This is my 100th post. The blog started back in June 2018 and now has over 100 restaurants reviewed (some posts deal with more than one place) spread over a dozen cities in South East Asia and the Far East. The top cities are Shanghai (22 reviews), Ho Chi Minh City (17), Tokyo (14), and Hong Kong (11). Japanese cuisine is the most reviewed with 34 posts, then French and Italian (but the Italian category mostly includes ice cream places!).
Looking back at the second half of 2018 there were a lot of memorable food experiences. Here’s my top ten.
Ultraviolet: I was initially skeptical about this “multisensory” experience, but chef Pairet cracked it and created his own genre.
Sushi Chiharu: I can only describe it as a divine omakase.
The Red Box: just a fantastic find in Chiang Mai, I loved the food, the creativity, the passion of the chef.
Yakitori Ueda: another Osaka winner (Osaka is still underrepresented, one of the goal for 2019 will be to go visit the city again) for my best yakitori to date.
Taian Table: in Shanghai is just another mind-blowing multi-course experience. Just ridiculous that they have only one star in the Michelin Guide.
Romeo and Juliet: Italian fine dining at its best in Ho Chi Minh City.
Soul Burger: I honestly wish I could try all of their burger of the month.
Donggang Fish market: a little adventure to get fresh sashimi at real wholesome prices including some rare cuts.
Teppanyaki Mitsui: eating quality Japanese meat in a family setting.
2019 will start with a full immersion in Vietnam again, then mostly Shanghai (with the occasional detour to Taipei or Hong Kong) and in the second part of 2019 there are already a couple of trips planned to Japan. I should also be able to go back to Chiang Mai and probably touch Laos as well this time.
Le Corto opened in 2016 and has made a name for itself as a premium French restaurant in Ho Chi Minh City. The name is an homage to Corto Maltese, the fictional adventurer coined by Hugo Pratt (Corto Maltese is from Malta and Pratt was Italian, not sure the link to a French restaurant, but it does not really matter). I also reviewed their weekend brunch deal.
The visit
They have a great deal for lunch, but I ordered a la carte (the full menu was available).
The bread basket was promptly served.
A particularly striking dish was a mille-feuille with marinated salmon heart, foie gras, and raw sea Scallops, sliced with avocado and guacamole and presented with wasabi espuma. This is a good epitome of what I like about Le Corto: creativity but not for creativity’s sake, the dishes are delicious and substantial. The wasabi espuma was quite spicy, I did not find it necessary to enjoy this great dish.
Foie gras ravioli were very well executed.
Finally, I had a tuna steak with kampot pepper, warm vegetable tabbouleh, citrus and coriander jus.
The check
Final check was 1,110,000 VND (around 58 USD). For a trio of high cuisine dishes like these was a very good deal. Le Corto is one of the best French restaurants in Saigon in my opinion.
Annam Gourmet is a brand of luxury supermarkets in Saigon specializing in imported food. They also have seats and a menu with a good assortment of Western dishes. When Saigon Centre re-opened in 2016 along with the newly established Takashimaya new overseas outlet, they took over a large space in the second basement and made it a gourmet heaven. In this location they also have a fairly large cafe area and they offer a fantastic deal for lunch in the form of a mini-buffet.
The visit
Here some of goodies from a visit during summer 2018.
A salad station.
Pizza and quiche.
Meat includes bacon, sausages, chicken, beef and clams.
They also have a small selection of sushi and sashimi and some cheese and cold cuts.
And finally a choice of fruit and desserts.
The check
This beautiful mini-buffet cost 250,000 VND (around 11 USD). It should be mentioned that drinks are not included, so the real price is more like my check, close to 300,000 VND (around 13 USD). Still, it is an incredible deal for Western food in central Saigon.
Where in Ho Chi Minh City: B2-11/12, 65 Le Loi St., Ben Thanh Ward Website: http://annam-gourmet.com/
This is Shanghai: with its thriving expat community it can offer food from all over the world. So no surprise if one of my little pleasures when I visit Shanghai is eating mouth-watering smoked meat Montreal style at Tock’s.
A view of the storefront on Henan Middle Road, now closed.
The visit(s)
I have eaten at Tock’s only a couple of times in the second part of 2018. I wish I had more chances.
They have a Western styled environment including some booths (the staff is so kind to let me sit in a booth when I go there very early and there are not too many customers).
Apparently the Canadian Prime Minister visited them.
The highlight of their menu is smoked meat. They have beef (that can be ordered lean, medium fatty or fatty) and duck. The 3 meat platter is a great way to sample the offering. I like all of their smoked meat. Maybe surprisingly I will say that the smoked duck is their winner, it really has a deep flavor!
Tock’s is also the place where I can have a Reuben sandwich time to time. The medium one is enough to satisfy an hungry customer like yours truly.
The checks
The checks above show that a visit won’t break the bank. The big platter is 98 CNY (14.50 USD) and the Reuben medium is 80 CNY (12 USD).
Overall I find Tock’s a nice food experience and reasonable value for money.
Where in Shanghai: 221 Henan Zhong Lu. Address in Chinese: 请带我去 河南中路221号 Closest Metro station: East Nanjing Road.
The location I used to patronize as to early 2020 is closed. They have another location in Fengsheng Li, but I have not tried it.
In October 2018 I was invited to a dinner in a well-reputed Chinese restaurant in Tainan specializing in crab. The restaurant was located on the second floor of Tainan’s Dream Mall and was called Jin Xia (錦霞樓). According to my research, the restaurant was run by a local family then in its third generation.
The visit
Our group was assigned a large private room with a classic round table and a lazy Susan at the center.
It was a classic eight-course Chinese meal with some add-ons.
Tea, sparkling wine and Apple Sidra were available throughout the dinner. Appe Sidra is a Taiwanese fixture: launched in 1965, it is a kind of apple cider vinegar soda with a very crisp and sour flavor.
First an amuse bouche including a piece of shrimp and tofu.
A tofu and abalone appetizer.
Another nicely presented appetizer dish including some local specialties like sausages and mullet roe (in the paper wrapping). Well balance of flavors.
Then we had a delicious seafood soup with shrimps, white fish and crab.
Then time for a big ticket item: a crab with its roe on a base of rice.
Another soup with tripe.
Another fish dish with a rich sauce.
Fruit.
A final Chinese dessert with tofu, jellies and brown sugar.
The check
I cannot comment on the price point because I was invited by a friend. But I can imagine that it would be fine dining level.
I found it an incredible good meal, leveraging on local specialties and with a contemporary touch in the presentation of the dishes.
It is rare that food, presentation, service and venue (not to mention the company) all line up to create the perfect dining experience. That’s what happened in this lunch at Leputing around Christmas 2018 that I had the joy to share with two friends (I was invited, I did not know about the restaurant).
The visit
The restaurant is located in a Japanese-style house that separates itself from the surroundings made of high-rise residential buildings.
This is not ordinary building. It is the result of a 18-month long restoration project to bring back to life an abandoned building from the colonial past (Japan ruled Taiwan from 1895 to 1945). This is what is explained on Leputing’s website:
Leputing used to be the Nishikicho [Japanese name of the area] Japanese-style dormitory used by officials of the Forestry Bureau, but it was later abandoned for a long time. Through collaboration with Taipei City Government’s Department of Cultural Affairs, Lead Jade Life & Culture team was entrusted in 2013 to care for this old building of historical and cultural significance.
(Another source indicates that the building was actually a granary, maybe it was both a dormitory and a deposit.)
They did a spectacular job in restoring and preserving the building adding a zen and a rock garden. Various works of art also embellish the environment (see the picture on top of this page).
The food was not less appealing than the history of the venue. The first dish was a salad including shrimps, pickled radish, and cucumber. I was informed that all the ingredients were attentively sourced from Taiwan.
The second entree was tofu and a kind of smoked white fish. It is nice how they made the tofu and the fish look very similar… It was surmounted by soy bean crumbs and lily bulbs. The dish was nothing short of delicious and again the presentation was just beautiful.
Then we had a soup with mushrooms and foie gras. The soup was chicken stock and it was poured in the bowl at the table. Another delicious dish.
Then I can show you three mains as everyone in the party took a different one. The first was short ribs with hon-shimeji mushrooms (also known as the Japanese honey mushroom for it lobster-like taste) and sunchokes. As you can see, every component of every dish is carefully hand-picked.
The second main was a fish filet with seaweed butter sauce.
Finally, the third main was chicken roulade (“rolled”) with pea puree and mushrooms.
All the mains were phenomenal but the chicken was probably the winner. I learnt that it was free-range chicken from a farm close-by and the roulade components were perfectly amalgamated and did not distract from the chicken juicy flavor.
But we were not finished yet. We also had a rice dish (in kaiseki meals it is never missing and this set menu was reminescent of a kaiseki).
This was not just any rice. It was Chihshang rice from Chihshang Township in Taiwan. According to the distributor:
Back in the age of Japanese colonization, Chihshang rice was the tribute to offer to the Japanese Emperor, so it was called the “Tribute rice”. The world-famous “Chihshang meal box” exactly originated here. The ingredient which the meal box has advertised is exactly the Chihshang rice.
Chihshang Township is located in the purest and most natural area where rice is produced in the Hualien-Taitung Longitudinal Valley. It is also between the Central Range and Costal Range and on the valley plain of Hsinwulu River drainage basin with averagely the height of 300 meters above sea level. The soil in the paddy fields in Chihshang Township is rich with abundant organic minerals along with the rivers. There is even the only inland wetland in Taiwan, the Dapo Pool, to control the water level.
A very fitting dish for the venue. The rice was made more succulent by adding chicken fat.
The dessert had three components. First, a delicate brown sugar cookie with a scoop of apple and sea salt flavored ice cream (not the usual vanilla, thanks). Second, some Taiwanese black tea.
Third, some German fruit bread (stollen). Very fitting given the time of the year (almost Christmas day).
Overall this lunch was an impeccable dining experience, emphasizing local and Japanese ingredients for creative and unique dishes where all the components made a contribution to the final substance of the dish.
The check
I do not really have a check because I was treated to this lunch. However lunch sets range from 1.200 to 1.700 NTD (39 to 55 USD). Only set menus were available. Dinner set menus are more expensive, but mostly below the 100 USD mark. Considering the quality of the food and the overall experience, I would be happy to pay this kind of money for a similar lunch (or dinner).
Leputing is a great restaurant that I highly recommend and I will try to go back in 2019.
During one of my visits to Tainan (October 2018), I finally tried their coffin bread. Thanks to a local acquaintance I was directed to the restaurant that invented the dish in the 40s and it is still in operations.
Coffin bread (or coffin toast bread, or guancai ban, 府城棺材板) is a dish where the toasted bread is used as a bowl. Given its rectangular shape and the use of a piece of bread as a “lid”, it does look like a coffin. The bread is filled with starchy soup of seafood, vegetables chicken, or curry. Given Tainan’s contact with the Western world it was probably inspired by the Western chowder.
The visit
The shop is called Chikan Eatery in English and is located inside a market. At noon, on a Sunday, it was open for lunch, while many of the other stalls were closed. I and my group were directed to a secondary dining room just across the main restaurant.
Coffin bread was available in various versions: curry, chicken, seafood and a mixed version that I chose.
The soup was very thick and concealed pieces of squid, chicken, and vegetables. It was good, a very filling dish.
I also had deep-fried baby oysters, another local dish.
The eatery has a website (not recently updated) that further explains how the coffin bread concept went about and was named:
The original name for Coffin Toast was“Chicken Liver Plank”. In the 40’s, chicken liver was a fine ingredient. As a result, Hsiung Liu-Yi [the founder of the restaurant] chose chicken liver as its stuffing and named after it. The stuffing tasted like French foie gras and then became very popular at that time. Those, no matter came from local or other places, would visit SAKARIBA and enjoy the snack.
Once there a professor (NTU) came to SAKARIBA and tasted the“Chicken Liver Plank”. After the meal, he praised to it and said to Hsiung Liu-Yi that its shape was a coffin alike. Therefore, Hsiung Liu-Yi finally decided to change its name as Coffin Toast. Since then the snack has become famous and popular in Tainan.
The check
To order, we were provided a Chinese form. Having someone who spoke Chinese was of course an advantage, but with some creativity it should not be difficult to ask for their main dish even without Chinese. The coffin bread cost 60 NTD (less than 2 USD). The oysters were 150 NTD.
It was certainly great to have a lunch at the original place of the coffin bread. Tainan is a city full of culinary points of interest.
Tainan is regarded as the culinary capital of Taiwan (or at least by its inhabitants as a friend of Taipei once remarked). I agree that food in Tainan is a big deal and they have a lot of local specialties that should not be missed. This restaurant does a good job in offering a selection of these specialties.
The visit
The restaurant in English is called Chikan Peddler’s Noodle and is located just next to a Tainan’s landmark, Chihkan Tower.
I initially went there for their Dan Zai noodles, but then I realized they had a set menu to sample some of the main local dishes and I went for it.
I was asked to sit on the upper floor. The building is an old traditional house and the stairs are quite steep…
The dining room upstairs was almost empty and I was quickly served.
The first dish was a bowl of their Dan Zai noodles, a type of noodle topped with minced pork ragu (and a shrimp). The pork meat goes through a long preparation process and the result is outstanding. The meat is full of herbal flavors and is extremely delicate. It is really a dish to try.
Then one by one I got the other dishes of this set menu. The second was boiled spearfish thick soup. Quite a good soup with some good pieces of white fish.
The oyster omelette was another typical dish included in the set.
I also had an opportunity to try the milk fish (boiled with a traditional bean paste).
Another dish was rice cake with deep-fried shrimp rolls.
Finally, I was served a kind of flan.
The check
Total was 420 NTD (13.65 USD), which included a large cup of iced tea (white gourd to be precise).
The restaurant clearly caters to tourist, but I think it did a decent job in presenting this selection of traditional dishes. My impression is that the noodle were really great, while the other dishes were quite bland. I do not have enough expertise to say if this was just the norm, or there was a difference between the quality of their noodles and the rest.
Where in Tainan: No.118, Section 2 Minzu Road. Address in Chinese: 老店 台南市中西區民族路二段 180 號 Website: https://www.chikan.com.tw
Tip: for the thick soup the Tainan’s King of Thick Soup has its store just across the street around the corner.
Taiwan is mad for brunch restaurants. These small restaurants are halfway a cafe and a bistro. I see them as a natural evolution of Taiwanese breakfast restaurants, but serving foreign food, usually from 9 am to mid afternoon or early evening.
The visit
Just as an example, I will mention one from Tainan where I ate. In English is called character and it is housed in a small space in a back alley of Chenggong road. It could have been a garage.
Everything about it is cute…
Their specialty seems to be instagrammable latte, with cute cartoons drawn in the cream.
I went for a set luch that included an iced tea, a salad with soba and…
…and an excellent tuna cheese sandwich.
The place with its cuteness and affordable prices seemed to cater to young people.
The check
The set menu cost me only 150 NTD (4.87 USD), really a bargain for a nice lunch.
This kind of eateries, which are not really restaurants, but not a cafe as well (not really designed to hang out for a long time as in certain cafes), are now endemic in Taiwan; I noticed a lot of them especially in the South. They are really a great option for a non-Taiwanese breakfast or lunch.
Where in Tainan: No. 4-5, Lane 68, Chenggong Road, North District
Not the biggest or most interesting night market, still I will write this review because I have not reviewed any Taiwanese night market yet and Lihue in Kaohsiung is a pretty typical example. If you are not aware, night markets are all over Taiwan (every city has many, often running concurrently from evening to midnight or later) and they are all about food. It is some of the best street food you can find in Asia (if you compound price, cleanliness and taste in my opinion).
The visit
I was in Kaohsiung in late December 2018 and I decided to take a stroll in this market as it was very close to my hotel.
The market spread around 700 meters on Lihue street with probably close to 100 vendors. It was quite crowded, as night markets always are in Taiwan. Good thing, it is mostly food, but you can also find garments and souvenir vendors.
I started with one of the popular vendors: a stall preparing Taiwanese hot dogs. This is actually a sausage squeezed in a bun of sticky rice. Other condiments are added including ketchup and spring onion. Only 60 NTD for a small one (1.95 USD). I liked it and it was not too messy to eat. Thanks to the paper wrap it stayed into place.
Then, if you like a soft ball, the diced beef vendor is a sure shot. I have seen them in Taipei as well. The beef is cooked with a blowtorch. Not the highest quality, but it does the job. A small portion is 100 NTD (3.20 USD).
This vendor was quite interesting. She prepared some shrimp and egg balls, using quail eggs. Maybe too much pepper, but another easy dish. Just 60 NTD (1.95 USD).
I also had a piece of mullet roe, made warm and combined with a slice of apple to make it more palatable. Mullet roe is a specialty of the South of Taiwan. Just 50 NTD (1.60 USD). In the picture above, while they are warming my mullet roe, on the grill they are cooking fish gizzard.
Of course there is much more, including more expensive seafood as shown in the picture above. A few stalls have stools and a few tables in the middle of the road, otherwise it is food on the go.
The check
No checks provided, but the total experience was less than 10 USD and it was totally enjoyable. Night markets are a great food experience in Taiwan.
Where in Kaohsiung: Liuhe 2nd Road, Xinxing District. The night market is within walking distance from Formosa Boulevard Station of the Kaohsiung MRT.
