VVG Bistro

Today we enjoyed a lovely brunch at the very very good VVG Bistro, sister restaurant to the VVG Table that I reviewed in a previous post. Since VVG Bistro also offers a set menu that's pretty similar to the one we had at VVG Table, I won't go into a full review. I'll just say that everything was delectable and post some pictures. For my friends in the States, these are to lure you here so you'll come and visit.

Actually, before I post the pictures, I would to say how much I like the idea of set menus here in Taiwan. In the States, set menus are pretty rare - unless you count tasting menus, and those are usually really expensive. The only place where you'll be sure to find a set menu is at McDonalds. But in Taiwan, set menus are much more commonplace and you definitely get more bang for your buck. And, it always includes the perfect amount of food, so you don't have to worry about ordering too much or too little, which sometimes happens when you order a la carte. The set menu at VVG Table is NT500, which is about $15 US, and probably a little bit on the steep side by Taiwanese standards, but in my opinion still a good deal nevertheless.

And now on to the pictures:

Here's a picture of the complimentary "ice lolly" that came before our meal:

For some reason, the coffee came in a giant bowl.

Here's a picture of my husband drinking from his bowl o' joe.

Our set meal. Clockwise from upper left hand corner: deep-fried fish with seaweed and rice; almond milk panna cotta with macerated blueberries; summer juice with honeydew, muskmelon, and watermelon; shrimp steamed egg and squid steamed egg, shrimp roulade with silver sprout, water chestnut and spinach; tomato, basil, and parmesan bread served with prosciutto, tomato, and cheese.


Some close-ups:


Also, check out the decor in this place. It's so quirky and eclectic. I love the pink refrigerator.

VVG Bistro
Zhongxiao East Road, Lane 180, Alley 40, No. 20
(02) 8773-3533

Flavor

For those of you who know me in real life and for a while, most of you are surprised by how far I’ve come in my eating habits. Just a few short years ago, I hated all sorts of foods – mushrooms, fish, cheese, tomatoes, anything with skin on it, anything that still had its head attached and seemed like it was looking at me…on and on. But then my husband eventually wore me down by cooking all sorts of fabulous meals using the very ingredients I hated, and now I love all sorts of food and am 15 pounds heavier.

Flavor is a testament to how differently I feel about food now. This is the sort of meal I would have hated a few years ago. Fish – yuck! Raw fish – double yuck! Mushrooms – grotesque beyond belief.

My meal tonight included all the foods that I previously disliked, but if only I had eaten meals this majestic growing up. Then I wouldn’t have been so picky. And I would be taller today. (Milk was also much hated.)

(By the way, before I go into the full review, I would like to apologize for the poor quality of these pictures. I don’t know, I’m not as bad as I used to be, when I would get up and go to the bathroom so as not to be associated with my husband if he so much as took out the camera, but I still feel sort of silly about it even now. It’s not so bad when you’re in a crowded, well-lit restaurant that doesn’t require the flash, but Flavor is a small, cozy and dark restaurant, and every time I took a picture the room would light up. So I took these pictures very hastily and as a result none of them really do the food justice. Alas, and apologies.)

The food at Flavor is authentic Swedish cuisine, as the owners – a husband and wife couple – both lived and studied cooking there. The husband, who happens to be the head chef, is an actual bona fide Swede.

When we went tonight they were offering a special set menu, since they had just come back from a vacation in Sweden and bought back all sorts of goodies with them. Our first course was a cream of potato soup with truffle oil. It came with homemade bread seasoned with cumin, and it was quite tasty. I asked my husband just now how he would describe the soup and the bread, and he replied, “Delicious.” Well, that’s a good a description as I could have come up with, so I’ll just leave it at that.

Our next course was an appetizer of smoked salmon and toast. The smoked salmon was prepared two different ways – on the left is the smoked salmon with a mustard sauce, and on the right the smoked salmon is with honey, sour cream and dill. Yum.


Afterwards came the four entrees: cod with horseradish, chicken seasoned with thyme and wrapped in bacon, pork with a game sauce and, of course, the house specialty: Swedish meatballs. The thing I like about Flavor is that each dish feels like it’s been prepared just for you. Maybe it’s because when we go we’re usually the only patrons – though this time we weren’t – but the way everything looks so nice and perfect makes me think that the chef made it that way just for me. I don’t know, maybe that’s my megalomania speaking. But everything was cooked to perfection – the meats were all the right tenderness, the sauces complemented everything just right, and with the chicken came a little whimsical potato box. The pictures below are of the chicken wrapped in bacon and the Swedish meatballs.




Ok, now on to the best part of the meal: dessert. I wish I had the words to describe how much I love this dessert. This apple pie dessert is the best apple pie I have ever eaten in my whole entire life. Ever. It is the perfect apple pie. When I accidentally dropped a morsel off my fork, my husband and I both gasped in horror. Thankfully, it just fell onto the table, and yes, I still ate it. It’s so good I would have still eaten it if it fell onto the floor. The textures and tastes just work together so well. The crust is the exact right crispiness and the apples are soft, but not mushy, and everything is drenched in this delicious foamy cream. I know I keep saying this, but it is truly perfection. Sadly, this picture is a really horrible one and does it no justice whatsoever. Just go and try it yourself.


Flavor
http://www.flavors.com.tw/
SanMin Road, Lane 107, No. 8-3
(02) 2769-1971

中國牛肉麵

Our lives pretty much ground to a halt this past weekend with the release of the last Harry Potter book. I forsook sleep, personal hygiene, going to the bathroom, my husband, etc. for the Deathly Hallows, but did I forsake food? Nope. Of course, we had to shovel the food into our months as fast as possible to get back to the reading ASAP, but we still managed a decent meal at 中國牛肉麵 (zhong guo niu rou mian).

Anyway, so I might not be the best judge of this place since I was speed eating my way through the meal, but luckily, I’ve been here before. Or more accurately, I’ve been to 中國牛肉麵’s original location by the Sun Yet-Sen Memorial Hall. This past Saturday’s meal was at their other branch in A5 of the Mitsukoshi by city hall. And I have to say, the one by the SYS Memorial is much, much better than the one in the Mitsukoshi. In fact, the only reason I could possibly think of to eat in the one in the Mitsukoshi is that that one is perhaps a little nicer and cleaner. Yes, the other restaurant might be considered by some to be a bit of a hole in the wall, but it's not that bad, honestly. It's definitely tastier, and less expensive.

中國牛肉麵 is known for their jin bing, which is somewhere between a crepe and a scallion pancake (but without the scallions). Here’s a picture:



You can eat these with just sauce and scallions, or you can also order something more substantive to go with it. We ordered the jin jiang rou si to accompany it, which is tender strips of beef and scallions stir fried in a sauce that’s reminiscent of the sauce you eat Peking Duck with.



中國牛肉麵 is also well known for their beef noodle soup. You can pick between two different kinds of soups: the hong shao, which is the spicy flavored beef soup, or the chin dun, which is their lighter, clear broth. I usually get the chin dun. Sadly, the broth in the Mitsukoshi restaurant wasn’t as flavorful as the one near SYS. Don’t get me wrong; it wasn’t bad, just not great. The broth at the SYS branch is really good. Also, their meat is nice and tender – it feels like it melts in your mouth. The meat at Mitsukoshi was a lot tougher – so much so that there were some pieces that I couldn’t even eat.



So I’d still recommend this restaurant, but only the one by the Sun Yet Sen Memorial Hall. There’s actually a few really good restaurants in the same alley, which I’ll review another time.

By the way, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was excellent.

中國牛肉麵
Yanji Street, Lane 137, Alley 7, No. 1
(02) 2721-4771 / (02) 2771-1004

101 Recipes in 10 minutes or less

This is going to be my salvation this summer. 101 recipes to make in ten minutes or less! I will the master of the 10 minute recipe by the end of this summer (which is in October here in Taiwan).

Penne Carbonara Recipe

The other night I made penne carbonara and thought I’d share the recipe with the three, maybe four of you who read this blog. This is one of the few dishes I can stand making in the summer here – our kitchen is super small and heats up really quickly, especially since there’s no AC in there. Plus, I have an unnatural fear of hot splashing oil, so whenever I’m frying something, I have to wear long sleeves. So as you can imagine, it gets unbearable pretty quickly.

Anyway, with this recipe I don’t have to worry about the suffocating heat because it’s a super fast recipe. And super easy. This recipe is actually adapted from a Jamie Oliver recipe. As an aside, for those of you out there who are beginning cooks, I’d really recommend Jamie Oliver, because all his recipes are delicious and fairly simple to make. He hardly ever bothers with standard measurements, instead using measurements such as “a wineglass full” or “ a handful,” which I found to be infinitely helpful for those times when I was first learning how to cook and would run around the kitchen like a chicken with its head cut off.

So onto the recipe. You’ll need:

4 slices bacon, chopped
I clove garlic, smashed with the back of your knife
2 eggs (try to get the freshest that you can – this is what makes or breaks the recipe), beaten
Parmesan cheese (fresh, not the Kraft kind), about 1/3 cup
About ½ box of penne pasta
Olive oil, 1 tablespoon

Serves 2

So what you do is first put the water on for the pasta, (make sure you add salt to it), let it come to a boil, and cook your penne until al dente, which is usually around 10 or 11 minutes. While you’re waiting for your pasta to cook, add about a tablespoon of olive oil to your frying pan and fry up the bacon until the fat is rendered. When it gets close to being done, add the smashed garlic to the bacon and oil and leave it in for about a minute so that it can flavor the oil. When the bacon’s done, remove from pan and drain on paper towels. Leave the oil in the pan, you still need it later.

Now beat your eggs together with the cheese. When your pasta is ready, drain the pasta, BUT save about a half cup of the pasta water. Add your pasta to the oil, put back the bacon, and toss.

This next part is important. The key to a good carbonara is all about the sauce. You don’t want to egg to cook, otherwise you end up with scrambled eggs. Add the egg and cheese mixture to the pasta and toss thoroughly. Add some of the cooking water (not too much), if you feel like you need to make the sauce a bit smoother. Add salt and pepper to taste. If you like, you can also add some extra cheese on top.

And that’s it! Here’s what it should look like:



This recipe takes no more than 15 minutes to make, and paired with a nice salad, it’s fast and easy, not to mention pretty darn tasty.

Chocoholic

The Chinese palette’s sensitivity to sweetness has its pros and cons. On the one hand, at least I’m not going to give myself diabetes and/or have all my teeth rot and fall out of my head when consuming desserts with the frequency that my husband and I do here – which is every single night. On the other hand, sometimes you just can’t taste anything, especially things that are supposed to have chocolate in them. Mocha cappuccino tastes exactly like regular cappuccino to me. In a blind taste test, I probably wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between a chocolate cake and a vanilla one.

Well, at least there’s Chocoholic to the rescue for whenever you’re craving some chocolate-y goodness. My husband and I like to go here to read and indulge our sweet tooths (teeth?). There’s all kinds of hot chocolates, iced chocolates, chocolate cocktails, chocolate milkshakes, and the last time I was there, they had even added chocolate chicken to the menu. That fat kid from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – I forget his name; you know, he’s the greedy one who falls into the chocolate river and then gets stuck in a pipe because he’s so fat – he’d be in heaven here.

We went today and I had the Sicilian Iced Chocolate (NT 135). It was smooth, creamy, chocolate-y deliciousness. The only complaint I had about it was that I wish it were a little bit colder. If I lived in a chocolate factory and had a special room made out of candy with a chocolate river flowing through it, that river would be made out of this drink.


Right now my husband is in the middle of playing video games, so I am having a hard time getting him to tell me about his drink. So far in between grunts, I’ve heard the words “chocolate,” “ice” and “French crispies.” When I asked him what “French crispies” were, he said, “I don’t know, they’re crispies from France.” Well, here’s a picture at least:


Anyway, I definitely recommend Chocoholic for whenever you need a good shot of chocolate to your system.

Chocoholic
www.chocoholic.com.tw
Dunhua South Road, Section 1, Lane 187, No. 66
(02) 2711- 2600

Udon Noodles at 土三寒六

I grew up on the East Coast, where it does get hot during the summer, but it’s still been quite a shock to my system to experience summers here in Taipei. Every time I go out here, I have to prepare as if I’m about to trek across the Sahara Desert. Water? Check. Umbrella? Check. Handkerchief to wipe off the buckets of sweat gushing out of my glands? Check. Then my husband and I will set out, huddled under our umbrella and walking along in silence because even talking makes me hot and sweaty and I need to conserve my energy just to be able make it to our destination without getting heatstroke.

So you’d think the last thing I’d want to eat during the summer here is a nice, hot, steamy bowl of udon noodles, but I like the udon at 土三寒六 (tu(3) san(1) han(2) liu(4)) so much that I’d risk heatstroke for it. It’s good, and it’s cheap (a medium size bowl can range from NT90 - NT200, depending on what you get). Plus, they also have cold udon noodles, which are actually quite wonderful on a hot day.

I usually get the udon noodles with the spicy broth. Again, I know, not the ideal thing to be consuming when it’s almost 100 degrees out, but still. The broth has just the right amount of kick to it, and it comes with pieces of seaweed and pork. The udon noodles are that perfect “QQ” texture. (For those of you that don’t speak Chinese, “QQ” is that sort of texture that Chinese people like. It’s hard to describe, but it’s firm, with a slight bite to it - but not as much bite as al dente.) The reason is that they're handmade, so you really notice the difference.




The last time we were there, they had added some new dishes to the menu, so my husband tried some cold udon noodles with roe. He said it was sort of like a carbonara – there was raw egg yolk mixed in with the roe to create a sauce for the noodles. He liked it, but I get sort of grossed out by raw egg and I just don’t like egg yolk in general, so I only tried a bite.



There’s also tempura available, but they set it out cafeteria style and who knows how long it's been out there, so it may not be all that fresh once you take it. The nice thing though, is that they’ll heat it up for you. It’s perfectly satisfactory, but not anything special.



土三寒六 is great for a cheap (we spent around NT500), tasty dinner. And sure, you might get a little sweaty eating it, but what’s a little more sweat when you’re already drenched anyway?

土三寒六
Fuxing North Road, Section 1, Lane 126, No. 6
(02) 2775-4611

Brunch at VVG Table

One of the things I miss the most about the States is brunch. Sure, I really like do jiang (that sweet soy drink), sao bing you tao (that fried cruller…thing inside that bread…thing) and dim sum, but sometimes I just want some eggs and iced coffee. And I don’t want to have to wait outdoors for 45 minutes while feeling I’m about to spontaneously combust at The Diner.

So then what a treat it was to discover VVG Table. If you didn’t know, VVG stands for “very, very good,” and yes, it is indeed very very good. Located in a small alley off of Dunhua Road, it is a bit hard to find, but once you do, it’s well worth it. Walking down a quiet residential street, you’ll see a shady porch filled with all manner of comfortable and quirky looking sofas and tables. I imagine it would be quite nice to sit out there on a spring day sipping an iced coffee, but this was July in Taipei, and it was a frillion degrees out, so we opted to sit inside.

I love the ambiance at both the VVG restaurants (there’s a sister restaurant, VVG Bistro, just down the street) – both have such specific personalities to them. At VVG Table, I felt like I’d just stumbled into a French farmhouse. The interior is small and cozy, with some small tables clustered in the middle of the room flanked by long, antique looking wooden tables on both sides. There’re all these details I love – here the bright red candelabras on the long tables, there the vintage suitcases on top on some shelves. I even loved the little containers the sugars are in. Seriously, I wanted to swipe one when no one was looking.


For brunch, the only option is the set meal at NT540. The meal comes with several dishes, but in teeny tiny portions. Being the fat and greedy Americans that we are, my husband and I were initially worried that it wouldn’t be enough food. But the portions ended up being perfect – the small sizes let you savor each bite, knowing that there isn’t that much of it. It also allowed you to sample a lot more without feeling too full. We were first served a tiny cup of passionfruit, pineapple and mint slush. Scooping the slush into our mouths, we were surprised to find that the pineapple, instead of being blended in along with the passionfruit and mint, were instead frozen into little cubes, adding an interesting texture. A refreshing treat on a hot day.


Our set brunch came with homemade raspberry lemonade (more like a slush, actually), scrambled eggs with caviar, a sausage, olive, chickpea and caper dish, squid salad, and a rice cake topped with roe. The eggs were light and fluffy, with the caviar adding just the right hint of saltiness. The sausage, olive, chickpea and caper dish was surprisingly spicy, but with the just right amount of kick to work with the sourness of the olives and capers. My husband liked the rice cake the best. It had some nuts mixed in, so there were lots of interesting textures going on, what with the slight bite of the rice, the crunchy nuts, the silky roe.


I forgot to mention that before our brunch came, we were treated to a plate of fresh bread accompanied by various jams, honey and nutella. The honey was especially good – it’s some kind of special German kind, and you can really tell the difference. It was especially tasty mixed with the nutella.


VVG Table might not be the sort of place you want to go every weekend – it is a bit pricier, but definitely worth it when you want something more than your usual sao bing you tao/do jiang breakfast. Heck, it’s better than your typical bacon and eggs breakfast. So check it out.

VVG Table
ZhongXiao East Road, Lane 40, Alley 181, No. 14
(02) 2775-5120

Welcome

Hey there. Welcome to my blog. Here's where you'll find my reviews of restaurants in the Taipei area. Sometimes I cook, too, so you might stumble upon some recipes once in awhile. Enjoy!