It’s almost afternoon, but Sun Moon Lake in the mountainous heart of Taiwan is still shrouded in mist. The pine trees that dab the hillsides are barely visible through the huge glass windows of Rainbow Cloud, the teppanyaki restaurant at Hotel Fleur de Chine, Nantou.
Clang and hiss seem to be the only sounds that the soft-spoken Japanese chef seems to make as he tosses scallops, chicken, aubergine and cauliflower florets on the hot teppan, scooping up the excess oil in one swift motion. He looks up and smiles, and, because I smile back, gifts me steamed egg topped with caviar that has been nesting under a steel lid. Still sitting in its soft, brown shell, the egg tastes a little like unsweetened custard, the chewy black pearls of sturgeon lending it brine. With practised ease and a little showmanship, tender blush shrimp bathed in a fish sauce and crowned with broccoli and grassy seaweed is served. There is an incredible depth of flavour and none of the squidgy feel associated with last night’s dinner, although it was just as tasty.
At the buffet at Crimson, every flower, fruit, fowl and fish known to man was steaming in clay pots. The baby octopus bathed in a blue light offered a whiff of the ocean floor, and the crumbs of stinky tofu and 1,000-year eggs, both local delicacies, asked to be eaten with a side order of clothes’ pegs clamped over one’s nose while investigating their interesting textures. The egg-white is brown, the yolk, a fungal green, and like Dr. Seuss, I know where I stand on green eggs — ‘I do not like them here or there’.
Taiwan, that stands on the rim of the Pacific Ocean, at the far end of Asia, has had as its culinary influences the culture of its aborigines, China, and colonisers Spain, Holland and Japan. It’s an influence that spills over everywhere, from posh restaurants such as Irodori at the Grand Hyatt, Taipei, to the street-side stalls that crowd the Raohe Street night market.
The former is a Japanese restaurant that specialises in seafood. Everywhere, clams and mussels shine, their insides fleshy and pale, turning an iridescent shade of green when dipped into a wasabi-based sauce. Mullet roe, John Dory fish and braised pork chops jostle for space with fresh avocados and long-limbed dragon fruit. Varied platters of sushi crowd the counters and fresh scallops sizzle and shrink on the hot plate. It’s a place filled to the gills even on a weekday afternoon and the food is beautifully plated — dots, dashes and drizzles of sauce lend it flavour.
The latter is a market that announces its presence much before you see it, thanks to the dense walls of stinky tofu. Eels swim in plastic tubs, seconds before they do so in salty soup. Fruit salads in colours so blinding served with shaved ice knock off the tropical humidity. Customers, both local and foreign, perch on plastic stools, scoffing down quantities of sticky rice, oyster omelettes and slow-cooked belly pork.
If all this is too much to stomach, the Jenbow restaurant serves vegetarian food with all the classic Taiwanese flavours and none of the rough edges of street-side non-vegetarian food. The mushroom and grilled aubergines taste like heaven when mixed with the accompanying breadfruit sauces.
But, the high point of a visit to the island is dinner at the Din Tai Fung restaurant at Taipei 101. Lines of waiting customers snake around the bend, and when the bamboo baskets are opened to reveal its famed steamed dumplings, sighs abound as the dumplings are ruptured with chopsticks and eaten while the juices drip.
Food in Taiwan is like a jazz composition. Full of funky high notes that surprise you — with the brine played on a major key.
The writer was in Taiwan at the invitation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Republic of China
