by Liv | Jun 12, 2011
Ximending for young people is one of the coolest parts of Taipei. It is one of the many local districts within Taipei but has a number of fashionable shops but also lots of restaurants.
There’s a whole array of restaurants in Ximending but one restaurant which we didn’t know existed when Chris and I visited Taipei together for the first time is called Modern Toilet. Modern Toilet has a unique gimmick in that the whole restaurant is style liked a toilet. You sit on a toilet when you eat your food, you eat out of plastic toilets and you also drink out of plastic tubes that are shaped like the tubes men pee into in hospital.
They serve all kinds of food from curries to seafood hotpots and all kinds of other dishes in between. I’ve included pictures of the menu below for you to have a look through. They also do desserts that look like, as Chris calls it “swirly dog poops” lol.
Modern Toilet is fairly difficult to find. We tried following google maps which wasn’t a great help and we had to ask local shop keepers where to go. Once we arrived at Modern Toilet I had a seafood hotpot and Chris had a curry. Chris’s curry was so so, not very tasty and it wasn’t spicy at all but my hotpot was ok. Some of the fish was quite tasty but certainly this restaurant is all about the gimmick and not the food.
I’ll definitely give this restaurant 5 out of 5 for style, it’s hilarious and the staff were attentive and the food was served really quickly (as is normal in Taipei). They also sell a number of items like plastic toilets and they gave us the drink pots to bring home free of charge.
by Liv | May 6, 2011
Kao Chi Taipei Restaurant Review. The first time I brought Chris to Taiwan we didn’t go to any Taiwanese restaurants. Sure, we went to quite a few night markets which of course sell Taiwanese food but night market food is different to restaurant food.
Kao Chi Restaurant Taipei
Kao Chi Restaurant Taipei
For example, in a night market, you might buy a bowl of rice covered with slow cooked mince or you might buy a bowl of beef noodle soup. The night markets have a huge variety of food but it’s not restaurant food.
This time when we went back I wanted to take him to some more restaurants. We first of all went to a Shanghainese restaurant where we ate delicious dumplings amongst other things (this restaurant is mentioned elsewhere on this blog). I also wanted to take him to a famous restaurant called Din Tai Fung but it’s always really busy and it’s not necessarily any better than some other Taiwanese restaurants.
So, a couple days before we came home I took him to Kao Chi. Kao Chi’s website can be found here: http://kao-chi.com/ but as a warning it’s entirely in Chinese. Kao Chi is one of my very favourite restaurants and if you eat there you’ll know why.
We went with my parents and my grandmother and ordered quite a lot of dishes. We started off with sweet and sour pork ribs, which Chris quickly devoured, and then in usual Eastern fashion they brought most of our dishes to the table at once. We had a delicious cooked rice dish which I made on 28th April (this recipe can be found here: https://eggwansfoododyssey.com/2011/04/28/cooked-rice-with-bak-choy-and-gammon/). We also had Wuxi Ribs, which if you follow this site you’ll remember I cooked before.
Cooked Rice Kao Chi Restaurant Taipei
Wuxi Ribs Kao Chi Restaurant Taipei
The Wuxi Ribs were phenomenal. In terms of seasoning they’re quite similar to how I cooked them but the meat was very different. Ribs in the UK tend to be mostly bone with a little bit of meat but the ribs in Taiwan are some bone and mostly meat.
We also had one dish with a kind of jellyfish wrapped in pork belly. Incredibly tasty. Chris actually thought the pork belly was bacon but they cut the pork belly so fine it does look like bacon but tastes a lot better. I’m hoping to have a go at making this dish, minus the jellyfish as they can’t be bought in the UK, providing I can find a butcher that can slice pork belly thin enough.
Sliced Boiled Pork with Garlic Sauce Kao Chi Restaurant Taipei
We also ate really delicious shenjingbao, a large fish dish and a pork dish which came with garlic soy sauce. Below are the photos from the food we have but trust me everything is really delicious.
Shenjiangbao Kao Chi Restaurant Taipei
Fish Dish Kao Chi Restaurant Taipei
Tzung Tzu Kao Chi Restaurant Taipei
Deep Fried Pork Chop Kao Chi Restaurant
Rice Eel Kao Chi Restaurant Taipei
Drunken Chicken Kao Chi Restaurant Taipei
Steamed Crab Meat and Pork Dumplings Kao Chi Restaurant Taipei
by Liv | Apr 24, 2011
Mitsui Japanese Restaurant Taipei Review. Whenever I visit Taipei one of the restaurants I have to visit is Mitsui. I really love Japanese food, it’s beautiful and can be incredibly tasty, and Mitsui is one of the finest examples, if not the finest, in Taipei.Mitsui is also, by UK standards, incredible for value for money but there’s more on this below.
Whenever I visit Taipei one of the restaurants I have to visit is Mitsui. I really love Japanese food, it’s beautiful and can be incredibly tasty, and Mitsui is one of the finest examples, if not the finest, in Taipei.Mitsui is also, by UK standards, incredible for value for money but there’s more on this below.
THE RESTAURANT
Very smart and very modern. The service is impeccable. All of the staff are extremely knowledgeable and extremely attentive. They regularly top up your drinks and if you wait literally more than two or three minutes between dishes they apologise. If you also order a set menu the restaurant manager will personally take your order.
Whenever I visit Taipei one of the restaurants I have to visit is Mitsui. I really love Japanese food, it’s beautiful and can be incredibly tasty, and Mitsui is one of the finest examples, if not the finest, in Taipei.Mitsui is also, by UK standards, incredible for value for money but there’s more on this below.
THE FOOD
The first time that Chris and I travelled to Taipei together was in January 2009. We both ordered a set meal which consisted of the following:
- Large scallop on a seafood sesame base covered in crispy seaweed
- Spot Prawn and tuna belly sashimi
- Foie Gras dish
- King Crab dish (they brought a whole live King Crab to our table for our approval)
- A Lobster salad
- Kobe Beef Hot Pot (for information Kobe Beef is the Japanese beef that comes from Wagyu Cattle that are fed corn, massaged and given beer to drink). This might sound crazy but Kobe Beef is absolutely divine.
- Endless supply of Chinese tea
- Green tea ice cream and fresh seasonal fruit
How much? £50 each!!! In the UK this would have been £200-300 or more.
Deep Fried Scallop with seaweed
Spot Prawn and tuna belly sashimi
Lobster Salad and the dressing was amazing!
Kobe Beef Hot Pot
Green Tea Ice cream and seasonal fresh fruit
The second time around we ate differently. We ordered a set meal and three sushi platters.
- Sashimi platter. Highlights of this were a huge prawn and super fatty tuna (the fattest most expensive part of tuna)
- 2 sushi platters. This contained one piece of half cooked fish, roe sushi (roe is super tasty), salmon sushi and my favourite was the sea urchin sushi. Sea urchin looks and sounds disgusting but it’s absolutely divine. Another highlight was the squid sushi. Just two days before going to Mitsui we went to the food hall in the 101 building and had sushi there. The sushi is granted cheaper (cheaper than Yo Sushi and much better) but the squid sushi I had was a bit tough. The squid sushi in Mitsui just melted in your mouth. There were of course other kinds of sushi but naming these is fairly irrelevant.
- Abalone Salad (abalone is a large sea snail)
- Grilled King crab legs
- Tilefish with drops of sea urchin (this is the first time I tried Tilefish and it’s gorgeous)
- This wasn’t Kobe beef but it was absolutely delicious and I love the presentation
- Miso Soup
- Deep Fried softshell crab. Chris is petrified of anything with more than 4 legs (strange I know!) but these small softshell crabs are delicious (Even he thinks so too! ). You eat absolutely everything and both the shell and the meat inside are some of the tastiest crab I’ve had.
- Green tea ice cream
- Endless supply of Chinese tea (I believe this was Oolong which I really enjoy).
Mitsui Sashimi Plater
Mitsui Sushi plater
Mitsui Abalone Salad
Grilled King Crab Legs
Tile Fish with drops of sea urchin
Deep Fried Soft Shell Crab with Pumpkin puree
Mitsui Barbeque Beef
Total cost: About £30 each. Phenomenal! We originally planned to eat just sushi but after looking at the menu and based on past experience we had to order a set meal as well. Let’s also face it, we don’t go to Taipei very often.
A note about pricing. The sushi alone would have been £40-50 in the UK but the quality of the sushi in Mitsui was on a whole different level. I will admit I have had better sushi in Japan itself but then you expect the best sushi to be in Japan.
Each time we’ve been to Mitsui we’ve been utterly filled up and every dish was incredible. One thing I must point out was paying for the meal. If we eat in a regular night market or shop then we pay with cash but for a larger more expensive meal we always pay by card. Mitsui wouldn’t accept either mine or Chris’ credit cards as they hadn’t opened a line for international banking. I had to run down the street to a cash point, half scared that neither of us had any money in our accounts, then had to run back and pay. This wasn’t great.