58 TRAVEL+LEISURE | SEPTEMBER 2019
EXPERIENCES
Gen Creative, where
the menu reflects the
Taiwanese, Korean,
and Guatemalan
heritage of its chefs.
At Taïrroir, the food is playful, unpretentious,
and deeply rooted—in short, a deliciously accurate
yet updated evocation of the Taipei I’ve come
to know over 22 years of regular visits (many of
them with my wife, who grew up in the city).
While Westerners have long regarded Singapore,
Bangkok, and Tokyo as top Asian food cities,
Taipei’s culinary scene isn’t far behind:
YouTubers assiduously document their night-
market visits. Instagrammers showcase local
trends like wobbly pancake towers and lattes
adorned with images of Shiba Inus. Bubble tea,
invented in Taiwan in the 1980s, is now ubiquitous
in American cities and the Taiwanese soup-
dumpling restaurant Din Tai Fung has locations
across California, Oregon, and Washington.
The movement began in 2014 with the opening
of two restaurants. Raw, which sits just north of
the city center in Taipei’s Dazhi neighborhood,
was launched by André Chiang, the Taiwanese
chef behind Singapore’s (now closed) Restaurant
André. It focuses on Taiwan’s 24 “microseasons”—
the subtle, cyclical shifts in weather throughout
the year that produce stellar but short-lived raw
ingredients. Meanwhile, Taipei’s restaurant-dense
Daan District saw the arrival of Mume, where
egg comes from silkies, the black-skinned
chickens prized for their medicinal value;
the broad, crispy buckwheat tuile that lies across
the top is dotted with sweet-potato fondant
and wisps of green herbs. You want to savor it,
yet it vanishes in a few bites, a brief stop on a
multicourse tasting menu that romps through
the island’s traditions and ingredients with dishes
like roast P’ing-tung pigeon, salt-baked bamboo
shoots, and Taiwan Beer tofu mousse.
Ho belongs to a new generation of chefs who
are reimagining what fine dining means in
Taipei. They’re a mix of Taiwanese and expats—
including veterans of kitchens in Vegas and Paris—
who could be running restaurants anywhere
in the world. Yet they’ve chosen to make their
homes and careers on this particular island.
“I want to showcase culture, history,
everything,” the 34-year-old Ho told me. He’s
referring to his menu’s hard-to-define blend of
regional cuisines from mainland China, Japanese
influences from the half-century Taiwan was a
colony, and homegrown dishes and flavors rooted
in the island’s mountains and oceans: braised
pork, briny oyster omelettes, beef noodle soup,
and unnervingly fresh mangoes and guavas.
