taiwan tiger 台灣的老虎

Hao Li Hai! 好利害

You know the "rubbernecker" syndrome?  Where something you see is so bad, that you gotta just stare at it a get a good view of the wreck.  Well, there's a situation going on in Kaohsiung that fits that bill.  Something that I just have to watch as it trundles to a horrible crunching mess.  It's a new restaurant called The Villa.

Close to where I used to live about 2 years ago, there was a no name noodle shop that I ate at once.  Only once.  Now, I've eaten at over 100 noodles shops here in Taiwan, and most have been good to excellent.  It's hard to mess up noodles.  But this noodle shop?  Wow.  We got the noodles and walked home to have them for dinner, and opened up the box.  Slimy, overcooked, and tasting only of...well, oil.   They were so awful we couldn't eat them.  Fiona's comment was "好利害! hao lihai" which is normally used for something "awesome, amazing, formidable" in a good sense.  I looked at her quizzically, and she explained that the shop was so amazing because they could screw up something that was practically un-screw-up-able.  So it is with the same amusement that I came across General Pancho's, and now The Villa, a foreigner-owned place that could claim "好利害! hao lihai" status.

It's not out of spite that I do this.  I just think it is amazing how captivated I am at this place.  Maybe it's schadenfreude or 幸災樂禍 (xing4 zai1 le4 huo4), but occasionally, I am just intrigued by ineptitude.

The Villa, which I think is owned by a Canadian, opened up as an offshoot of a Mexican roadside stand called General Pancho's.  Now, let me say that I would love to have a(nother) good Mexican restaurant in town.  Teresa's (South American, actually) has some delicious stuff down in Yen Chung district, and Smokey Joe's provides some decent "tex-mex" cuisine, though I have never been a huge fan.   So the promises of The Villa sounded good.  Opening reports were rough--friends reported waiting 45 minutes for a drink, and 15 minutes for someone to open a bottle of beer (eventually just getting their own), despite the staff's standing around doing nothing.  I believe the words "incompetent" were used by a fellow barstaffer in description of the service.  Now, any restaurant that doesn't do a soft opening for some friends (as presumably they didn't) is going to run into some problems, so it's a little understandable.  Another report comes my way--they ran out of ice for the cocktail that the customer watied 15 minutes for, no salsa in the burrito, terrible taste.  Nacho chips made from ..deep fried white bread.  Yes, that's no typo.  OK. Well, I'll try it and see.

Now, the first time I went to the General Pancho's to try it out I got a real surprise.  How do you screw up tacos?  Here's how:  take a nice, crunchy pre-baked corn tortilla shell, and d e e p  f r y it until it is the thickness, texture, and taste of a paper plate.  Add toppings, omitting salsa, (which can be added for an extra NT$30!).  We ended up removing the contents from the shells, which were dripping oil onto the plates.  Now, I don't know how they make tacos in your neck of the woods (is this a tradition somewhere?) but when they delivered the deep fried shells, my reaction was "what the f*%$ is that?"

My second "what the f*%$ is that?" occurred when I went to The Villa last night.  I perused the fairly extensive salad list, as I was really wanting a good salad.  House salad, chef's salad, shrimp & something salad, Ceasar salad, Greek salad, prosciutto and gouda salad... looks pretty good.  I ordered a Greek salad and a margarita.  My margarita (timely delivered!) had only the small problem of being made of orange juice and garnished with a lemon.  But the Greek salad was what did it.  As promised, the cucumbers, olives, feta, onions, and green peppers were all there.  In a 2 centimeter pile on a plate.  With no lettuce.  Uh, a Greek salad?  "What the f*%$ is that?" I explained my understanding to the waitress that salads as those listed have lettuce by default.  [imagine for comparison a "bread lover's hamburger"--all bun with nothing in between...]  I was not offered any choice except to order an additional house salad (costing extra of course) to add some lettuce to the "salad".  I folded, and said okay.  She comes back later to report that they are out of lettuce.  Out of lettuce?  It's a Mexican restaurant that advertises lettuce in fully half their items, not to mention the salads and the hamburgers that require lettuce.  Not to mention that there is a big grocery store 2 minutes away that is open and has tons of lettuce!  My thought here is really that they probably just figured that they could serve a Greek salad without lettuce, hoping I wouldn't notice.

At this point, I realized that earlier reports were not unjustified.  The owners appear to be really clueless.    Anyway, I changed to a beef burrito, knowing of course that the burrito, which was advertised to include "rice, refried beans, lettuce, southwestern sauce, and salsa" would not have lettuce.  What I didn't count on was the omission of the refried beans and salsa as well. Now, I want to stress that I don't know where all this is coming from.  Is the owner a foreigner with a peculiar sense of taste and humor?  Is it being reinterpreted in the kitchen by a Taiwanese cook who has no idea what this cuisine is supposed to be?  I don't know, but The Villa's ability to screw things up is nevertheless uncanny.

So now I want to go again.  Why?  I realize that they are just "好利害! hao lihai"--so talented as to be able to screw up something that I previously thought was un-screw-up-able.  So I am dying to order something else and see what shows up, to see what clueless creative "take" on a standard will arrive at the table and prompt me to say "what the f*%$ is that?"  I think I had better go soon, though, as I don't think it will be around for long.

Maybe I'll go back to that noodle shop, as well... 

Plateful of good reading

Deep End Dining, a site devoted to eating the strange and unusual, has a few excellent articles about eating American versions of some of the food that I like here.

Stinky Tofu, which I like a lot.

Delicious Thousand Year Egg Congee, which is my favorite type of congee.

My girlfriend always looks at me strangely when I eat Chicken Feet (though I would add, the nails are not always clipped).

One extremely funny post regards a Korean specialty, rather than a Chinese one, but I thought I would include the article anyway.  It's about eating live octopus tentacles.   

Love with Maple

Recently I experimented with the local Taiwanese wines in the shop on the corner.   My reward?  I found the WORST WINE IN THE WORLD.  I have tasted many many red wines, and this was absolutely undrinkable.  It probably was the...believe or not...maple syrup that was added.  But certainly the English on the bottle was priceless.

Love of Country

Love with Maple
When We are together
We enjoy life with wine Sharing the wonderful moments
that go an and an, Fry it at once.

Perhaps the only good use is indeed to fry it at once.  It was impossible to drink.

擂茶 Hakka tea in Mei３Nong1 美濃

Just northeast of Kaohsiung city is a wonderful Hakka village named MeiNong.  The village is well-known for its paper umbrellas and Hakka culture museum.   Unfortunately, we didn't get there in time to go the museum, but we did have the opportunity to make some Hakka style tea called Lei1Cha1 擂茶 at a restaurant in MeiNong.  The restaurant's food smelled delicious, but we only drank tea.  Here's what you do:

Step 1: You are brought the ingredients.  In the big bowl are crispy popped rice, white sesame seeds, black sesame seeds, and dried tea leaves.  On the plate are peanuts, pinenuts, and green sunflower (?) seeds.  Farthest to the the right is the powder--a soybean based powder that we will use later.  On the bottom right is a plate of cookies to nibble on while you drink your tea.

Step 2: Using a mortar and a pestle made from a guava tree, grind the rice, sesame seeds and tea leaves to a powder.  After that, add the nuts and seeds, and grind those into a powder, too.  Use those muscles!

Step 3:  As you are grinding, you can use a brush to sweep the powder out of the mortar.

Step 4:  Keep a big pot of boiling water handy... [note the traditional Chinese tables and benches in the background.  Also the traditional blue and red Hakka clothing.]

Step 5: Put a spoonful of the stuff you ground up and a spoonful of the soybean powder (more if you want a stronger flavor) in your cup. Add hot water and stir.  Enjoy.

Guan Shan Rice 關山米

So, haven't you always wondered what rice looks like up close?  These are rice fields near Guan Shan 關山 where they have a noted variety of rice called, appropriately, Guan Shan Rice: 關山米.  These plants are nearing harvest, as far as I can guess, as you can see the furry husks.

 

Shut up!

I went to my first (not for free) movie theater last week to watch "House of Flying Daggers."  The movie was just okay--the fighting scenes were quite good, but the movie was hampered by weak characters and the improbable Character Who Wouldn't Die, which made everybody laugh as she continued to rise up off the ground time after time.  But the most annoying part of the movie was the couple behind us who chatted throughout the entire movie.  I didn't matter that I turned around and asked them to shut up.  I haven't yet perfected the zen of patience here, but I am working on it.  Also, despite the repeated admonition to turn your cell phones off, no less than 3 phones rang during the show, with two of them holding conversations during the movie.  Yeah, I know it is different here and all that, but why should I pay for the "theatre experience" if that experience is listening to other people's chatter throughout the film?

While I am on the topic of my struggle to curb anger at inane behavior, I will mention a lounge called "Salute" that I went to last night.  My friend Keita and I thought we would try a new place.  The board outside mentioned that they had a Saturday night buy 3 get 1 free beer special.  So we figured we would each drink 2 while paying for 3 and it would be cheap enough, considering their rather steep $200/bottle price.  So we walk in and there is nobody on the ground floor except the bartender who was himself lounging  in a chair.  He stared at us for about 3 seconds after we walked in, maybe deciding if it was too much effort to open his yap.  Finally we sat down and looked at their menu.  Four beers in the bottle to choose from.  Okay, I can do that.  So I order a Ching Dao.  He mumbled a response about not having any of that.  Okay, I'll have the Heineken.  No we don't have that, either.  Okay, so what DO you have?  Corona.  Blech.  Okay, fine.  He gives us our beer then ignores us for a period of time.  A new bartender takes over.  We order the second round and the bartender tells us that there is no special.  Yes, it is written on the sign outside and on the menu that we ordered from.  And nobody bothered to mention that when we ordered.  It seems that they cancelled the special at the beginning of August and "forgot to change it."  And there was, of course, no attempt to apologize or make up for it in any way.  It's like changing the price of the gas after you've filled the tank.  I was ticked off, but I noticed Keita appeared to accept this explanation of why we would have no special.  I asked him about it and he just shrugged, "I've been here for a few years longer than you have and this is no surprise to me anymore."  While I contemplated "forgetting to pay my bill" I eventually settled down and settled up.  Turns out the beer price had changed too, to $150.  Okay, so a little vindicated, but it still is my first and last trip to "Salute."  I wasn't really sure if it was intentional towards us, considering the place next door is a Japanese businessman's club which flatly tells white and Taiwanese customers who for some unknown reason venture inside that "I'm sorry.  You are not Japanese.  You must leave."

Yesterday I took advantage of one of the wonderful cheap things about Taiwan--US$3 massages.  At the Cultural Center a few times a week, a group of blind people set up massage chairs and offer a 10 minute massage for NT$100.  I find it to be a nice after dinner diversion.

Sometimes I feel sad like this building.

Big Daddy

In some bad news from home, a food icon has died. Ike "Big Daddy" Seymour fed me his excellent Bar-B-Q throughout high school, and every chance since then that I am back in Des Moines, Iowa. His wife, Arnzie, also makes stupendous sweet potato pie. She knew me in college as "the sweet potato pie" guy because of one unusual incident where I flew back to Vermont carrying two pies for my classmates, just to prove that it was as good as I said it was. Of course, putting the pie in the communtiy refrigerator was a sure guarantee that it would be gone before I could have any, so I delayed the opening and devouring of the pie by wrapping it in brown paper and labeling it "Bovine Fecal Sample."

Big Daddy's sauces were legendary. Incendiary. He had a running challenge that if you could consume a large sandwich with his hottest sauce in under 10 minutes, you won a catered party for all your friends. When I first started going there, the sauce was called "Last Supper" then moved progressively hotter to "Emergency Room" (so-named because a challenger had to be taken to the emergency room in great discomfort after eating the sauce). I have a bottle of that sauce in the States as well as a bottle of "Hot Chocolate"--a sauce that mixes a bit of chocolate in with the BBQ sauce. How hot are these sauces? If you have ever seen the Simpsons episode wherein Homer eats the hot pepper and hallucinates, you get the idea. I had a bit of emergency room straight once, and I will attest to the fact that I was nearly in an altered state. It felt like being in a Carlos Casteneda novel.

Big Daddy, we will miss you.

My Bread Day

For several reasons, I have taken a short break from writing. Today I start again. A nostalgic look at the history of bread in my life.

The Wholesome Bakery in Georgetown, Grand Cayman makes beatiful fluffy white bread the texture of pound cake that redefines "white bread." Recently, I was introduced to the heartbreaking goodness of Yamazaki Bakery, a Japanese bakery that also has chains here in Taiwan. Today I bought some of their fantastic soft poundcake-like white bread, cut as thick as the Texas Toast from Best Steak House that I used to love when I was little. Considering that last week in a frenzy of comfort food hysteria, I bought peanut butter and jelly, I am eager to combine them into a towering, sticky mess.

Yamazaki also has a variation of raisin buns, that rare treat that in the U.S. hasn't seemed to find its way beyond Orange City and Pella, Iowa. But, yes, I have found them here in Taiwan. A little more searching and I may come up with Colby Cheese to complete the Raisin Bun with Cheese combo that would greet my return from school whenever my Grandma and Grandpa were in town taking care of me.

Almond means home. Growing up in a Dutch American household, I developed a love of almond patties. I remember when we would arrive at Grandma and Grandpa's house after the 4 hour drive, usually through swirling snow. Fresh, hot, rolled pastry filled with almond paste and sprinkled with sugar would quickly appear on the table. Nothing could compare, could it? At a tea shop on Saturday, I found perhaps the greatest ode to almonds since the almond patty (known in its inferior form as a "Dutch letter"). It was supposedly a cake, but the texture was so dense and rich, it was almost like a part-cake, part-silky powder thing that melted in my mouth. I was actually stunned to the point of reverance.

These are things I know my family understands.

My Christmas Eel

Christmas Eve Day's weather was outstanding here in Kaohsiung. Sunny, warm with just the right light quality that makes winter my favorite season. I met up with a friend for coffee and she told me about her experiences with the TOEFL exam. I don't envy her having to take another stupid standardized test. Then she gave me a wonderful book called "Formosa--A Short Story of an Island" with a lot of old maps (in Dutch, of course) of Taiwan. Cool! After I got good and juiced up on caffeine, we popped across the street to Caves Bookstore to settle a bet on the tone of a certain character. It turns out that we each misunderstood the question we were debating, and were both right, so we settled on no winner and went to dinner.

It wasn't until I was eating it, that I realized that this was traditionally the Christmas dinner time. So how was I celebrating? Eating 鱔魚麵 shan4 yu2 mian4--stir fried eel and noodles--amid the din of a night market. Delicious, as all food here, but a rather unconventional Christmas dinner. After dinner, we hopped over to a store to buy some DVDs. They are way cheap here, no doubt due to a hundred licensing laws being broken. At any rate, I picked up some of my favorite films for a song. It is hard to say no to both Rashomon and Lawrence of Arabia for about US$2 apiece. And a bonus--they all have Chinese subtitles, so I can learn while I watch! But I can't figure out why my copy of "A Streetcar Named Desire" is called "A Street Car Named Desire Cop."

All in all, it was a wonderful day off, and compares favorably with other Christmases. Of course, then the gloomy feeling hits when you are so far from your family. For me, strangely, it was spurned on by the techno versions of Christmas carols I heard in the DVD store.

Cold Tile and Rough Wine

Living on the top floor of a Kaohsiung house has its advantages: unrivaled privacy, a nice view, and a breeze. It also has it's disadvantages: broiling in summer, freezing in winter, and very loud when rain shatters on the tin roof over my head. I can hardly believe--considering only a month and a half ago it was too hot to sleep under the covers--that I am wearing socks to bed and wishing my comforter weren't a size too small for my bed. And tile floors tend to be rather cold.

Last weekend was an exercise in alcohol diplomacy. I went up to Wanshoushan, the mountain near my home, to get a late night snack. This is same place I had been before and had munched down on the jellied pig blood thing and bbq'ed chicken ass. So your man behind the cart recognized me immediately--I really don't think many waiguoren (foreigners) visit him--and after I ate my snack, he pulled up a chair up a chair and pulled out a bottle. Gaolian wine is a Taiwanese specialty that looks and tastes like straight vodka and contains a considerable sting. Anyway, so he poured me a glass and ganbei'ed me (bottoms up!).

One thing I am having some difficulty with here is knowing the polite way to say no. There are certain times in Chinese society, I have found (and which Taiwanese friends have corroborated), where it is really impossible to say no. I think every other foreigner here has a similar story, and one where the meaning of "no" is either afterward debated or explained. [see Laiwei Monologues 12/7/2003 entry] If I would have said no to this guy, I would have without a doubt made him lose face in front of the other customers there. To drink gaolian wine (on his terms, that is) with this waiguoren increases his face. Since I see way too many ignorant foreigners who come to Taiwan to abuse this place, and since I am a one-man diplomatic machine trying to reverse this image, of course I sit and drink and talk with him. Of course, it isn't that simple. Next he pulls me over to a table of his friends for repeated ganbei's and lots more conversation. I loved the conversation part--the people that show up in this place are LOCALS--that is, their Chinese is heavily tinged with Taiwanese, making it (even more of) a challenge to understand. But I love the challenge, so I doggedly chatted and listened until my Chinese was slurring a bit. Fortunately, the park on the mountain is open and safe, so I waited out the buzz until I could drive. The lesson here: next time, bring a friend to serve as a convenient excuse, or, as another friend suggested, have one drink as a matter of practice, then explain that you really must go.