The day finally arrived when we are finally “allowed” to leave quarantine. Well, we are actually still required to practice self isolation and avoid crowded and public places for the next 4 days. Depending on who you talk to, some said you should adhered to it, others said CDC will not check-in on you. Remember, during arrival, we had to registered a local phone contact info at airport CDC checkpoint? Well with that phone, they have the ability to checked on our whereabout and call on us, so we were a little wary about this. Chanel who arrived a few days ahead of us let us know that after the initial 4 days quarantine, she were not contacted anymore.
Jensen came back on our last evening and brought us our last quarantined dinner consisting of the Taiwanese favorites street food such as Oyster pancake made with fresh oyster harvested from water in the region, oyster noodles, steamed vegetables, and get this –> pork blood soap!! After dinner we sat down where he made us some of the best Oolong I have ever had. The scent from the tea came out so subtly yet so refreshing. I would take the cup of hot tea and just take a few whiff to smell the Oolong fragrance, just like a brandy or a wine drinker would with their drinks. Jensen explained the process in making a good cup of Oolong. It is, the right temperature and not soaking the tea leaves for too long, the first batch should not take more than 30 second and a small pinch of tea leaves can make 3-4 batch of tea. Each batch in this instance serve 3 person. He claimed not to be an expert in tea making, but still we learnt a lot from him and realize we have been making tea all the wrong way!! Claudia usually like to put a lot of tea leaves and let it soak and as for me, I would let the tea cool down before drinking.
Jensen had planned to take us out at midnight to visit Taiwan famous night market Shih Lin, but I was starting to feel the food coma coming strong and had to regretfully cancelled the trip. So we planned for a trip to a place close by known for their Taiwanese breakfast the next morning before Claudia’s sister picked us up. Morning came and our official “freedom” arrived. We are still obligated to place social distancing and self isolation, but off we go to try out the Taiwanese breakfast. Jensen took us to a local hole in the wall place that is popular with Dazhi resident for breakfast.
Taiwanese style breakfast can be had anywhere in big and in small restaurants. Everyone has their own favorite go to places. These places opened up early and by late morning some places are closed for the day especially the popular one. As you can see in the below pictures, there is a line. Good thing with these places is that the line moved pretty quick as the kitchen are very efficient and the process from ordering to receiving your food has been refined to the point where it runs like a well oiled machine!
Let me clarify my use of the term Taiwanese breakfast, there are 2 forms of Traditional Taiwanese breakfast. The one pictured above originated from northern china. Since northern china region grow wheats and soy bean, the main ingredient is wheat based. Typical menu items are fried Cruller, radish meat or meatless pies, egg pancakes, various forms of chinese flat breads (these are the flaky kind) where most customers like to sandwich a piece of fried cruller. Other variation of the flat breads sandwich include slice marinated beef. The egg pancake consist of a tortilla like pancake wrap with eggs and meat. Another very popular item is the rice roll. It consisted of sweet rice roll that typically contain fried cruller, pork floss. Variation of the rice roll include adding pork chop, eggs etc. Good thing the rice roll has made its way to the United States and other countries.
As for beverage, soy bean milk (sweetened or unsweetened) is the way to go for most people. I like mine slightly sweetened. Claudia and Jensen like the more traditional soy bean dish that included fried cruller, pork floss, green onions, and meat and topped with a dash of sesame oil. It is a heavier dish. I am just not into it, but very popular.
Claudia’s sister picked us up from Jensen’s place later in the morning and took us to — Guess What? More food places of course! This time we were off to a “famous” restaurant in Taipei that specializes in goose dishes. I didn’t get the name of this restaurant, the name is listed on the menu picture below if you can read chinese. This is a 3 story restaurant where, you are assigned to floor and table the minute you walked into the restaurant. We were assigned to the 3 floor and table 9-10. It is very common to see restaurant in Taipei that span multiple floors due to the space constraint of older buildings in a congested Taipei city where they build vertically instead of horizontally. As such each floor space would not be as large or expansive as you would expect. This floor has seating for about 10 groups of customers big or small and there is a sauce and condiment station right as you enter the floor. You gather your own sauce and tableware. One thing I noticed about restaurant here in Taiwan is that you don’t get served with water. It would be unusual to go through the entire meal without a glass of water like you would get States side. Of course there are beverages you could ordered with your meal. One other thing is the table napkins, they comes in a small pack like those small tissue pack most ladies carry in their handbag. It is uncommon to get those large “thick” napkins we are used to.
This was actually our first real full meal in Taiwan since our arrival! All the dishes were very tasty and unique and I can see why they are so popular. We got here around 11am just as they opened up and I was told if we came later, there will be a long wait. I wished I could “pigged” out but had to kept reminding myself to “eat small portion of everything” instead of stuffing myself up with one or two items and regret it. Chanel had already made plans for us for the afternoon and evening. So I had to leave room for later.
Our first day of freedom continued as Chanel’s friend met us outside the restaurant and took us to another part of Taipei city to meet up with her and her friends for afternoon coffee. Chanel used to be an actress in her younger days and the group we are meeting up today were her former colleague in the entertainment industry. We met up at a cafe called Royal Petite Garden cafe or in chinese it is 老爺。小花園. in Yitong street, Zongshan district.
Royal Petite Garden Cafe
One thing I noticed about shops especially restaurant in Taipei is that they popped in the most unlikely places compared to Southern California. Royal Petite is located on the ground floor of a residential high rise building and surrounded by other high rise building. In front of the cafe across the street is a small park (not your typical grassy park in US). As far as I can tell, you need reservation to be assured of a table. Beside the variety of specialty coffee and tea, they do serve light food/snacks beside pastries. This place is pretty cozy and the staff are very friendly and helpful. They will stop to take pictures for you even though they are in a rush to serve other customers. They do not try to usher you out of the shop in order to turn over their tables. We ended meeting here twice with our Penghu trip sandwiched in between. I tried their Orange cafe latte on the first visit. It was a regular latte with a slight hint of orange flavor topped with a slice of round orange. It was alright in taste, but I give it a high mark for novelty, orange in a latte! On the second visit, I tried their Orange Americano With Pineapple, not knowing what I would be getting but the name sound exotic which is good enough for me to order. I wanted it hot but was told they only comes in cold, though on their menu, there is a blue and red dot next to it. To my surprise, it came in a tall glass of what turned out to be a mixture of pineapple and orange juice with a tiny cup of black coffee. By tiny, I mean really tiny maybe quarter ounce of coffee. I was told to pour it into the juice and stir it! Interesting drink, guess, if you let your imagination wild you can come up with food or drinks that will boggle people’s mind! Another interesting fact that maybe it is just me, I didn’t realize Americano is just black coffee! I always thought it was a specialty coffee. I saw this on those K-Drama series and other Asian shows. Well like they said, you learn something new everyday or in my case, I was just a step away from being ignorant or “where have you been” category.
We spent our first two days of freedom meeting with different groups of friends basically eating before heading out to Penghu Island.
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