that if you're visiting Istanbul and lack local friends to take advantage of.]]> On our second day in the city, Diana, Kåre, and I went on Istanbul Eats' "Two Markets, Two Continents" tour with guide Gökçen Ceylan. I couldn't think of a better way to start the trip; it was a combined six-hour crash course in Turkish Food 101/Getting Around Istanbul 101/Tidbits About Turkish Culture 101 with a friendly, seemingly all-knowing teacher. Gökçen has since left Istanbul Eats and started Gourmet Holidays, giving you two great food tour options (Gourmet Holidays' "Asian Side Walk" is similar).
The price is $125 per person (same with Gourmet Holidays), which includes food and travel to Kadıköy. That may seem like a lot, but considering how long the tour is and how much you eat, it's totally worth it. (Full disclosure: I got our tickets at a discount, but I would've still done it at full price.) Just make sure to plan ahead if you're on a tight schedule; groups are small and may fill up quickly. Our group had just five people (including a nice American couple) because someone didn't show up at the last minute.
Here's a rundown of what I ingested during the tour in case you need more convincing.
We started with breakfast in Karaköy at Mutfak Dili Ev Yemekleri. I don't consider myself an American breakfast person, but a Turkish breakfast person? Yes. Just look at this spread:
Next we took the 20-minute ferry ride to Kadıköy (aka the Asian/Anatolian side), where the bulk of the tour took place.
We started at Adapazarı Islama Köftecisi, famous for their köfte (like meatballs or elongated meat patties) and beef broth-soaked slices of bread.
Time for a break.
Şekerci Cafer Erol is the most charming old-timey sweets shop I've ever been to, stuffed with all things Turkish and sugary. You can't be unhappy in a place like this. Just look around:
This is a great place to get gifts, like pre-packed boxes of Turkish delight and hard candies. I bought some of those, along with a big bag of tiny Turkish delight cubes to snack on.
On to another Turkish favorite: pickled everything. Özcan Turşuları is nearby for all the pickle needs you didn't know you had.
They've also got these huge dispensers full of tahini and pekmez (grape molasses). Mix 'em together for a popular breakfast spread.
Arifoğlu is a good spot to get spices, tea, and other dried stuff.
Some random snapshots from the many neighboring food shops and stalls:
Time for a Turkish coffee break at Fazıl Bey'in Türk Kahvesi. We headed up the wee staircase to the cozy room on the second floor.
I like black coffee about as much as I like poisonous dirt water—because to me it tastes like poisonous dirt water—but add lots of sugar and I'm ok with it. Thankfully, in Turkey you can choose from four levels of sweetness: none, a little, medium, and a lot. (Sugar is added to the ground coffee before it's brewed; the drinker doesn't add it after. Read more about how Turkish coffee is prepared at Wikipedia.) Ah, Turkey, you get me. I went with "a lot."
Each cup was served with a glass of water and a small cube of Turkish delight.
Not being anything of a coffee lover, I can't rate it in any meaningful way. I liked it all right, because sugar, but I can't beam with excitement about it, because bitter.
Salep, on the other hand, is a 500% excitement-worthy drink. At least if you're like me and love all things sweet and dairy. Salep is a hot, sweet, milk-based drink flavored with rosewater and cinnamon and mildly thickened by its namesake, salep, aka orchid tuber flour. It reminded me of non-alcoholic eggnog. Crème anglaise. Drinkable pudding. All good things. I don't have much to compare this version of salep to, but I'd say it's awesome. To make it at home, check out this recipe at Serious Eats.
After we were all done drinking our coffee, Gökçen showed us how to use the leftover grounds for fortune-telling. We turned the cups over on their saucers, let them sit for about ten minutes, then looked in our cups for any hint of imagery that could convey grand, general ideas about our futures. Mine looked like brown glurp. My future's lookin' real good!
Next up, sweets at baklava shop Gaziantepli Baklavacı Bilgeoğlu, where everything looked picture-perfect.
We sampled sweet pistachio paste nubbins and flaky pastries filled with crushed pistachio and kaymak. Crushed pistachios and kaymak in everything, please.
We returned to savory at Halil Lahmacun, famous for their lahmacun, super thin flatbread baked with a topping of spiced minced meat and peppers, garnished with parsley and lemon. 'Tis a great snack.
The savory continued at Kadıköy Tantuni. Tatuni is basically one of the best things ever, better explained by Istanbul Eats than anything I could write.
But I'll try anyway: it's a super juicy, snack-sized roll of lavash filled with beef, tomato, parsley, and pepper, finished off with a squeeze of lemon. It feels a bit like a taco-burrito hybrid, but not really. It ought to exist more in this world.
I also tried a frothy cup of ayran, a cold, salty yogurt drink considered Turkey's national drink (well, non-alcoholic drink, at least; the alcoholic throne belongs to rakı). I can see how this could be refreshing, but I just can't get into it without the aid of sugar. I'd say I have the taste buds of a five-year-old, but I'm guessing Turkish five-year-olds like ayran more than I do.
Not as delicious to me as tatuni but still worth eating is kokoretsi, a sandwich stuffed with chopped lamb intestine and other offal. We got ours from Kokoretto.
Big honkin' loaves of intestine-wrapped offal—like an organ meat mummy lump—get spit-roasted to a dark crisp before getting sliced and chopped into lil' bits for your sandwich.
The tour ended on a high note at Kimyon Dürüm thanks to dishes such as:
During the meal, Gökçen made a bakery run to Serger to make sure we could all try their katmer, possibly the best pastry I had during my trip. These triangles of phyllo dough are stuffed with pistachio paste and kaymak and topped with ground pistachio, similar to the pastry we had at the earlier bakery but less sweet. It's supposed to be eaten for breakfast. YET ANOTHER REASON WHY TURKISH BREAKFAST IS THE BEST. Diana, Kåre and I happened to walk by the bakery after the tour was over (hence the exterior shot above), but for some reason I didn't think to buy more katmer or anything else from the bakery. Perhaps I was blinded by fullness, but THAT IS NO EXCUSE AND I AM AN IDIOT I SHOULD KNOW BETTER BY NOW FULLNESS DOESN'T LAST FOREVER AND NOR DO PASTRIES. Anyway. [gently dusts off self]
After parting with Gökçen and our tour mates, I steered Diana and Kåre towards Ali Usta, a famous ice cream shop in a quieter part of the neighborhood. On the way we passed...
I don't remember much about Ali Usta, unfortunately. I failed to take any notes, and I don't even remember which flavors I got, besides that the pink one wasn't a straight-up fruit flavor. It certainly wasn't bad, but I guess it wasn't that memorable either. Maybe I had to be hungrier to appreciate it. If I could go back, I'd also want to try their salep.
Lastly, random night shots on the ferry ride and walk back to our apartment.
Mutfak Dili Ev Yemekleri
Tersane Cad./ziyalı Sk No:10, Karaköy/Istanbul, Turkey (map)
mutfakdili.biz; +90 212 254 1154;
Adapazarı Islama Köftecisi
Osmanağa Mh., 34714 Kadıköy/İstanbul, Turkey (map)
+90 216 338 7815
Sekerci Cafer Erol
Osmanağa Mh., Yasa Cd No:19, 34714 İstanbul, Turkey (map)
sekercicafererol.com; +90 216 337 1103
Özcan Turşuları
Güneşli Bahçe Sk No:7, Osmanağa/Istanbul, Turkey (map)
ozcantursu.com.tr; +90 216 336 3756
Güneşli Bahçe Sk No:4, Osmanağa/İstanbul, Turkey (map)
arifoglu.com; +90 216 346 9155
Fazil Bey's Turkish Coffee
Serasker Cad. No1 A,Tarihi Kadıköy Çarşısı, 34200 Istanbul, Turkey (map)
fazilbey.com; +90 216 450 2870
Gaziantepli Baklavacı Bilgeoğlu
Caferağa Mh., 34710 Kadıköy/İstanbul, Turkey (map)
+90 216 336 0049
Halil Lahmacun
Caferağa Mh., Güneşlibahçe Sok. No: 26, 34710 Kadıköy/İstanbul, Turkey (map)
+90 216 337 0123
Kadıköy Tantuni
Osmanağa Mh., 34714 Kadıköy/İstanbul, Turkey (map)
Serasker Cd No:69, Osmanağa Mh., 34200 Kadıköy/İstanbul, Turkey (map)
Kimyon Dürüm
Kadife Sk 17/C, Caferağa/Istanbul, Turkey (map)
+90 216 330 4845
Moda Cad. No:100/ A, 34710 Kadıköy/İstanbul, Turkey (map)
Ali Usta
Moda Cad. No: 176, 34710 Kadıköy/İstanbul, Turkey (map)
Late last Friday at the Serious Eats office, I gathered up all my remaining personal belongings—books and pictures, mostly—and left my set of office keys on my desk before heading home. While waiting for the subway, I realized, "Oh crap, I forgot my leftover pasta in the fridge. The pasta I wanted to eat for lunch tomorrow." On any other day I could've walked back to the office for the pasta, but for the first time in seven years, I couldn't go back. No one else was in the office, and the door was locked. The forsaken pasta bummed me out (it was from Osteria Morini; you'd be bummed, too), but more saddening was accepting that the office was no longer my home away from home.
I've spent the last week trying to figure out how to do justice to my seven-year tenure at Serious Eats using the power of the keyboard-tapped word. (I wrote a bit about it in last week's This Week at Serious Eats World Headquarters, and Ed wrote me a farewell post last Monday. I'm really pulling up the rear now.) But after many stretches of staring blankly at my laptop screen alternated with staring blankly out my bedroom window, underscored by my internal soundtrack of a drawn-out "bbbbbbeeeeeeeeeuuhhhhhh" (imagine Hypnotoad with roiling indigestion), I've decided there's no way I can do it justice. Somewhere deep in my brain meats is a pile of useful words getting flaccid and crusty in their stagnancy, like a sloppily stacked, ever-growing tower of forgotten luncheon meat. ...So now that I've accepted that, I can write this overdue post.]]> Seven years is a long time to stay at one job in today's age. I Googled it; as of 2012, the median number of years people stay at one job is 4.6 years, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. For my age range, the median is shorter, at 3.2 years.
[Stands up with fists in the air] YEAH, MORE IS BETTER!
...Wait, it's not? Oh. [Sits back down, puts away fists of triumph.]
But it's hard to leave Serious Eats. Because
they chained me to my desk and drugged my food for years it's a unique company staffed with some of the most hardworking, smart, quirky, and fun people you'll ever meet, and as a trusted member of the Serious Eats staff, you kind of have the creative freedom to do whatever you want. I've heard about jobs in the "real world"—from the acceptable to the soul-crushing—and I know I've had it good these last seven years. I suspect most jobs don't involve meaningful friendships with coworkers, contributors, and interns, and eating shittons of good food.
I'm not sure I've ever explained how I got my job at Serious Eats in the first place. It was unfairly easy. Back in late 2006, I wrote a post on this blog asking if anyone could help me find an internship to fulfill a school requirement. Adam Kuban, one of my first food blog-related friends, reached out to me about interning at a new website he was working at with Ed Levine, Alaina Brown, and Meg Hourihan, some of the most influential food bloggers of the time. With Adam's help, I became the live site's first intern (Serious Eats had interns before the site launched), and after a semester of working there, they deemed me worthy of hiring full time. It was a prime case of being in the right place at the right time.
Today, Serious Eats is considerably more serious about how it hires interns (rightfully so, as the site has grown so much and upped its quality standards since I started). They receive a wealth of applications from passionate, smart students, a disproportionate percentage of whom seem to be from Ivy League schools. If I applied today as the college senior I was in 2006, I'm not sure I'd be accepted. If I applied for a job at Serious Eats now, I doubt I'd get it.
So thank god my mom popped me out in 1985, perfectly positioning me to get a job doing something I enjoy at what would've otherwise been a directionless point in my life.
Although I enjoyed most of the work I did at Serious Eats (along with the free food and 10 a.m. start to the workday and location in Chinatown), it's the people that most made me want to stay. People who want to work and intern at Serious Eats tend to be awesome. I guess that shouldn't be surprising—the tone of Serious Eats is inclusive, friendly, fun, and smart, characteristics found in all of the staff members, past and present, whether they're in ad sales or web development or editorial. I'm honored to say I was a part of that group.
And even though everyone in the group deserves recognition, I want to focus on Adam and Ed. Adam for reaching out to me back in 2005 when this food blog was a drooling infant, for giving me all kinds of advice, for getting my foot in the door at Serious Eats, and for being one of my biggest cheerleaders the whole time I've known him. Ed for taking me on as a shy intern, trusting me with his baby, Serious Eats, over all these years, for also being one of my biggest cheerleaders, and for having more confidence in me than I have in myself, which will hopefully push me in the right direction once I fully accept his confidence. I owe them something like a million thanks.
What am I doing now that I'm unemployed? First, the most boring thing: catching up on sleep. God, I love sleep so much. Sleep is master of all that is good and joyful and don'ttakesleepawayfrommeoriwillcutyou maybe I love it too much.
Second, meeting up with as many friends as I can. Some of whom I haven't seen in years. My bad. :(
Third, working on some personal projects. I don't have a portfolio—I should probably do something about that. More importantly, I should also update this blog more than once a month. At least, after I edit the truckload of photos languishing in raw format on my hard drive. Yeeeaaah.
And fourth, preparing ever so slowly to move out of New York City at the end of July and haul myself to Taipei in mid-August to learn Mandarin at MTC in National Taiwan Normal University. Yes, I've finally given in to the deep shame of not knowing my parents' mother tongue, and I'm moving to my parents' motherland to learn it. If all goes well, I'll spend nine months in the program and return to the US with better-than-feeble Mandarin skills. If you live in Taipei and want to hang out, oh god, please let me know. If you want to visit Taipei between September and May, please let me know—maybe you can crash in my apartment!
What's going to happen after I'm done with the MTC program in Taipei? ...I'm still figuring that out. I guess I'm still staving off real life. You'll just have to continue reading this blog to see the success/failure/horror/indigestion unfold. Thank you, as always, for sticking around.]]>
Q: How do you make Japanese curry taste even better?
A: [Invoking the manic spirit of Craig] YOU CAN'T, IT'S PERFECT, HOW DARE YOU SUGGEST OTHERWISE.
B: Add more curry.
C: Stick it in a casserole, top it with a raw egg and grated cheese, and bake it until the egg is set and the cheese is gooey and crisp.
It's a trick question, because all of these answers are correct. ...But especially C. Just look at this thing:
This is the baked curry from Curry-Ya in the East Village. Before I tried the baked curry, I thought of Curry-Ya as the place to go to if I wanted to ladle Japanese curry out of my own personal cast-iron pot onto my rice/meat however I please. This desire rarely presents itself. As much as I love being the master of a mini ladle—don't we all?—I'm quite content with eating curry that is already portioned out as a brown pool touching a mound of rice.
It wasn't until this past February when my friend Christine shared her baked curry with me that I found the real draw of Curry-Ya. For an extra $3.50, Curry-Ya will top your curry and rice with shredded cheddar cheese and a raw egg and bake it all into a mini-casserole of gooey-and-crisp, cheesy, eggy goodness. It goes a little something like this:]]>
The menu says the baked option excludes chicken and pork katsu, but I'm 99% sure they'll do 'em. However, since baked katsu would lose its crisp crust after being soaked in curry and topped with cheese, I think you're best off going with a non-katsu curry, like the Japanese classic (beef, potato, carrot, and pumpkin) I ordered.
The baked curry is pretty hefty. I ate half (leaving room for dessert—thinking ahead, you see, like the responsible adult I am) and saved the leftovers for the next day's lunch.
Anyone else a fan of baked curry? If you've never had it before, try it and let me know what you think. ...Or invite me so I have an excuse to eat more.
214 E 10th St, New York, NY 10003 (between 2nd and 1st Aves., map)
212-995-2877; nycurry-ya.com
Janet: [In the living room] I made some apple crisp if you want to eat some!
Robyn: [Me, in my room] Oh yay! Thanks!
J: It's not great. I forgot to add flour, so it's watery.
[Both go into kitchen, inspect crisp]
J: Yeah, it's...loose.]]> R: [Picks apple chunks out of baking dish] Loose apples. [Eats chunks.] Hot loose apples. Hehe. "New and Improved Hot Loose Apples." Mmm.
J: That sounds terrible.
R: It's like something from Arrested D—
J: It's like hot ham water.
[Enter bout of laughter/expressions of mirth]
R: I like the crunchy bits. Oat bits. Oat chunks. It's like an add-on.
J: "Oat Chunks—for an extra 50 cents."
R: Hot loose apples. And apple stew. With optional oat chunks.
J: It's like the saddest dessert menu.
R: Hot loose apples...in their own juices.
J: "Loose" just sounds so wrong.
R: Yeah, you don't really describe food as "loose." ...Like beef stew. That's like...
[In unison] Loose beef.
R: How about, "Thick loose beef in its own juices"?
[In unison] Euuuh.
R: Well, I'll keep eating this—it's fruit. Apples have vitamins, right?
J: Ehh, I don't know about these, they've been sitting in the fridge for a long time. Aged apples might not have any nutrients left in 'em.
R: ...Aged...hot...loose apples.
[In unison] Eeeeeuh.
J: I ate the loose apples for breakfast today. Cold, with yogurt.
R: That's such a good idea! That totally works. Cold loose apples. "Loose Apples: Good Night or Day."
J: "Dress It Up, or Dress It Down."
R: I don't know when I'll have another idea as good as "loose apples" again.
I love a good welcome sign. Something that declares more than the name of the town/state you have just entered/left. Something with personality. Something unique. Like Delaware's dual achievements of "THE FIRST STATE" and "Home of Tax-Free Shopping."
The welcome sign for Danshui (or Tamsui, but I prefer the former) is a sign to remember. If you drive up to Danshui from Taipei City, you'll whizz by the sign, which is painted on the side of a wall hugging the main road. The wall is some meters high and the sign runs...[counts on fingers]...many more meters long. But as you're probably driving past it quickly, that doesn't give you much time to process it. I'm guessing I mentally responded with something like, "Did that sign say...what?...wait... [turns] oh shit it's gone now." I would've forgotten what the sign said if I hadn't tucked away a mental note to myself that I had to look up the sign online because something about it made it worth treasuring forever. Thanks to Flickr member yawei2009, I can recount what the sign says:
Welcome to Tamsui!
Don't Do Drugs
Don't Drag Race
That sign is just one of many things I came to treasure about Danshui.]]>
The tourist-friendly, waterside district of Danshui sort of feels like the Jersey Shore of Taipei, featuring a long walkway along the Danshui River lined with food stall after food stall after souvenir shop after food souvenir shop. Except I like it way more than the Jersey Shore. It caters better to my interests, particularly in the areas of Chinese food, cute knick knacks, and Engrish. (Admittedly, my memories of my sole visit to the Jersey Shore are marred by it taking place during high school, an era I'd rather forget.)
As much as I love cute knick knacks and Engrish, it's the food that won out here. Danshui is where I ate my favorite meal of the whole vacation.
Behold, mussels bathing in super garlicky basil sauce/broth. Brain. Splode. Delicious. But also...
Fried, battered oysters topped with shatteringly crisp fried basil and shrimp chips. Brain. Reassemble. Brain. Splode. Again.
Mussels and oysters are two foods that sit in my "Don't Dislike Them But Would Rarely Think To Eat Them" category. These dishes sit in the "WANT AGAIN FOREVER PLEASE" category. I suppose it's the sauce and the frying that most appeal to me—I could eat anything dunked in that sauce, and I could probably eat anything fried—but briny mussels seemed like the perfect pairing for the sauce, and the fried oysters were just a really good version of fried oysters.
Another major thing this restaurant has going for it is its no-frills open air seating on the second floor. Red, plastic patio chairs and wood paneled tables lit by a soup of different artificial lights—it's a charmingly comfortable, laid-back atmosphere, made better by the riverfront view (...even if you can't see the water at night). I was a bit jealous of the neighboring table of a dozen boisterous eaters. It made me think, "This is where I want to bring all my friends and just hang out and fill up on mussels and Apple Sidra and get stinky burpy garlic breath and have a good time into the night."
If I were just eating with my dad, we would've left the restaurant forever wondering what was in the sauce. Thankfully, Lee Anne is infinitely more inquisitive than I am. When we were at the counter paying our bill, Lee Anne simply asked what was in the sauce. The man at the counter, conveniently also the chef, happily wrote down the ingredients for her. The translation, from my mom (question marks are hers):
As far as I can tell from Googling (as someone who doesn't know much about Taiwanese food), quite a few restaurants specialize in this mussels dish in Danshui and Bali, a district located across the river from Danshui. I'm not positive what the name is of the restaurant we ate at. The sign says 孔雀蛤 150, literally "peacock clam," or green mussels English, followed by the price (apparently now 180), which sounds more like self-promotion than the name of a restaurant. But I don't know what's written on the sign on the 2nd level, so whatever. It's next to this more famous mussels restaurant.
After dinner, we roamed around Danshui's shop-filled streets. Some snapshots below:
if you've never eaten a suncake before, be sure to pick some up while you're in Taiwan. They're one of my most favorite pastries ever. I don't have much to compare them to, although at first glance they may sound similar to hand pies: a single-serving, patty-shaped flaky pastry with a sweet filling. But that's not all.
With just four easy payments of $19.95 The pastry is feathery light, powdery soft, a bit crisp, and so delicately flaky it sheds skin-like flakes at the slightest disturbance. From my experience, biting into a suncake should unleash a poof of flakes—eat over a plate or a trash can. The maltose-based filling has a mild, pleasant chewiness that pairs perfect with the soft crust. If you're eating a suncake with a hard filling, something's wrong/old. Send it back to hell.
The suncakes I bought from Maison Kyosai were awesome. Next time I'm in Danshui, I'll be buying more. The make great gifts...or you can eat 'em all yourself, as I was tempted to do.
For the rest of you, there's the option of making them yourself.
I ended the night with one of those gravity-defying soft serve super-towers. It's the kind of excessively bad food that screams, "Robyn, you shouldn't eat this, but YOU MUST EAT THIS." After one bite it was easy to see why they were so cheap. The soft serve is truly terrible, the most bland and watery I've ever tasted, perhaps the most watery it could taste before it could no longer be recognized as soft serve. Ah well. My curiosity about what a novelty soft serve cone tastes like, simultaneously satisfied and unsatisfying.
But still a great memory of Danshui.
Taipei 2011, Day 3: Taipei 101 Food Court and Dim Sum Dinner
Taipei 2011, Day 2: Shaved Ice Two Ways, 7-Eleven, Shilin Night Market, Etc.
Taipei 2011, Day 1: Fried Crullers, Bear Head Doughnuts, Scallion Pancakes, Etc.
Belated Intro to Taipei, or "What's That Smell?"
Taipei 2011, Day 4: Keelung River Bikeway, TAS, Beef "Pie," and Din Tai Fung
Peacock Clam 150/180/?
Next to 251, Taiwan, New Taipei City, Danshui District, 中正路55號 (map)
Maison Kyosai
No. 133號, Zhōngzhèng Rd, Danshui District New Taipei City, Taiwan 251 (map)
+886 2 2623 2008
I biked more during my one week vacation in Taipei than I have in the last three years of living in New York City. It's not a tough record to break—I haven't used my bike here in, um, at least three years. During the summer of 2009 when I lived in a first floor apartment I'd ride my bike out to Prospect Park at night with uncharacteristic enthusiasm, largely because I was disgustingly drippy with summer sweats and hurtling myself through the air was the best way to cool off. But about three years ago I moved into a second floor apartment. Second floor. You expect me to carry my heavy folding bike down and up one whole flight of stairs? Nah, I'll just marinate in a puddle of my own sweat.
I'm just as lazy in Taipei, but Taipei offers a few incentive to getting me off my butt that New York City doesn't: picturesque mountains and rivers in tandem. Mother Nature dealt Taipei a good deck. If you ride along the Keelung River Bikeway in the northwest outskirts of the city, as my dad and I did this morning, you'll be treated to well maintained bike paths with lovely scenery far from the din of the city.]]>
Another major reason why this path is better than any in New York City: it features a charming hut-like cafe with outdoor tables where you can treat yo self with iced milk tea, among other things. I'd bike more if I could reward myself with a sweet liquid prize.*
*During freshman year of college the main reason I dragged myself to the gym, located an excruciating 12-minute walk from my dorm, was because it was the only place on campus with a juice bar. "30 minutes on this elliptical and I can reward myself with celery and apple squeezings!" Sometimes I fondly look back at those healthful days, days when I didn't see cancer and/or death by asthma as an inevitability, but then I remember I didn't have many friends nor did I eat waffles, which isn't much of a life.
"But isn't the bike ride itself the prize?" you may ask. Yeah...but...I like sugar liquids a lot.
For lunch, we picked up my grandma and grandpa and drove to my grandpa's relatives apartment for an eight-dish, home-cooked meal. It was the nicest apartment I'd ever been in in Taipei—possibly anywhere, actually—with a sprawling view of the city center framed by a panoramic window. Their bathroom had one of those "invisible" doors that seamlessly blended in with a elegantly curvaceous, striated wood-paneled wall. I wouldn't have expected to be related to people with such an classy mystery bathroom. Like, who has to die for me to get a bathroom like that? Because I'm probably not going to earn it based on merit. To starkly contrast, my bathroom door has a poop sign on it. (The website yells it best: "IT'S LIKE A STOP SIGN BUT IT SAYS 'POOP'!)
Pig's feet, eggplant, bamboo, fish roe, meatball soup, and more. I'm assuming it was all quite good. I can't say I remember much; I was probably more focused on how awkward I felt around a host of friendly relatives I wasn't familiar with and mostly couldn't understand. Thus is the problem when you're a Chinese person who doesn't know Chinese: every meal with relatives makes me feel like a self-conscious baby. But I still had a good time.
I met up with Lee Anne at Sogo, or at least I'm assuming I did or else I wouldn't have ended up in their food court where I took photos of chunked loaf and a fake plastic slice of mille crepe.
Our activity for the afternoon was roaming around Tianmu. Lee Anne is intimately familiar with the area, it being where her grandparents live and where she spent much of her time growing up. I'm far less familiar, even though I went to school in Tianmu for two years during 6th and 7th grade at Taipei America School.
I remember with surprising clarity the first time I heard of Tianmu. It's not much of a story, but I'm going to tell it anyway. It was during the first week or two of school when I was eating lunch in the cafeteria with two other new students.
Girl 1: "I live in Tianmu, do you?"
Girl 2: "Yup!"
Me: "Where's Tianmu?"
Girl 1: [chuckles] "Where we are now, hahahaha, you are dumb!!"
Those were not her exact words, but I could feel her tween-fueled derision. Is it pathetic that I still remember that exchange from over 17 years ago? Yes.
Anyway, as someone who doesn't like to make snap judgements about people, I totally had bad vibes about Girl 1 soon after I first met her, the bad vibe being, "She's not very nice and she already doesn't like me and well TWO CAN PLAY THAT GAME except she surely doesn't care what I think about her." Luckily, the universe was on my side and Girl 1 soon transferred to the European School, leaving me to become close friends with Girl 2 over the next two years.
...Two years that would become some of the best years of my life, probably more memorable than all the school I attended for the nine years that followed.
That sounds kind of sad. Well. Let me explain.
I was a moderately unpopular kid during elementary school in New Jersey. That's got to be the most boring kind of unpopular. It's nothing to cry a river over—I had a small group of close friends and most of my classmates were nice to me, aside from two dickish kids who occasionally bullied me. I didn't feel like I fit in, which didn't bother me too much; I just accepted it as the way things were. It's hard to long for better when you don't know things can be better. (Unlike my post-TAS years back in New Jersey when I was acutely aware that things could be better and it made me quite depressed, but that's not a story for this post or any post, probably.) I could've had a far worse experience for clinging to the bottom fifth of the social ladder.
Then TAS was all like, "Robyn, things can be so much better, for real. Let me show you. First, take this overflowing bucket of friends. You'll fit in nicely with your above-average intelligence; in a school mostly populated by high-achieving, well-off Chinese kids, that makes you pretty average. Oh yeah, you're surrounded by Chinese kids—welcome to not being a minority. Also, the school cafeteria has chicken nuggets, french fries, and slushies. You're gonna like it here."
I liked it. I liked it a lot. Even gym class had its fun moments. Gym class. (I mean, I still loathed gym, just less so than I did in New Jersey, where the highlight of the class was not being the last kid picked for a team.)
Why was it so much easier to make friends in TAS than in New Jersey? I'm guessing for many reasons not applicable to New Jersey. Living in a foreign country during the awkward tween years is a good unifier, and being the new kid in a city where expatriates regularly come and go means you automatically have a community of other new kids to bond with. The international student body was an important part—I think it made for a friendlier, more welcoming environment. It definitely made for a more diverse and interesting environment.
Equally important were the teachers. I loved my teachers. Ms. Lindgren, my 6th grade science teacher who ensured we'd never forget the symbol for potassium thanks to the innovative method of doing jumping jacks in front of the class while shouting, "Potassium, K!" Mr. Puckett (RIP), my 7th grade math teacher with a sweet Southern lilt who made pre-algebra fun. (And I just found out now through Googling that he was also an accomplished artist. Wish I had known that back in middle school.) Mrs. Mock, my 6th grade English/Social Studies teacher who had a knack for being able to speak with seemingly any non-American accent. And Mr. Tossey and Ms. Wu and Mr. Halabi and more and more.
And I don't mean to knock the public school teachers I've had in New Jersey; most of them were great and passionate about teaching, but their work sometimes suffered at the hands of a smattering of disrespectful students. It's just much more enjoyable to learn when you're surrounded by students who care about their school and don't disrupt the class.
I do realize comparing TAS against public school in New Jersey isn't that fair. TAS is an expensive private school, and you get what you pay for. For those attending middle or upper school this year, that'll cost about $25,000, assuming I added up the tuition, transportation, food, and other fees correctly. I don't know how much it cost back in 1996 when I first started there, but I'd guess it was equally expensive for the time. Thank you, and sorry, Mom and Dad. At least it's not as bad as private schools in New York City?
During my last day at TAS, I tried to give as many goodbye hugs as possible. I was possessed by some kind of confident affection I've never really felt since then, and I don't think it could be reproduced. It was tied to the time and place, plus the knowledge that I'd never see most of my classmates again.
Anyhoo, back to Tianmu roaming.
Shortly after passing TAS, Lee Anne, the biggest bubble tea aficionado I know, popped by local chain Come Buy, one of many bubble tea chains you'll find in Taipei. I was mostly amused by the name. It's not asinine enough to fit in the world of Idiocracy, yet that's what it brought to my mind. (I'm one of those people who fits in the category of "Enjoyed Idiocracy," in case that uncovers the depths of my being.)
If I recall correctly—and I very well may not be, thus is the problem with digging up two-and-a-half-year-old memories—Lee Anne didn't like their bubble tea that much.
Oh my stars, RANDOM OBANYAKI STAND?!?! [Cue dancing pony emerging from a burst of rainbow glitter.] Obanyaki, or imagawayaki, is a Japanese snack made with a pancake-like batter griddled in deep, puck-shaped molds around some kind of filling—traditionally sweet red bean paste, with custard being the next most common filling. I grew up eating obanyaki from Yaohan (now Mitsuwa) in Edgewater, New Jersey. No visit was complete until we had picked up a carton of six freshly made obanyaki, half of which would immediately be eaten during the car ride home (gotta eat it while it's still hot and crisp), the rest to be toasted later at home. I'm guessing the nostalgic factor is the main reason I'm so enamored by obanyaki, but they're also, like, tasty, because how could a warm pancake puck heavy with sweet goo not taste good?
This black sesame-studded version was all right. Not bad, not particularly memorable. Nick's rec is probably better. Those obanyaki look like they're stuffed up the wazoo.
Here's a massive poop. It's the kind of graffiti that really speaks to me.
Many sidewalks in Taipei look like so. I thought I'd have more to say than that. ...Nope.
Back to food! For a late afternoon snack, Lee Anne brought me to one of her favorite places, Song Jiang Pie and Porridge (宋江餡餅粥). And now it's one of my favorite places.
Methinks this represents the "pie" part of their name—a pie made by squishing down a thin-skinned bun/oversized dumpling into a fat puck and frying it on both sides to a light golden crisp. (Puck food, the unofficial shape of the afternoon.) According to my mom (aka, my personal translator), the menu lists a beef-filled pan-fried pie and a pan-fried pie of indeterminate filling. We got the beefy version, which was filled not just with beef and scallions but also a gush of meat juice. Damn tasty.
We couldn't pass up fried pork dumplings. Probably good, although not as memorable as the beef pie.
From their selection of small cold dishes, we tried their kao fu—squidgy, spongy chunks of wheat gluten.
The top right corner of their menu proclaimed, "UNEQUALED BEAUTY / UNBELIEVABLE SIGHTS." I wish I possessed such confidence. I've been outdone by a menu.
I don't remember exactly where this is, but it was a nice pedestrian path. Somewhere! At night!
A few hours after our snack, we met up at Ding Tai Fung with two of my friends from TAS, Pearl and Cleo.
Din Tai Fung is surely Taipei's most famous restaurant chain (well, restaurant period), with locations scattered around East and Southeast Asia, along with Australia and the US. This intercontinental expansion is propelled by the power of their xiao long bao, translating to something like "small basket buns," aka steamed soup dumplings, or as I like to call them, soupy dumps. (I prefer to call all dumplings dumps. Because dumps sound like poops. Poops are funny. Remember my bathroom sign?)
As someone who isn't picky about soup dumplings, my general impression was, "Not life-changing, but good." Read Kenji's review for 10000 percent more detail. Even though his review is of a location in Tokyo, my experience was similar. He says the dumplings tasted "almost too clean"—indeed, they didn't have oomph. Not that they need oomph. They just tasted less oomphy than others I've had, a taste that I've come to expect.
If you're visiting Taipei you'd probably be too curious to not give these a try. And try 'em, you should. It's just hard for anything with mega-piles of hype to live up to that hype. (Cronuts are a prime example of this effect.)
Like Kenji said in his review, the shumai were more enjoyable. I don't prefer shumai over soup dumplings in general, but I guess I do when the shumai are exceptionally better than the norm and receive zero buckets of hype.
I wouldn't have thought to order the pork chop fried rice if not for Nick's recommendation. And a good recommendation it was. It sounds like a simple throwaway item, but if you're into fried rice, get it.
I don't remember much about the other dishes we ordered, but there they are [points at screen].
Din Tai Fung's prices are higher than average in Taipei but still cheap. A 2013 menu spotted at Adventures Abroad in Taipei lists 10 pieces of pork soup dumplings for NT $200, about $6.60. For that, you get to eat in a clean, brightly lit restaurant with efficient service and the charm of an IKEA cafeteria. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I'm quite a fan of IKEA's cafeteria.
Lastly, MORE PHOTOS WITH HAPPY SOUP DUMPLING MAN!!!
For dessert, we walked a few blocks down to Eastern Ice Store, an old school shaved/crushed ice shop that's been around for over 20 years, according to taipeitravel.net. The shop is split into two rooms: order in one, eat and sit in the other. (Or if the room is full, sit on a stool on the sidewalk.)
Crushed ice menu, translated by Momma Lee:
Behold the wall of toppings, densely packed with metal bins of starch balls, bean mash, sweet sauces, and jelly chunks, among other things. (There's the name of your new shaved ice shop: Balls, Mash, Sauces, and Chunks.) I copied the toppings list from Eastern Ice Store's website and squeezed it through the Google Translate wringer. Here are the results:
A bit of Googling tells me "pink circle" is a not very helpful translation for tapioca balls.
...Yeah, I don't remember what we ordered. Looks like barley, something fungusy, and tapioca bathing in syrup. It was mostly sweet toppings soup with not much ice, which was fine with me because I liked the toppings more than the crunchy ice bits.
But if you want more ice, no problem! Just help yourself to the ice from this big bucket. You can also add more syrup from the neighboring pot.
I'm not sure I'd go out of my way to eat at Eastern Ice Store, but it's a unique dessert spot worth visiting if you're in the area.
Taipei 2011, Day 3: Taipei 101 Food Court and Dim Sum Dinner
Taipei 2011, Day 2: Shaved Ice Two Ways, 7-Eleven, Shilin Night Market, Etc.
Taipei 2011, Day 1: Fried Crullers, Bear Head Doughnuts, Scallion Pancakes, Etc.
Belated Intro to Taipei, or "What's That Smell?"
Song Jiang Pie and Porridge (宋江餡餅粥)
111, Taiwan, 台北市士林區天母北路2號 (map)
+886 2 2874 7885
Din Tai Fung
Multiple locations listed at dintaifung.com.tw, but if you're curious, I went to this one:
No. 218, Section 4, Zhōngxiào East Rd, Daan District, Taipei City, Taiwan 106 (map)
+886 2 2721 7890
Eastern Ice Store
No. 38, Lane 216, Section 4, Zhōngxiào East Rd, Daan District, Taipei City, Taiwan 106 (map)
(02) 2777-2057; efy.com.tw
'Cause there ain't no doubt I love this land,
God bless the USA.
Lee Greenwood's patriotic crooning doesn't often pop into my head, but when it does, it's probably not for any reason Greenwood had in mind. Unless he wrote those words to behold the majesty of a sub roll stuffed with three different kinds of fried foods. In that case, I totally nailed it.
That fried food-stuffed roll is just one many members of the fat sandwich family. A fat sandwich is what you get when you cross a burger and/or a cheese steak and/or a gyro and/or bacon and/or eggs and/or dump on a sports bar appetizer platter—namely mozzarella sticks, chicken fingers, and fries—and douse it all in a sauce or two. It sounds like a monstrosity from Pawnee, Indiana,* but luckily for us non-fictional folks it hails from New Brunswick, New Jersey, where grease trucks at Rutgers University have been slinging fat sandwiches since the '80s.
* "First in friendship, fourth in obesity."]]>
For about 20 years the grease trucks were located in a parking lot owned by Rutgers, but last August the trucks were forced to relocate to make way for a new development. I'm not familiar enough with the grease truck family to know if they've all reopened elsewhere, but I can tell you the most famous of these trucks, RU Hungry, moved about one and a half miles away from its original spot at 11 Nichol Avenue on Rutger's Douglass Campus.
With over 30 fat sandwiches to choose from and no patience to wade through the options, I took the easy way out with RU Hungry's most popular sandwich, the Fat Darrell ($6.50)—a sandwich so popular it has its own website, fatdarrell.com, and a trademarked name. What kind of sandwich is worth all that? A sandwich stuffed with chicken fingers, mozzarella sticks, french fries, and marinara sauce, that's what.
As fatdarrell.com explains, the Fat Darrell was invented by Rutgers student Darrell W. Butler back in 1997, borne out of a craving for the golden trio of chicken fingers, mozzarella sticks, and fries, and a lack of funds to buy all these things separately. Darrell convinced RU Hungry's then owner, Abdul Eid, to pile everything into a sandwich for $4.25. And then a bagillion people ordered it after him because it's one of the best combinations ever. Its popularity has been boosted by plenty of media attention, most notably from being dubbed the best sandwich in the country by Maxim magazine in 2004.
So how does it taste if you're not drunk or high as a kite? As someone who doesn't drink or smoke, I say it tastes damn good. That's what I expected from a sandwich that combines three of my favorite junk foods. I wouldn't say it's better than eating chicken fingers, mozzarella sticks, and fries separately—it's just different. The best, most crucial part was the top layer of super crisp, fresh-from-the-oil-vat french fries. The chicken fingers were satisfactory, standard breaded protein strips, not especially dry or moist. I wouldn't have minded more mozzarella sticks; they got suffocated by the chicken and fries. (Actually, what might be really good is a Fat Darrell Parm blanketed in a layer of melted mozzarella. Or maybe that's overdoing it. Or maybe that's not. [strokes chin])
Does the Fat Darrell deserve the title "Best Sandwich in America"? Come on. No. (Does any one sandwich deserve such a lofty title?) But I would put it on the list of great American sandwiches. And, man, we've got a lot of great sandwiches.
Because there's no reason vegetarians should be denied the privilege of stuffing themselves with excessively caloric foods, RU Hungry offers a handful of vegetarian fat sandwiches. I tried the Veggie Brian ($6.50) made with a veggie burger patty, not quite enough mozzarella sticks, plenty of french fries, and a few handfuls of shredded lettuce, all well lubricated with ketchup and mayo. Overall it's the fries and sauce you taste the most, and that's perfectly fine by me. The shredded lettuce lent a refreshing, light crunch—never a bad thing in a sandwich full of fries—and helped delude me into thinking I wasn't eating something terribly unhealthy.
Fat sandwiches are obviously not an everyday food. Maybe a quad-monthly food. The Fat Darrell has been reported to contain 1,718 calories and 78 grams of fat, and compared to the other fat sandwiches it sounds like one of the tamer choices. If you want to go a somewhat reasonable route, you could split one sandwich with a friend and both emerge feeling satisfied...but if you wanted a reasonable meal, you wouldn't be eating a fat sandwich. On that note, my friend and I completely finished our two sandwiches—I ate 3/4ths of sandwich, he ate the rest—and we felt...kind of ok after. Not terrible. Not filled with regret. We just didn't eat much for dinner.
What I don't understand is why fat sandwiches aren't more widespread. Lots of restaurants have the basic ingredients; it's just a matter of stuffing them all into a sub roll. Maybe an intrepid eater has to request a specially made sandwich to get the ball rolling at these unenlightened fat sandwich-less eateries. It brings to mind that false Ghandi quote, "Be the change you wish to see in the world." You can be that change. You can be that intrepid eater. (I'm probably not even applying that fake quote correctly, but whatever.)
Or you could refrain from eating fat sandwiches like a respectable human being. Whatever floats your boat. My boat is full of fat, so it's floating really well.
RU Hungry
11 Nichol Ave, New Brunswick, NJ 08901 (map)
732-246-2177; ruhungrynj.net
Despite that Tristan doesn't appear in this blog nearly as much as he did in the days of yore, we are still best buds. Special best buds. The kind of special best buds who can comfortably communicate solely through one-word texts that say "butts." This is the big leagues we're talking about.
Tristan is also the kind of friend who will cast aside his normally healthy, vegetarian diet and defy all he believes in to aid me in my quest for fat sandwiches. Also, because he wanted to eat sandwiches stuffed with fries and mozzarella sticks, like any normal human with working taste buds and a lust for fat and sodium. But mostly because of me. I think. Dance for me, Tristan, DANCE. And drive for me, because I hate driving.
So, many lovey-dovey huggy-smushy thanks to Tristan for being the bestest of buds and giving me a reason to visit New Brunswick. He's getting his PhD at Rutgers, so he'll be there until he's like 40 or something. Long after his brain drowns in knowledge and his body grows a second brain to accommodate the overflow of thinking bits, I'll be there to dumb him down with my vapid conversation and random sound effects and my insistence on playing with his stuffed animals. Like a true friend.]]>
This is a bit of a cop-out, folks. Not much happened on this day of my Taipei trip, so I'm going to focus on the photos and pair them with forgettable blurbs. It'll be like I'm showing you a slideshow of my vacation! People looove vacation slideshows!...no, wait, vacation slideshows are commonly reviled for being long and boring. But I'm not forcing you to watch, so do as you please. You're your own woman. Or man. (Or neither. Or both.) And you have the power to do what you want. ...[puts on serious face]...Within the law.
If you want to read more of my words with fewer photos, you can check out my recent posts on Serious Eats, published for your mild enjoyment (and because Max made me write them, which is good because, as you can see, without someone telling me what to do I do very little). Here's me talking about my love of stewy foods with rice and rambling about bringing Kåre to a Chinese buffet.
Continue for photo splodge time:]]>
Taipei 2011, Day 2: Shaved Ice Two Ways, 7-Eleven, Shilin Night Market, Etc.
Taipei 2011, Day 1: Fried Crullers, Bear Head Doughnuts, Scallion Pancakes, Etc.
Belated Intro to Taipei, or "What's That Smell?"
Last February I went on a press trip to Hong Kong (along with Rachelle Lucas and Cynthia Drescher) sponsored by the Hong Kong Tourism Board. I meant to blog something about it sooner—perhaps, saaaay, last year—but I figured I'd wait until I was finished writing about it on Serious Eats.
And I just did. Finish writing about it. This month. Erm. Well. Better late than never? That's the delusion I buy into so I don't hate myself.
Here's a list of all the posts I wrote:
That's the greatest number of posts I've ever wrung out of a press trip, although in an ideal world it would've been more. I didn't eat as much during the trip as I would've liked—it wasn't primarily food-focused—but I did well with the schedule I was given and the limitations of the Chinese New Year holiday, thanks to the help of a handful of awesome people.
Michael Poon was our most excellent guide during the trip—super helpful, accommodating, and knowledgable, besides plain ol' friendly and laid back. Definitely the person you want to be with on your first trip to Hong Kong—he will do whatever he can to make your Hong Kong dreams COME TRUE. I can't believe I almost didn't try Yee Shun Milk Company until I casually told Michael on the last day of my trip I had yet to try steamed milk pudding. Gawd, that stuff is good.
Fellow food blogger Rachel Balota was my number one eating partner, about as important as Michael in helping me get the most out of my visit. Besides enthusiastically joining me at Yat Lok, Lee Keung Kee, Hokkaido Dairy Farm Milk Restaurant, Mak's Noodle, and wherever else I could drag her, she met up with me during my "layover" back to NYC from Taipei and helped squeeze five more places in my eating itinerary. ...Including McDonald's, at my request. I wouldn't ask just anyone to go to McDonald's. Hope you feel special, Rachel. WE HAVE FORGED A BOND YOU CANNOT BREAK sorry.
Susan Jung is the food and wine editor of the South China Morning Post, and she's been reading my blog since at least 2007. Which blows my lil' mind. I was especially mindblown when in 2008 she praised my blog in an issue of South China Morning Post, which actually took up precious dead tree space and not just digital space. I was shocked when I read that at 23; now I'm 28 and I'm still shocked. I hope Susan doesn't regret what she wrote.
I was a bit nervous meeting Susan for the first time. No reason to, of course; she's 100% sweetheart. I joined her, her husband, and her friends Lambda and Peter for a pork-heavy Cantonese dinner at Manor Restaurant (now closed, FFFFFUUU) and black sesame soup at Yeun Kee Dessert. Susan knows what I like because she's thoughtful and awesome.
Susana, a sweet TGWAE reader who answered my call to meet up in HK, introduced me to the wonders of Hong Kong dessert shops at Happy Together. HAPPY TOGETHER. She ordered a dessert called Popping Golden Man. POPPING GOLDEN MAN. As for what that entails, it's mango, mango pudding, mango ice cream, mango juice, and Pop Rocks—duh. I went for the self-explanatory Deep Fried Mango Ice-Cream Pancake. God knows why I didn't go for something with a crazy name. Eating dessert with Susana was a refreshing break from my press trip itinerary. Make sure to check out her great blog about life in Hong Kong and travels around Asia!
I didn't think I'd have enough time to meet up with Kar-Yan, who's been reading my blog for years. Looking back, I should slap Past Robyn on the head. You have no idea when you're going to be back in Hong Kong! Make the time. You don't get many readers like Kar-Yan. Thankfully, we were able to meet up around midnight on my last night in Hong Kong at a Tsui Wah across the street from my hotel. We feasted on crispy buns with condensed milk and washed 'em down with Champagne milk tea (aka, milk tea in a bottle that sits in its own personal ice bucket). That's kind of a perfect last-night-in-Hong-Kong for me. Not just any night—it was Valentine's Day! (Kåre, this is all you have to do to make me happy on Valentine's Day. Milk tea + toasted buns saturated with butter and condensed milk.)
I took hundreds of photos in Hong Kong, but you'd have to wade through the bowels of my Flickr photostream to see 'em. ...Or I can just pick a bunch of my favorites and post 'em here. Alright, I'll try that.
What makes Blow Pops the most coveted of the lollipop family? (At least, if you were elementary school-aged me in the early '90s.) The bubblegum center.* Without the gum, it's just a fat, boring lollipop. Chewing on bubblegum not encased in a hard candy shell just isn't the same. It doesn't leave you with the heady sense of accomplishment**, of victory, that only comes from licking and crunching your way through a thick layer of candy to uncover more candy.
* If you're curious, as I was, here is the patent for "Method for making candy with gum inside."
** My list of childhood accomplishments is very, very short.
How does this relate to shaved ice? Barely. But pretend I came up with a better comparison than what I'm about to tell you. (And pretend with each passing second you're not inching closer to your death. And pretend there is a box of corgi puppies outside your door waiting to let loose in your home and trample you with more cute fluffy butt action than you could ever dream of OH GOD IT'S AMAZINGGUUHHH.)
Bad shaved ice is sort of the opposite of a Blow Pop. The outermost layer is where the party is—a party of syrup-soaked, toppings-laden bites—while digging deeper into the ice mound reveals a center of...ice. Crunchy bits of unadorned ice due to meager and/or ill-distributed toppings.
This is how you do it right:
Thanks to Tai Yi Milk King (臺一牛奶大王)—a famous old-school shaved ice shop that's been serving Taipei since 1956—I now know one sign that I'm about to dig into a good bowl of shaved ice: when it looks like a toppings bar puked on it. Vigorously. In this case, the toppings bar hacked out a hefty mound of homemade glutinous rice balls, sweet red beans, and sweet mung beans dripping with thick condensed milk. Crunchy, soft-n-chewy, starchy, milky-n-gooey—this pile has it all, with hardly any naked ice ruining the party. The way nature intended.
Looking like vomit isn't a requirement, of course. Here's another bowl of shaved ice more thoughtfully heaped with ripe mango chunks, probably less ripe slices of strawberries, and condensed milk.]]>
And because it was lunch time, we supplemented our shaved ice piles with wonton soup. Because the shaved ice shop makes wontons.
Thankfully, Joan of A Hungry Girls' Guide to Taipei, aka one of the best people you could eat with in Taipei, helped Lee Anne and me plow through these bowls of shaved ice. Joan loves Tai Yi, Nick loves Tai Yi, and you should too, lest you break the chain of love, and why would you do that?
Ok, you might do that if you are adverse to grossly excessive toppings, or don't love the ice. And I must admit, I don't love the ice, but I do love the toppings. To me, Tai Yi is sort of like the Taiwanese shaved ice version of Eddie's Sweet Shop, an old school ice cream shop in Queens and one of my most favorite ice cream shops in the world. You don't go to Eddie's for the ice cream (ice cream that's totally fine, just nothing you'd go out of your way for); you go for the no-holds-barred smothering of traditional toppings. I feel the same about Tai Yi.
After we waddled out of Tai Yi, Joan guided us around some charming backstreets:
Oh no, it's Mister Donut, that means we have to go inside and buy doughnuts.
And the wonderfully chewy Pon de Ring was mine.
Mister Donut (well, Japan in general) understands the value of having an adorable mascot. An adorable mascot that spreads joy and happiness to people the world over, luring in devotees with its round, innocent face...then used to sell limited edition goods only obtainable by buying a lot of doughnuts. By the end of my trip, I had accrued enough Mister Donut points to buy the plush blanket. I am not ashamed. I did it...for friendship. (I gave it to Nick as a gift. I hope he still has it. If not, he should definitely lie to me and tell me he still has it.)
We hopped the metro to Ximending, a major shopping and entertainment district, where Joan gave us a taste of her Ximending eating tour.
Ay Chung Noodles is famous for their vermicelli with pig intestine, a variation of the popular Taiwanese dish oyster vermicelli. That's all they make. You can get it large (NT$60) or small (NT$45), and season it to your liking at their toppings bar with tubs of chili, garlic, and vinegar. Seating consists of stools scattered in front of the store.
I'm ashamed to admit I barely remember anything about the dish besides that the noodles are very soft—not mushy-soft, just soft—and the soup is thick. I didn't dislike it, but I prefer noodles with some chew to them. I wish I remembered more about the broth. Various reviews I came across say it's flavored with bonito flakes and bamboo shoots, besides the intestines.
I know I'm not selling this well at all, but you should try Ay Chung if you're in Ximending. I'll have to try it again on my next visit. Maybe I'll even end up with a description that isn't totally useless.
For dessert we went to...KFC! For Portuguese egg custard tarts! Because they sell those. And they're not bad. They come in Original, Custard, and "Brown Sugar Mochi Q, and they're served warm, my favorite temperature for flaky-crusted, creamy custard-filled tarts. The crust isn't the delicately flaky crust I'm used to—the kind that instantly plops a mess of feathery flakes when you bite into it—but a sturdier puff pastry-like crust. I'm guessing there are better Portuguese egg custard tarts in Taipei, but if you're an egg custard tart fan these are worth a try.
Next up, a visit to 7-Eleven. 7-Eleven? Yup. If you're into food, visiting a convenience store should be on your to-do list, as ordinary as it may seem. FOR ORDINARY, IT IS NOT (at least, if you've only ever been to 7-Eleven in the US), because it's full of Taiwanese/Japanese/etc. goods instead of American goods. It's a fact that East Asian convenience foods are better than American convenience foods, right? Yes.
And if that isn't enough for you, 7-Eleven has harnessed the power of a cute mascot named OPEN-Chan, a rainbow-headed space dog whose birthday is on July 11 and is from a planet located an 11-day rocket journey away from Earth in the 7-o-clock direction, duh. (You need to click that link. The mascot's profile is really...something. I can't read without imagining Catbug fervently shouting it at me. Please tell me I'm not the only one.)
And you'll have plenty of chances considering Taiwan is one of the most densely 7-Elevened areas in the world.
I took quite a lot of photos before an employee waved their hands at me to stop. Here are the fruits of my labors:
* When I lived in Taipei in the mid-'90s, I shopped at Family Mart waaay more than 7-Eleven due to proximity to my apartment, but I failed to visit a Family Mart on my trip, so I can't tell you much about it. This forum thread at Forumosa.com compares the two chains.
For dinner, my dad brought my grandpa and me to Water Drop Teahouse (滴水書坊), a Taiwanese vegetarian chain with an outpost near my grandparents' place in Beitou. The restaurant is next to An-Kuo Temple, a local branch of Buddhist organization Fo Guang Shan. This article says the restaurant chain is run under the Fo Guang Shan system.
As usual, I fail you in the "describing food" department, as my most vibrant memory of this meal was getting attacked by mosquitos. Either I wasn't very hungry or I was distracted by my increasingly itchy, swelling legs. Overall, I liked the food enough—it tasted light and simple—but I may have liked the cozy wooden hut-like setting even more.
For a more helpful review plus lots of photos, check out AJ's Veggie Adventure.
You may as well take a peek inside the temple while you're there.
After dinner, I met up with Lee Anne at Shilin Night Market, Taipei's most famous night market and one of the city's largest, if not the largest. How large? ...It's...big. (Ok, I tried to get a more specific measurement of the largeness. This article says the market is 5,710 square meters. If you're like me, that doesn't mean anything to you. So I looked up the area of an American football field: about 5,349 square meters. That makes Shilin Night Market the size of about 1.07 football fields. Unless I fail at math.) And super crowded. How do you navigate it? Just step into the sea of people and flow through the the maze of sign-lit streets lined with open-air shops and stalls selling clothes, handbags, shoes, accessories, and, most importantly food, all for cheap. Food's really what you want. So that was our plan: walk around and eat food.
For some reason, we didn't check out the food court, which for nearly a decade until the end of 2011 was housed in a semi-temporary building down the street from the main drag of the night market. I'm guessing we didn't go because we weren't that hungry; otherwise it looks like I failed at life. When I visited Taipei early this year I did check out the food court's new digs, a renovated basement space that felt like a fire hazard. But that's a post for another day. As for what happened to the temporary location, it was torn down to make way for the new Taipei Performing Arts Center, set to open in 2015.
First order of food biz: large fried chicken "steak" from Hot-Star (Hao Da Da Ji Pai, 豪大大雞排), a Taiwanese chain that also has outposts in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Shanghai, South Korea, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Australia. Their specialty, called jipai, is like a thicker, crisper, juicier, spiced version of schnitznel. But you don't need a plate or utensils; you just eat it out of a paper bag. So...it's awesome. This was my first time eating it and I was immediately hooked for life. Yes, I'm confident that I'll love this chicken until I am dead.
I couldn't find a definitive description of how Hot-Star makes their fried chicken steak/cutlet/meat plank, so here's an educated guess based on information from Taiwan Food Culture, LauHound, Never Too Sweet, and Mickey's Favorite Taiwanese Recipes. Thinly pounded chicken breast is marinated, coated in potato starch and cornstarch mixed with five spice powder and white pepper, deep fried, and sprinkled with chili powder.
It's best eaten with two hands. Because it's huge. And it'll only set you back 55NT, about $1.90. Sigh.
Hot Star has at least two locations in Shilin Night Market. Besides the stall we went to, there's one in the basement food court.
We poked around some random stationery-and-cute-things stores for a while because stationery and cute things are two of our top interests. I remember seeing a lot Angry Birds accessories and alpaca plush toys, in case you're wondering what was popular...two years ago. Perhaps not anymore. I'm guessing these Totoro products will never go out of style.
We probably spent too much time in JSF ogling stationery, often colorful and riddled with cute animals and poetic Engrish making profound statements about friendship and happiness. On one hand, I can understand how some people may not be enamored by Asian stationery. On the other hand, OH GOD WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU, HAVE YOU SEEN ALL THESE CUTE NOTEBOOKS and NOTEPADS and NOTECARDS and TINY KEYRING NOTEBOOKS and LETTERSETS and STICKERS and THE LATEST IN PEN AND PENCIL TECHNOLOGY?! HOW DOES IT NOT BLOW YOUR MIND?
...Yeah, I know I'm the weird one.
Let's get back on the food train! Chuga-chuga-chuga-chugaflump. That's the sound of the train hitting a pile of sad. I recalled Nick telling me to check out a sheng jian bao stand in the market, but I didn't write down which one. (It's this one, by the way.) The buns from this stand weren't very good. I don't remember why exactly, but I'd guess they were inadequately crisp on the bottom and juicy on the inside. Two mehs up from Lee Anne and me.
Aaand back off the food train.
You'll find lots of crane game machines in the night market filled with neatly stacked piles of whatever's cute and/or popular. During my visit earlier this year that meant craploads of Adventure Time things. Back in 2011 there was none o' that.
Japanese capsule toys remind me of when I was a kid and easily enticed by those quarter toy machines filled with sticky goo-hands, flimsy plastic jewelry, poorly molded figurines, and more of the worst quality trinkets ever peddled to children. Of course, now that I'm an adult I look at those machines and think, "Gosh [clutches chest while squinting at machines], all of these so called 'toys' are atrocious, simply atrocious. [shakes head, monocle bounces off face] What a foolish child I must've been." And as an adult with a disposable income, when I'm presented with walls of Japanese capsule toys I go, "OOOOH, OOH, OMG, IT'S A KEYCHAIN WITH A CUTE FAT KITTY ON IT, I MUST BUY THREE OF THEM!!!"
Okay, food train again. Last stop: Xin Fa Ting (SFT), a famous shaved ice shop.
SFT's shaved ice is a different style compared to Tai Yi's shaved ice: fluffy, superfine shavings that melt in your mouth (appropriately also called snow ice), as opposed to Tai Yi's coarser, crunchier ice. You can read a thorough comparison of the two (with much better descriptions than I can come up with) at From Pearls to Stinky Tofu. I can't say one is better than the other; both are great in different ways and worth trying if you visit Taipei, but my ideal ice texture would be somewhere between the superfine and the sightly crunchy, like in Hawaiian shave ice.
Lastly, continuing the theme of unique "No Smoking" signs from my first post, here are two different signs in SFT featuring a merciless fork that'll break your cigarette in half...and a cute lil' bird-thing wearing blue pants and a tiny blue cap who will put out your cigarette with a tiny red hose awwww.
Taipei 2011, Day 1: Fried Crullers, Bear Head Doughnuts, Scallion Pancakes, Etc.
Belated Intro to Taipei, or "What's That Smell?"
Tai Yi Milk King
No. 82號, Section 3, Xīnshēng South Road, Daan District, Taipei City, Taiwan 106 (map)
+886 2 2363 4341
Ay Chung Noodles
No. 8之1號, Éméi St, Wanhua District, Taipei City, Taiwan 108 (map)
+886 2 2388 8808
Water Drop Teahouse
No. 10, Lane 101, Fùxīngsān Rd, Beitou District,Taipei City, Taiwan 112 (map)
02-2891-4019; closed Mondays
Shilin Night Market
MRT stop Jiantan Station; (map)
Specific directions
We did some non-food activities for a bit.
Xin Fa Ting (辛發亭冰品店)
No. 1號, Ānpíng St, Shilin District Taipei City, Taiwan 111 (map)
+886 2 2882 0206
Do you like sandwiches? Pudding? Cake? Candy? Then let me be your guide. Because that's all I'm going to feed you.
This itinerary represents my favorite places to bring out-of-towners to on the Lower East Side for a morning and afternoon jaunt. "Favorite places" does not equate to "best places," but they are, in my humble opinion, consistently good, unique, and won't break the bank. These places aren't all meant to be eaten at in one day (but you can try; more power to you). Pick and choose what sounds best. You'll probably feel disgusting by the end of it, but it'll be worth it.]]> Breakfast
Start your day off with a food coma by going to Shopsins, home of the city's most daunting menus [PDF] featuring over 300 items, brought to you by one of the city's most infamously intimidating restaurateurs, Kenny Shopsin (but really, you shouldn't be afraid). Want a double-decker grilled cheese French toast sandwich? They've got that. Want pancakes encrusted with macaroni and cheese? Yes, yes you do, and you'll get 'em here. Can't decide between schnitzel, fried eggs, and banana bread pudding French toast? Don't stress; they'll serve you a combo of all three. That's just a wee smattering of all the glorious things you can start your day with. If the menu is too much for your brain to handle, I'd recommend sticking to breakfast items, sandwiches/burgers, and fried things. The prices may seem high, but the portions tend to skew huge.
Notes: Seating is limited, and they don't serve parties larger than four. You may have to wait in line if you come here on the weekend. Go on a weekday if you can. Also note the limited opening hours: Wed. to Sat., 9 a.m. - 2 p.m., Sun., 10 a.m. - 2 p.m., closed Mon. and Tues. You have to go inside Essex Street Market to find Shopsin's, located in the southwest corner of the building.
Want something more traditional? Grab breakfast at Cup and Saucer Luncheonette, a old school greasy spoon that's been around for decades. Don't come here with a group; there are no straight-up tables in this narrow restaurant, just a long counter and seats along the window. The menu has solid diner staples that won't blow your mind, but the food is better than other diners in the area, and it's fast, satisfying, and wallet-friendly. The service is charming, too.
Take a stroll around Essex Street Market. It's one of the city's oldest markets, established in 1940, with over 20 vendors offering produce, meat, fish, spices, cheeses, baked goods—hell, just look at our photo tour of the market.
Continue digesting at Economy Candy, the city's best candy store, open since 1937. This modestly sized space is packed to the rafters with all things sweet and sugary: bulk gummies, bulk M&Ms, bulk jelly beans, bulk nuts and dried fruit, giant jawbreakers, five-pound lollipops, obscure candy bars, British chocolate bars, giant Pez dispensers, and more. I'd be suspicious of anyone who didn't love Economy Candy.
Although I generally steer clear of tourist-filled restaurants, Katz's Delicatessen is an exception. It's really fuggin' good. One of my friends from Germany recently had a stopover in New York City—his first visit to New York City—with time to eat only one major meal. I told him to meet me at Katz's. Prices are high—their must-order pastrami sandwich is $16.95—but the portions are so large that I only need half a sandwich to feel uncomfortably stuffed. You're getting a pile of tender, fatty, juicy meat; a little goes a long way. Hungrier folks will want a whole sandwich, but if you have someone to share with, you don't have to spend that much money here.
Note: The front register only takes cash, but you can pay by credit card at the register in the back of the restaurant by the cakes.
My other favorite sandwich shop in the Lower East Side is Tiny's Giant Sandwich Shop. It's been my go-to sandwich shop for the last seven years. It's nothing like Katz's; it's more of a comfortable, casual, everyday spot with a wide range of consistently good, not-messy sandwiches for $10 and under, many of which come in two sizes and are vegetarian-friendly. One of my favorite combos is to split a Spicy Rizzak and a Veggiest of Them All, the former being a load of meat in bread (mostly turkey and bacon topped with gooey cheddar) and the latter essentially being a salad sandwich (but a good salad sandwich). They sort of balance each other out. Of course, if I could only choose one I'd go with the Spicy Rizzak, because meat.
Sugar Sweet Sunshine has the staples of a homey American bakery. Cupcakes! Fluffy layer cakes! Cookies! Pies! Cheesecakes! All served in a cozy, colorful shop that you can comfortably linger in. The main draw for me, though, is their trifles and puddings, like strawberry lemon trifle, banana pudding, and my favorite, the seasonal pumpkin eggnog pudding. These aren't just straight-up puddings, but puddings mashed with cake and whipped cream, which is immeasurably better than pudding or cake by its lonesome.
Sugar Sweet Sunshine is probably best known for its cupcakes though, which are great in their their simplicity. No fancy-pants flavors, no softball-sized cakes masquerading as cupcakes; they do the basics, and they do them well for just $1.75 a pop.
Doughnuts more your thing? Head to Doughnut Plant, the harbinger of the pricey gourmet doughnut in New York City. It's still a small investment, though—doughnuts start at $2.50, and for that you get doughnuts made with good ingredients with interesting flavors. I always go for the moist, tender cake doughnuts, specifically the Tres Leches or Brooklyn Blackout. If you like your yeast doughnuts chewier than not, theirs might be up your alley.
Still hungry? Follow SE:NY on Twitter and Facebook.]]>


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Patagonia R1 Hoody
Where to Buy
While the women's version hasn't been reviewed yet, there are 5 reviews for other versions of the R1 Hoody. Read all reviews »
Retailers' Descriptions
Here's what other sites are saying:
Everyone's peak looks different: calculus final, half-marathon, first 5. 0+ pitch, hike the PCT, pick up the kids on time. The Patagonia Women's R1 Fleece Hooded Pullover can help you cross your own personal finish line comfortably--and it will be there for future accomplishments as well. Regulator grid fabric lets fresh air in while keeping you just warm enough. Thumbholes provide your thumbs a place to rest while preventing the sleeves from sneaking up your arms. When the wind kicks up, throw a layer over this hoody, and never miss a beat as you reach your personal summit.
- Backcountry.com
More than a decade of ascents and counting: As days draw longer and winter turns to spring, our R1(R) Hoody sees even more mountain time. Its highly refined high/low interior grid fabric (Polartec(R) Power Dry(R)) breathes, stretches and compresses incredibly well, while offering durability, warmth and a terrific feel. The femininely tailored silhouette and design include the pared-down detailing that backcountry pursuits demand: a deep-venting front zipper that?s offset for chin comfort, wrist-warming thumb loops and a snug-fitting balaclava-style hood. With raglan sleeves for pack-wearing comfort, an exterior chest pocket that sits high and lightweight micro-grid stretch polyester at the cuffs and lower back for minimal bulk and rapid dry times. Beginning with our Spring 2015 styles, we've improved our women?s fit: There?s a slight increase at the waist for shaping and to ensure the fit is truer to size. All other measurements, such as chest and hip, remain the same. Please refer to our new, updated Women's Size Chart and Fit Descriptions for details. Note: this change applies to full-price Spring 2015 styles, not to past-season or on-sale items.
- Patagonia.com
Patagonia's optimal hooded midlayer or baselayer for alpine endeavors in demanding conditions. Made with Regulator grid fleece for outstanding stretch, breathability, compressibility and durability.
- CampSaver.com
When the days get colder and the sun sets earlier, but you can't bring yourself to head inside, keep war with the Patagonia R1 Hoody! A super warm and cozy baselayer, this hoody glides easily beneath layers and the snug fitting hood fits under your helmet for those long days on the mountain!-- Versatile R1(R) fleece provides excellent stretch, warmth, wicking and breathability in a variety of temperatures-- Fleece has high/low grid on inside for enhanced compressibility, airflow and dry time-- Microfiber face speeds moisture-wicking and allows for easy layering-- Capilene(R) 4 stretch panels under the arms, at cuffs and hem reduce bulk and increase breathability-- Snug-fitting balaclava-style hood; deep front zipper is offset for next-to-chin-comfort-- Zippered chest pocket with brushed polyester mesh-- Raglan sleeves for comfort under pack straps; Capilene 4 cuffs stretch and have thumb loops to hold sleeves in place
- OMCgear
Free Shipping. Patagonia Women's R1 Hoody FEATURES of the Patagonia Women's R1 Hoody Versatile R1 fleece, with its high/low grid pattern, provides excellent stretch, warmth, fast wicking and great breathability in a variety of temperatures Microfiber face speeds moisture-wicking and allows for easy layering Lightweight, micro-grid panels at cuffs and lower back reduce bulk and increase breathability Snug-fitting balaclava-style hood with offset center front zipper Zippered chest pocket with brushed polyester mesh Raglan sleeve construction reduces bulk under a backpack; thumb loops on cuff extend coverage SPECIFICATIONS of the Patagonia Women's R1 Hoody Weight: 11.4 oz / 323 g Slim fit Body: 6.8-oz Polartec Power Dry 93% polyester (41% recycled)/7% spandex Cuffs and rear hem: 5.4-oz Polartec Power Dry 92% polyester (54% recycled) / 8% spandex This product can only be shipped within the United States. Please don't hate us.
- Moosejaw
Patagonia Women's R1 Hoody
currently retails for:
$111.30 - $159.00
$111.30 - $159.00

subset: commoncrawl


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