A Wedneday Night Dinner

The best thing about living in Taipei is that we have the sort of lifestyle here that allows us to eat out several nights a week - something that time and money never allowed us to do back in the States. Here's a dinner we had last Wednesday:

(clockwise from top: deep fried soft shell crab, spicy tuna,

eel, shrimp and avocado roll, sirloin beef with mushrooms)

This fine Wednesday night dinner was at A-Plus Sake Bar, right by the Eslite bookstore on Dunhua. Good food; prices not bad considering you're eating sushi.

And if you finish eating before 8:00, head over to Ginjer, just a short walk away. Here you find an assortment of cupcakes (50NT each; buy 5 get one free), with flavors like chocolate chocolate, pear, and carrot cake. This was the first time I've had cupcakes in almost a year, I think, and after biting into the chocolate chocolate I remembered how much I like cupcakes, especially ones that are moist and oh-so-chocolate-y.

(We bought several different flavors to try,
but the clear winner was definitely the chocolate chocolate.)

So that was our Wednesday night dinner. Not too shabby for Hump Day.

A-Plus Dining Sake Bar
AnHe Road, Section 1, No. 33
(02) 2731-9266

Ginjer
http://www.ginjer.com/
Dunhua South Road, Section 1, Lane 223, No. 20
(02) 8773-3061

Mr. Donut

Oh Mr. Donut, how do I love thee. Let me count the ways: I love your bread-like, chewy texture; I love your funny shape and how I can pull off those little balls one by one and just pop them into my mouth; I love your unique and interesting flavors, like Green Tea and Red Bean and some that I can't even name.


Clockwise from top: coffee roll, glazed mo cha (Japanese green tea), glazed, glazed chocolate.

You will notice that we ordered a lot of glazed donuts last night. Though we do like the glazed donuts, there are definitely a lot of other flavors that we like better, which sadly at 9:30PM the Mr. Donut at the Breeze 2 on Zhongxiao seemed to have run out of. But some other favorites include the Konoko, which is dusted with a cinnamon-ish powder, and the Double Chocolate, which is chocolate glazed with chocolate. We also like their "stuffed" varieties, where they slice a donut in half and spread a paste or cream on the inside, so it's like a donut sandwich.

However, I would not recommend their "regular" donuts, meaning the non-ring kind. Those always taste dry and slightly stale. Nor would I recommend their coffee. Also, the donuts don't come cheap - it's about 35NT per donut.

Look at their cutely designed bags, with Mr. Donut and his cute little donut friends.


Get thee to a Mr. Donut!

Mr. Donut
located in several places, these are just the ones I know of off the top of my head:

NYNY
Breeze 2
YongKong Street
Taipei Main Station

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