New Japanese Banquet Hall – New Taipei Taiwan 新日式宴會館

Fried rice top with a piece of salmon, having sides dishes of pink ginger and marinated daikon (white radish). 

Unagi set, grilled eel with rice and here served with lime instead of slice of lemon, just in case you would feel alittle fishy but usually it won’t. 

Soft shell crab, this will never go wrong anywhere in the world. 

Finale, ice cream as dessert.

In a Japanese restaurant, you can never miss the sushi bar and their multiple sake display. 

Look at their ultimate stylo coffee process. Its call the yama cold brew drip tower. Its name says it all. It is cold, water with coffee grounds and let them drip all day long. Sounds like a super slow process. Come let us have a drink. Sake or coffee? Cheers!

Hooters Taiwan

Hungry yet? Not having Chinese today. Hooters! I am sure many people have heard about this company. It is a company from United States of America and their first shop, existed in 1983! It has been 33 years!

Into some sporty girls. You have gone to the right place. Olalah! Oh its Hula Hoop! Half way having my meal, suddenly there came a few waitress with hula hoop. Music was up and louder! Yup! And they hula from top to bottom!

It seems there have other games like limbo, see how low you can go. Other games too, drinking with a long straw competition, food snacking eating chicken wing competition, cup stacking game, costume party. Well, they really can make any game out of anything. Not just playing the games but you might be able to be lucky winner for some giveaways. Patron Tequila?  How can you not enjoy yourself here? You will definitely be fully entertained.

Alright, done with the introduction, back to the food ordering. Here we have some deep fried seafood platter consist of deep fried battered calamari or just as known as squid, fried shrimp with few stalks of celery and carrots. Another grilled platter the meat platter, grilled chicken, grilled prawns, grilled beef. Really meaty meal.

If you were to go to their website you could get some promotion for your meals.

Their address

Hooters

Contact No. +886 2 2716 5168

Address No. 18, QingCheng St. Songshan District, Taipei, Taiwan.

If you are taking the Taipei Metro Train/MRT you should take the Brown color line – Wenshan – Neihu Line or known as Wenhu/ formerly Muzha line, you stop should get out at Nanjing Fuxing Station and exit 7 to Qingcheng Street

Operation Hours:

Sunday to Thursday 11.30am-12.00am

Friday to Saturday 11.30am -1.00am

-End-

Streets of Danshui

There were many stalls along the street. Trying out some deep fried octopus tentacles cut into smaller cubes on a skewer. Deep fried squid balls and not to be miss out, the delicious fried button mushroom and enoki mushroom. Next stall we have the grilled Taiwan sausage in a stick comes in 3 flavours. 

After having such dry and heaty food, it is time for some refreshing juice. Freshly squeeze fruit juice. Pick your choice of regular size for NTD40 or big size for NTD50. Check out the huge melon 2 for NTD50. Types of fruit juice; grapes, papaya, watermelon, mango, apple lemon, banana or can add milk to them if you wish.

Not enough, for NTD30 you could get 1 cup of Hung Ma sour plum drink/ Assam Boi drink(preserved plum, they bury it with salt and sugar) to wash down all the oily food. While having your drink, just pop in next door to look for some souvenir, Doraemon anyone?

Moving on, Ah Kee Original Restaurant, the menu from left to right. Ah Kee, Dried tofu skin wrapped with fish paste and glass noodle, fish ball, fry noodles, fry vermicelli, meat ball. My order as you can see.

Dongmen Night Market- Taiwan

There are numerous night market in Taiwan, but the one here now is Dongmen Night Market. What is in this night market, well they have clothes, slippers, yummy snacks on sticks such as corn, sausages, chicken wings and many others. 

Not just on sticks, but stew eggs, chicken legs or Chinese call it phoenix claw, goose webs, pig liver and blood, goose wings, chicken heart, neck, intestine and tofu. 

Moving on, tiny sea snails or we call it “bali tong” fried with chili. I really don’t know what this is call in English. 

There was a stall with some hello kitty picture. What do you think? Selling cat meat? Nop, they are selling pressed fried bun, looks like prata.

Tea house. After along day of the busy buzzling city, let us go up to top of a mountain for some calm and soothing tea for a peace of mind. Ain’t this house beautiful. Look at the lovely bears carrying fruits. Look at the beautiful calm scenery, it is so peaceful. 

It is so perfect to view this while having a cup of tea. Look at the cup, having tea or having fish? 

On the way, you would be able to see one more special plant, a bird plant. A plant which looks like a bird. 

Food Yilan Taiwan

Need to get some souvenirs? How about some biscuits? Well, let us go to the biscuit shop, so it is flooded with all types of biscuit. They do have some offers running to get you to buy more, example buy one packed of biscuit at NTD40, buy 3 packets at NTD 100, that would make each packet cost NTD33.33, cheaper by NTD6.66. I bought a couple of packets. One of it was written, thinnest cookie. Yes it is thin enough for me.

    

After getting some yummy biscuits, the sun has retreated itself, so it is dinner time. This restaurant claimed they use the traditional cooking method. So check out one of their kitchen, look at those huge grey stove which reminds me of the tandoori clay oven but the problem is the color makes it does not look like it is made of clay. The one I saw usually was orange in color, but this was grey. Wonder what this stove is made of.

Just before entering the restaurant, they displayed some of their vegetables. Can’t name you everything there because I have no idea what are them myself. But I could name you some, let us start from bottom left, there are two types of green chilies or peppers. Then followed by enoki mushroom (some call it gold needle mushroom) because its bright white and thin, next to it looks like some seaweed. Right on top, the brown cone shape are bamboo shoots. Then next on the white tofu are the tiny red dots, we call it goji berry, same with the ones on the green spade leaves. Right on top of the tofu, that bunch of green look alike artichokes, right next to it are my favourite asparagus! Far right at the bottom would be, vegetables ladies finger aka okr, fresh lily bulb, tiny bitter gourd. The rest in the metal container? I have no clue.

  

Dinner is served, roast chicken, leeks with dried black mushroom and dried prawns and a plate of fresh mushroom with some paste. Let’s dig in!

 Feeling some mouth itch? We can chew on some marinated goose feet or they call it goose web. Chicken feet, chicken wings or just choose anything from the counter.

Kavalan Single Malt Whisky in Yilan Taiwan

In Yilan County, Taiwan, plan on having a drink? Let’s try going to Kavalan, a place where whisky is made by the King Car Group. What? King Car Group, making premium whisky? You would be thinking that they are just car manufacturers. Yet they are on Whisky Magazine, Kavalan Distillery 2011 World Icons of Whisky for Whisky Visitor Attraction of the Year. You won’t believe it, let us have a tour to this place.

When you enter, they would be some introduction about the process and items display for the process. Look at the huge barrels! They also have other introductions about types of malts for Irish Whisky, Scottish Whisky, American Whisky and etc.

Look at all the machinery for the process. Really huge. Distillation process. To us, it’s all weird looking huge containers and giant look alike bottles. On the way, you could see their super huge warehouse where they keep all the barrels for the processing, hundreds of barrels all kept. Check out the barrels!!

 And finally, before reaching end of the tour of a whisky factory, of course the most important part is whisky tasting time. There is a hall, filled with long tables and benches. After your interesting tour in the factory, you will get to taste a cuppa Kavalan with some ice. The liquid looks clear and looks like light gold color but comes with a strong fragrant. Looks like apple cider but much more beautiful.

Then, off to their merchandise shop, bottles of whisky all over and yet I found this, Coffee fiber cookies comes with Whisky flavor. Anyone care for a cookie?

Yilan - Jinche - Taiwan

Another place in Taiwan, the Yilan County at the northeast of Taiwan. It was a cooling place, you could feel the air is much cleaner. It was not easy to go there unless I had a car or someone to bring me there. I had no idea how to get there myself. I do remember we have to go through a tunnel, They told me it’s the longest tunnel in Taiwan almost 13km (12.9) and took about 15 years to construct it. Wow! The Hsuehshan Tunnel recently open about 8 years back in 2006. The good news of having this tunnel available, easier to get there? So more tourist to Yilan.  

My first stop was the Jinche Orchid Garden. So it’s only orchid but numerous types, white, pink, full color to dotted, you name it, they have it.