abstract poet: 33 Jian Tang

Emily asked me to do a guest spot for the blog, and [gasp] we're still camera-less. So if you have the patience for all words, no pictures, here goes nothing...


At risk of sounding hopelessly old and unhip, let me start by saying this: I hate Ximending. I hate the flocks of oh-so-cool adolescents who loiter on every street corner and pollute the main pedestrian area with their cheap cigarettes and their ridiculous hairstyles. I hate how there are a hundred trendy clothing boutiques and none of them seem to carry a T-shirt or a pair of jeans I can squeeze into. I don’t understand cosplay. Most of all, I hate how poorly the streets around there are labeled, so that every time my wife and I go with the intention of finding some restaurant or other we’d heard good things about, we end up getting lost, cranky and, most likely, in a fight.

Thankfully, this time around I did my research and, after only a little bit of purposeful wandering toward the outer edges of Ximending, we found ourselves at the door of what proved to be a most pleasant—if not exactly quiet—retreat from the excesses of the local youth culture: 33 Jian Tang （三十三間堂） or, as it’s called in English, 33 Rooms.

Make sure you take off your shoes as you walk in (holey sock wearers beware!), unless you want to catch grief for tracking dirt on the restaurant’s polished wood floors. Emily and I were seated up in a little loft we had to climb a ladder to reach, overlooking the main dining room. The table was low, and we sat (or, in my case, reclined) on cushions one of the barefooted waitresses laid out for us.

Just as memorable than the restaurant’s ambiance and excellent food is its owner, an older Taiwanese woman whom the word “flamboyant” hardly does justice. When we hesitated for a moment upon arrival, she shrieked, “Come in!” and then remarked, to the entire restaurant it seemed, on how hard it was to make any money on a party of two (later, she said of another table, “They don’t eat sashimi; they don’t eat beef. I don’t know what I’m supposed to sell them.”).

Rather than take offense, the regulars eat this shtick up. 33 Jian Tang is very much its lao ban niang’s restaurant. She orchestrates the whole show, yelling at waitresses one moment, doing shots of sake with a table of businessmen the next, and prone to suddenly burst into Japanese opera, much to the amusement of her captive audience. The woman is LOUD, perhaps the loudest Asian woman I’ve ever encountered, and I’m pretty certain she was quite drunk by the time we went up to pay the bill at the end of the evening. "I'm sorry I didn't make it over to your table to yell at you tonight," she said, flirtatiously. Yes, I think maybe she was flirting with me.

But lest you think the restaurant is all show and no substance, let's move on to the food. 33 Jian Tang doesn't have a menu, so the owner just picks out what's going to be served each day. That's not to say that you don't get billed for each individual dish, but it's the sort of place where asking what something costs before you let them bring it to you would seem poor form. Don't go, then, if you aren't prepared to pay a rather hefty bill--at least NT$1,000 a person, but more likely upwards of NT$1,500 if you're drinking plenty of plum wine or ice-cold sake, as we were. Later I read other reviews that talked about how you can tell your waitress how much you want to spend, and they'll customize what they bring you accordingly. This time around, we just put ourselves at the mercy of the chef, but I was happy with what we got for the money.

We had plump oysters, six of them, brought raw to our table and simmered in a small hotpot in a fragrant miso sauce. They were still half raw when we ate them, positively bursting with ocean goodness. We had big king crab legs that were served propped up, on a bed of ice, in front of a perfect yellow orchid. Alongside was a small bowl of rice vinegar for dipping.

There was a big platter of super-fresh Japanese sweet shrimp sashimi (heads attached). There was the surprising combination of a fried fish fillet served over half a pink grapefruit. As you ate the fish, you dug into the flesh of the grapefruit with your spoon and poured some of the juices on top, mixing it with a light cream sauce. There was the tray of grilled fish livers that I gobbled up, seduced by their earthy depth of flavor. And, when we were nearly too full to eat another bite, there was a generous portion of cold beef salad with a peanut-vinegar dressing, featuring some of the most tender slices of perfectly rare steak I've tasted.

There are other dishes I'm forgetting to mention, at least ten of them in total. Each was beautifully presented, a miniature work of art (I thought Emily was going to stab herself for not having our camera with us); the flavors were clean and unpretentious. The only courses I didn't like as much were the snails-on-a-skewer (which were fine, but nothing special) and the seaweed soup (which I'm just not a huge fan of generally). For dessert we had a refreshing mixture of sweet red beans and chestnuts with almond tofu.

All in all, it was one of the best--and definitely the most unique--Japanese meals I've ever had, though I'll admit I'm far from an expert. For obvious reasons 33 Jian Tang wouldn't be the best choice for the thin-skinned or the budget-conscious. By the same token, the food we ate that night veered a bit more toward the adventurous side of Japanese cuisine, at least by Western standards. If you're not the adventurous type, you could, of course, tell your waiter or waitress what types of things you aren't willing to eat up front, but then what's the point? Half the fun is not knowing what they're going to bring to your table next.

If you want more conventional, but equally excellent, Japanese food with a quieter ambiance, try Sumie or, from what I can gather, any of a number of other restaurants in Taipei. But if you're in the mood to try something a little bit different, 33 Jian Tang is well worth a visit. I'm glad I’ve found at least one place in Ximending I won't mind going back to.


33 Jian Tang （三十三間堂）
116 Kangding Rd., Taipei (台北市康定路１１６號）
(02) 2361-0807, 0806