What We Ate In Taiwan, Part I

For the most part our vacations have been planned with little attention paid to the food on the trip.  Indeed with most of our foreign travels taken with commercial tour groups our major concern has been how many meals are provided on the trip and when do we have to fend for ourselves.  Aside from a family vacation to Hong Kong in 2015, where I made four blog postings relating to the food we ate, there has been nothing memorable in our foreign eats.

However our November trip to Taiwan was different.   With most Chinese tours, the meal plan is designed with one thing in mind--to minimize tour costs.  The result is that the rule is Chinese tour food is of low quality and limited variety.  However this trip to Taiwan was with the San Gabriel Valley based Supera Tours, the English language tour arm of Signet Tours.  Where most Chinese tours treat food as a cost to be minimized, Supera Tours expressly adopts a "Food=Life" approach to dining, without characterizing themselves as being foodie centric.  As future write-ups will show, the tour company made good on their promise of a different approach to food.

As noted above in taking past tours our main interest has been how many included meals are on the tour, so to this extent I was happy off the bat because all meals were provided from the official start of the tour to the official end.  However because tour group members were flying in from all over the US and Canada and arriving at wildly different times, Sunday was an arrival day and the tour didn't start until Monday.  As it turns out, we were the first to arrive at 5:30am, so had an entire day on our own.  Furthermore, hotel check-in time wasn't until 3pm, which restricted our mobility greatly.  We did go for a walk around 10am and fortunately there was a Taiwanese bakery, Mita Fancy Cafe and  Bakery, directly across the street.  Taiwanese bakeries are excellent, and while the Taiwanese based

85°C Bakery and Café is well regarded in California, what we get in California does not compare to what you can get in Taiwan.   At Mita, we had the green bean cream bun,  hot dog bun and bbq chicken bun, all certainly better than what we get in California, and with such a variety to choose from that there were so many items I couldn't try.   While I general abhor the use of the term "amazing" to describe food, I'm tempted to say that the hot dog bun was amazing, with a sweet and crispy bun.

Since the tour had no night market visits scheduled, we used the opportunity to head out to the Shilin Night Market at dinnertime which was conveniently located just four subway stops away from the red line Zhongshan station which was just a couple blocks from the Okura Prestige Hotel.   Now it's well known locally that the Shilin Night Market isn't what it used to be, and even the Supera Tour write-up on things to do in Taipei comes right out and says that there are other, better night markets in Taipei.  But back home, Shilin is the only one night market that anyone has heard about so that's the one I needed to visit.  There was supposed to be a large food court near the entrance to the night market, but I sure couldn't find it, so maybe it was temporarily closed.  There were food stands interspersed with the shops, but there was nowhere to sit, making buying something to eat rather inconvenient.

We headed deeper into the night market and we ran into the lady who had given me her seat on the subway ride and asked if there were any more extensive eating areas.  She pointed us down a corridor where we did find a concentration of food booths, some with seating.  However this still wasn't what I was looking for.

Though the candied tomatoes did look quite interesting.

At this point I decided to head back to the entrance and head down Jihe Street, where there was an accumulation of food trucks.

Visually the most interesting was the roasted conch truck, though it wasn't particularly appetizing.

We also saw trucks selling white sausage (which turned out to be rice sausage) and using a blowtorch as a cooking implement.

I ended up with orders of XLB (full order for $3.60) and honey lemon fried chicken.  On our way out of the night market we passed by a stinky tofu restaurant which produced the most vile smell you could imagine, far worse than the stinky tofu you smell in California.  So while I may have missed the food court, the only famous Shilin dish I didn't encounter was the oyster omelette.

Interestingly we checked out of our hotel before the tour begin, because while the first day of the tour began in Taipei, it ended in another city.  We did have the breakfast in the tour hotel, the Continental Room of the Okura Prestige.  Nothing particularly caught my attention as there was a combination of Chinese stir fry and Western items.  Like most hotel buffets in this part of the world, there was a noodle soup station.

The first real meal of the tour was at the original location of Din Tai Fung in Taipei, and will be described in What We Ate in Taiwan, Part 2.  Because there were so many outstanding eating stops on the trip, there will be several single restaurant reports on the trip starting in January.

As a sidelight to the trip, this was my return visit to Taiwan after our honeymoon in 1980.  I have little recollection today of that trip since most of the pictures were buried away in an unknown corner of the old family homestead, unseen for 20 or more years.  Upon my return I made a point to find those pictures and it was successful.   And it was a relief to find that there was a good reason I recognized so few of the venues on the current trip, for as it turns out there wasn't a lot of overlap between the trips.  This trip spent just one day in Taipei and spent the rest of the trip busing around the entire island.  The 1980 trip spent more time in Taipei, and the only excursions out of the area were a bus ride to Taichung and a flight to Hualien.  This trip only went to one temple, in Lukang.  The 1980 trip went to many temples.  The only real overlap were Taroko Gorge and Sun Moon Lake, which in 1980 were accessed by a flight to Hualien, rather than bus.  So I didn't forget as much as I feared.

What Happened To The Chinese Food In Montebello?

I recently stopped by a shopping center on Via Campo in Montebello which I had frequented many times since the 1980s, but have hardly visited at all in the past ten or more years even though it was where my branch of East West Bank has been located for three decades.  It was at this time that I was struck by how this corner of Montebello had changed in that period of time, and not in the way that one would have originally expected.

I have recounted in the past how the seeds of today's Asian American San Gabriel Valley were planted in the 1960s when newly developed residential communities in Monterey Park accepted Japanese and then Chinese American buyers, freeing those groups from housing discrimination that locked them largely into certain neighborhoods in East and South Los Angeles.  As the Asian American population of Monterey Park surged in the 1970s, the Asian presence expanded beyond the city limits of Monterey Park.  Initially this spillover was north and south, i.e. just over the border into Alhambra and the northern part of Montebello.  In the large shopping center on the hill alongside the Pomona Freeway, east of Wilcox, pioneering Chinese restaurants like Kay Hong Garden opened up.  Meanwhile, just to the west on Via Campo between Garfield and Wilcox, pioneering San Gabriel Valley locations of 99 Ranch Market (indeed at the time the store was called 99 Price Market) and East West Bank opened up (though I believe technically Montebello isn't part of the San Gabriel Valley, though that part of Montebello was spirtually part of the SGV).   Next to the 99 Price Market were four restaurant spaces, including early locations of Sam Woo BBQ and Happy Family.

But on this last trip to this center, the only Chinese remnant was the East West Bank branch.  The 99 Price Market, which became 99 Ranch Market, devolved into an independent Chinese market, then an Italian furniture store, and is now ironically a 99 Cents Only store.  And the only Chinese restaurant left literally bears the name Chinese Fast Food and serves sesame chicken and broccoli beef.  Likewise, at what used to be Montebello Town Center mall, where major Chinese restaurants like 888 Restaurant and Sing Sing Dim Sum were located, the only Chinese food at today's Shops At Montebello is a Panda Express.

As things turned out in the 1980s, and continuing to this day, the growing Chinese and Asian American communities expanded eastward, past the San Gabriel Valley itself and past the Los Angeles County line.  And while Monterey Park and Alhambra continue to thrive as part of the Asian enclave, and even though it retains a healthy Chinese residential population, Montebello is the one area that has been culinarily left behind.

Wenzhou Style Food Comes To Los Angeles

Recently an article about Chinese cuisine in Los Angeles listed roughly two dozen Chinese regional cuisines represented by restaurants in the Los Angeles area.  Not included in this list of cuisines was the cuisine of Wenzhou, but this was no surprise, as with the case with migrants from Fujian province, most people coming from Wenzhou to the US go directly to New York, and very few make their way to California, though there apparently are enough of them locally for there to be a Wenzhou Chamber of Commerce in El Monte.  (Wenzhou is part of Zhejiang, whose cuisine can be found in Los Angeles, but Wenzhou cuisine itself cannot.)

I first became aware of the Wenzhou population in New York a dozen years ago when I read about how they dominated the pirated DVD business back there, and how a couple of Wenzhou restaurants had opened in Flushing. And when I was in Spain last year, I learned that almost all the Chinese in Spain are from Wenzhou and they specialize in importing low cost knockoff products. The one Wenzhou dish from Flushing that I ate which stuck in my mind was something called variously fish dumpling or fish paste, served in soup with noodles optionally added. I’m not exactly sure if dumpling or paste is a fair description, since there is no dumpling wrapper, and it was more meaty than cooked fish paste.  Rather it's grouper beaten to a pulp, but not as smoothly as the fish paste you see in the stores.  Anyway, while food writer Tony Chen seems to have disappeared as a source of written information on Chinese food, he still has his finger on the pulse, and recently posted a picture from a Wenzhou style restaurant in El Monte.

After a couple of false starts I finally ended up at Masterbee Express, in the space right in the front in the Tito’s Market shopping center at 9814 E. Garvey Bl., in El Monte. But even upon arriving there, there was nothing to indicate anything other than a typical gringo Chinese fast food place. The proprietor who spoke almost no English appeared to indicate that his colorful little menu including fried rice, chow mein, chow fun and jalapeno chicken was all he had, but then he seemed to ask what I was looking for. I tried saying “fish noodle” but that didn’t get anywhere. But then he whipped out some hand held translation device and motioned for me to speak into it. When I said fish noodle, the machine spit something out and he smiled and said “fish balls” and brought out a Chinese language menu with a dozen items on it. There still was some confusion because the fish balls (which by no stretch of the imagination do not look like balls) came either with or without noodles, but an English speaking customer came over and straightened that out. Then when I said “Wenzhou” the owner smiled broadly and I knew we were on the same page.

The Wenzhou fish ball noodle soup was quite pricey–$15.99 for a normal sized bowl of noodle soup, possibly because of the labor required to render the fish. But if you hadn’t tried that dish or any Wenzhou cuisine before, or if you had and liked it the way I did, it’s worth it. This version wasn’t as good as what I had in Flushing, but that’s to be expected given the disparity in the local Wenzhou population between New York and LA.  I'm just happy that the cuisine exists here.

Reflecting on Embarcadero Center Chinese Dining Over The Years

Sometimes I get nostalgic about Chinese restaurants that no longer are around and recently I thought about Harbor Village which had locations in San Francisco and Monterey Park.  The San Francisco branch opened around 1985, back in the days when people from Los Angeles used to drive or fly to San Francisco in search of better Chinese food.  Harbor Village in San Francisco was the beachhead for a Hong Kong based Chinese restaurant, which I believe was called Harbourview.   Everybody in Los Angeles drove up to Harbor Village in the Embarcadero Center for their Hong Kong brand of dim sum at the time where dim sum/Hong Kong seafood palaces were just starting to spring up in the United States.  We drove up in the summer of 1987, our first trip away from Los Angeles where we brought our two little kids, Eric (6) and Christina (4) with us.  I remember very little about that lunch except that we had dim sum on carts (yes, I know all dim sum was on carts in 1987 but I remember specifically watching the carts) and we were joined by my former co-worker Marlene Kristovich, who subsequently became a Los Angeles Superior Court judge.   Harbor Village opened a branch in Monterey Park shortly thereafter in 1988.  The San Francisco location closed in 2005 when they lost their lease, while Monterey Park was sold in 2000 to what became Empress Harbor.

I don't know what, if anything, occupied the Embarcadero Center space from 2005 to 2014, but in 2014 the famous Singapore based Crystal Jade restaurant opened up in that location to great anticipation and then fanfare, not surprising given Crystal Jade's reputation and the $14 million spent decorating the premises.  However all that quickly came crashing down when the San Francisco Chronicle's review of the new restaurant savagely ripped into the restaurant, followed by corroborating reports from all around.   Of course I will try any Chinese restaurant once, irrespective of what other people may say, so we showed up in early 2015 to check it out.

Crystal Jade was a giant facility with a large lounge, but I found the interior disappointing, in light of the $14 million spent to decorate the place and I didn’t see anything in the interior even worth photographing.   In one of my very few Yelp reviews, I gave it 3 stars out of 5, with the comment that the $90 dinner was probably worth half of that.   (If I factored the price into the rating it'd be no better than 2 stars.)  The egg white with sea bass was quite good.  We were a little miffed with the “sliced pork shoulder in honey sauce” appetizer for $13.  It turned out to be chashu, though pretty good chashu.  Whole scallops with macadamia nuts was decent, and the beef tenderloin which the waiter raved about was pretty good, but no better than the beef cubes at any number of San Gabriel Valley restaurants.  All in all, the $90+ tab was not money well spent.

Crystal Jade finally gave up after four years and sold the location to the operators of R&G Lounge.  (Crystal Jade would not have lasted nearly as long in the Los Angeles area which lacks the expense account dollars and the geographical concentration of tourists that San Francisco has.)    Harborview Restaurant opened up in late 2018 and we visited there this past June.   Arriving there I was surprised to see the dining room nearly packed on a weeknight.  The crispy baked bbq pork buns were pretty good, though not comparable to San Francisco's best.

Something unexpected was the lemon chicken (wor shu style, but quite nicely done) a surprisingly old school (meaning Toishanese, pre-Hong Kong immigration era) dish at what otherwise seems like a modern Chinese restaurant.

 Decent but not noteworthy were the mustard green with mushrooms.

 I was surprised when the waiter recommended beef brisket with turnips, but they consider this their signature dish and certainly was excellent.

However, like Crystal Jade before it, the quality/price ratio (QPR) at Harborview was certainly not worth it.

Food Friday In San Francisco

A wedding in Monterey was the perfect excuse for a two day side trip to San Francisco.  Through a combination of circumstances, most of our notable eating was concentrated on our second day there, Friday.  As many people know my favorite Chinese dish these days is the Tim Ho Wan style crispy baked bbq pork buns.  At sit down restaurants, a small dim sum sized bun can come to $3 each, but at iCafe on Waverly Place in San Francisco Chinatown you can get a giant one for $1.50.  And the iCafe version is better than some dim sum palace versions.

Breakfast was light as we had planned an early dim sum lunch at the Guangdong based HL Peninsula Pearl branch in Burlingame.  I had read that the restaurant filled up early, so our friends got there at the 10:30am opening to grab a table and indeed the restaurant seemed to be full by 11am.  We had a variety of old and new dim sum items.  Versions of lotus leaf sticky rice and bean curd rolls were excellent, har gow, chicken feet, and beef cheung fun with corn were good.  The star of the show, though, was the piggie mango pudding, very visual and as good as this dessert gets.

Another highlight was the house special bbq pork plate.  Skin was crispy, meat was tasty (as was the fat) though at $18 for eight small pieces this was on the pricey side.

Another good dessert was the pandan bird nest tart, something I've never seen anywhere.

The most visual, but least tasty item was the pumpkin green bean paste bun.

All in all, while not in the category of San Francisco dim sum restaurants like Dragon Beaux and Hong Kong Lounge, I can see why the HL Peninsula locations are so popular.

Moving on, I had kept hearing about this dumpling place called Dumpling Time which was a little too far to reach on foot from my annual Market Street meeting, which was located somewhere in the general vicinity of the Nordstrom Rack just off the 101.  So I did a Google map inquiry and found Dumpling Time was located just three blocks away from Nordstrom Rack where I dropped off Mrs. Chandavkl.  Unfortunately I couldn’t read the Google map orientation properly and started going in the wrong direction, but after a block I realized my mistake and turned around.  It’s amazing how the neighborhood around the Nordstrom Rack had changed in the years since we started going there probably 15 years ago.  What was a dumpy area to the east is now a vibrant location with Zynga having their headquarters building, and other new developments.  With two major restaurant visits set for the day, I only ordered the chicken bao which appeared to have slivers of wood ear fungus mixed in, which provided a good contrast.  Also they provided a different look from the normal chicken bao. 

When we got back to the hotel after 3pm, it was still four hours before dinnertime so an additional snack was in order.  The previous evening I had noticed a newly opened restaurant called V & J Restaurant and noticed they had a special happy hour menu during the off hours of 10am to 11am, 3pm to 6pm, and 10pm to 11pm.  The values were amazing so I had ordered cod in spicy broth for $4.50 and snow pea leaves for $6.50 that night, so we we ordered a reprise of the snow pea leaves for our snack.  We also picked up breakfast and lunch from  V&J before our Saturday drive down to Monterey, scoring Chinese broccoli, bean curd sheet sticks, drunken chicken and chow chicken lai fun (a type of Cantonese noodle we seldom see in Los Angeles) for the grand total of $20.50 plus tax.

We had a 7pm reservation for our return visit to Palatte, and before we left for San Francisco I wanted to be sure that we took the right bus to get there.  In June we had asked the front desk how to take the bus to Fisherman’s Wharf and they told us to catch the #8 bus on Columbus, which made perfect sense since many years we rode a bus that went along Columbus and took us to the Wharf.  But in June we were stunned to find that the #8 bus left Columbus and ended up taking us to Pier 39.  So checking the mapping services beforehand, it was clear that we should take the #30  bus which would take us up Columbus towards Ghirardelli Square.  The only question I had was where on Stockton Street to catch the bus–Columbus or Pacific/Jackson.  The front desk wasn’t helpful so we decided to get on at Pacific/Jackson, which turned out to be the right choice since I saw the bus about to reach the stop and I literally sprinted to catch it.  Except when I mentioned to the bus driver we wanted to go to Fisherman’s Wharf he said we were on the wrong bus.  What??  But he said not to worry, he could take us two stops where we could transfer to the right bus, the #8.  Wait a second, I said, the #8 goes to Pier 39 and I don’t want to go there.  The driver tells us no, Pier 39 is Fisherman’s Wharf.  Which explained everything to me.  In the old days there was no Pier 39 and to us old timers, Fisherman’s Wharf meant the area with all the fishing vessels docked by Alioto’s restaurant.  The Wharf area then expanded west adding places like the Cannery, the Anchorage and Ghirardelli Square where Palatte is located.  But then it expanded east, including the development of Pier 39, such that today Pier 39 is considered to be part of the Wharf, while Ghirardelli is not.  So anyway we were on the right bus for Ghirardelli Square, and in fact the bus let us off across the street.

When we got into Palatte the place was packed, which made us very happy.  Ghirardelli Square was pretty dead the past few years and Palatte has really revitalized it in just a few months.  Dennis Leung, who had hosted us there in June, was not around, but fortunately at the end of our June visit he introduced us to his floor manager, Ken, and after chatting with him a while he remembered us from the prior visit, and we were treated quite well.  He pointed out the special menu printed on a small slip of paper that we actually had ignored when making our dinner selections, so we ordered two items off of that menu, the black cod stuffed with eggplant and the Iberico pork rice noodle rolls, both of which were excellent.  We also ordered our two favorites from our first visit, the fried tofu cubes and the crab rice noodle rolls, which while quite good didn’t wow us like the first time, though I'm sure they actually tasted the same as before.

We were so full that we had to cancel our squid ink fried rice with shrimp order.  We were ready to leave when Ken came over to tell us about their desserts.  We said we were full, but he said they were on the house.  So we got the chocolate egg rolls accompanied by a lychee based sauce).

The second dessert was called Cloud 9 (nine frozen melon balls surrounding a scoop of frozen tofu dessert).

I asked Ken about the progress of their San Mateo location and he said he thought it would be open in December or January, so we'll be sure to visit the new Palatte location on our next Bay Area trip.

One last noteworthy food related aspect of the trip was the Saturday morning visit to Beijing 49er, a newly carved out 1st floor eatery in what had been the two story Chinatown Restaurant on Washington St. in Chinatown.

This has to be the stupidest name ever for a Chinese restaurant because all of the Chinese who came to California for the Gold Rush in the mid-19th century were from the areas outside of Canton in southern China, where the law against Chinese emigration abroad could not be enforced.   So there were no Beijing 49ers back there, nor have any Beijingers ever played for San Francisco's NFL franchise.  Of course this was to be expected from probably the biggest tourist trap in Chinatown.  But I did like the crystal chicken dumpling, the first time I've seen this type of dumpling made with chicken instead of shrimp.