There’s a restaurant hidden away in the Neihu Technological Park. It started out as a wholesale seafood company selling their goodies at a pop-up place next door complete with picnic tables and patio furniture. Now, they’ve remodeled, and it’s a full-fledged amazing seafood/sashimi restaurant with lines out the door and reservations that need to be booked a month ahead.

Anyways, let’s get to the good stuff.

(Psst.. this plate is only $400NT ($12.50USD).)

This the sea-urchin-over-rice of which we so fondly refer. Look at all that roe!

However, if you don’t do the raw stuff, there are other things you can get.

This is some really tender pork.

You wouldn’t think the chin of a fish would be appetizing, but try this salmon’s and you might be happily surprised.

After all the ordering, this was our table:

I had a food-filled day today. For lunch, we went to this amazing mountain-top restaurant called 野宴食堂 (Wild Feast Dining Hall?) out in 石碇 (ShiDing), which is a rural town about 20 minutes south of Taipei and famous for its tofu. Unfortunately, I didn’t take any pictures, but you can see pictures of some of their dishes here. The seafood was so fresh, in fact, you could pick out what you wanted, which were all freshly caught and in coolers of ice.The sashimi and squid were so sweet and fresh. The baked fish, clam soup, and the udon were phenomenal.

(For the Chinese readers, the address is 台北縣石碇鄉彭山村崩山12號 (石碇交流道往華梵大學方向) (02)2663-4276

I can’t translate that into English, and since it’s so local and Taiwanese, it’d be a bit hard for non-Chinese speakers to go, so bring a Taiwanese friend!)

Afterwards, we had tofu ice cream! It’s literally just soybean based ice cream, but it tasted like the tofu dessert (豆花 dohua) but frozen. It’s totally healthy, not too sweet, and really light, and I would eat it every day if I could.

Then four hours later, but still full from lunch, we had dinner at A Cut Steakhouse in the Ambassador Hotel. (Definitely pricey and costs more than Ruth Chris in Taipei) The steak was pretty good, but I’m raving about the dessert. (Again, no camera no pictures, sorry!) There’s this chocolate ball thing where they pour heated chocolate over a chocolate ball filled with cappuccino ice cream. The top of the chocolate ball will melt so you can get to the good stuff inside. The soufflé was also superb. (I totally miss having a kitchen with an oven so I can cook and bake dessert goodies!)

To top it all off, since we were celebrating a birthday, we got a Caramel Banana Chocolate Cake from Black as Chocolate, and this is the only picture that I can actually post (which is taken from their website but it’s linked). I love Black as Chocolate cakes (careful with the pronunciation there) because I’ve been fairly disappointed with the dessert/cake selection in Taiwan, not counting the ones from American-styled restaurants. Their cakes are made from dark chocolate so they’re just the right amount of sweet (and healthy!) but don’t taste like they’re sugarless like most of the other cakes here.

(This post is brought to you by payday advance loans.)

I have been looking for authentic American hot dogs to satisfy my cravings, and yet the best ones have been at Costco’s. Sadly, you can’t even get in without a membership or waiting in a line that goes around the block especially on the weekends.

Hungry Girl in Taipei and I did go check out a place called Hook in Zhongxiao Dunhua, but their hot dogs were the really thin, mediocre-tasting, non-American kind, and the wait for the food was really long even when we were the only two customers there.

However, I have discovered that Evans Burger does serve some good ole American hot dogs. They come with really tasty fries, relish, lettuce (???), and salsa. The bun’s kinda weird, but the hot dog is good. Evans also has some pretty good burgers. The one pictured is their Chili Beef Burger.

Ok, now I’m hungry.