Taiwan 2013 - Non Banquet Eats Part 2 - 3-4 Forks

Howard Hotel -  3 Forks - No. 160, Section 3, Rén'ài Rd, Daan District, Taipei City, Taiwan 106

I'll be honest, but I'm a sucker for a good buffet.  I know they are usually kind of gross with food made in bulk just sitting out in the open for people to pick over, but there's just something appealing about having a large variety of food at your disposal.  My mom and my aunt and uncle met a family friend at the Howard Hotel which I guess is one of the nicer hotels in Taipei.  On the first floor is the Rainbow Terrace which serves an Asian buffet for ~$20/pp for lunch.  I've been to a bunch of buffets in my life but none of them were really Asian themed, so this was a treat.  They had Indian food (chicken and fish curry), Thai food (lettuce cups, papaya salad, satays, etc), Chinese food (peking duck, fish soups, jellyfish, etc), a cold seafood bar of shrimp, New Zealand style green mussels, octopus, and crab, a fruit bar and an ice cream bar.  The only thing that was missing was the one cuisine I was most looking forward to:  Japanese.

I ended up trying almost everything in the buffet but I started with the cold seafood bar.  The shrimp was great, very plumb and sweet.  Unfortunately, the crab (which I was most looking forward to) was awful.  I don't know if something was off about it or it was a kind of crab I wasn't used to, but it was inedible.  The mussels were good but I prefer my mussels warm and even though I knew they were cooked, there's something about eating ice cold mussels that didn't really do it for me.  All the other hot dishes were pretty good and very filling.  The best part of a buffet is if you don't like it, you don't have to finish it!  But there wasn't really anything except for the crab that I didn't finish.  For $20, it's definitely worth checking out, although $20 is really a lot of money to spend on on meal in Taiwan.  In the end, it's still a buffet, so the quality isn't going to be stellar but I enjoyed that it offered a different variety of food that you don't normally get all in one place.

Mazendo - 3.5 Forks -  No. 24, Lane 280, Guāngfù South Rd, Daan District, Taipei City, Taiwan 106

Another dish that Taiwan is famous for is their spicy beef noodle soup.  I remember from my youth of going to real divey mom and pop places for this dish.  But times have changed and my mom and I were walking down this somewhat trendy street that had this very sleek modern looking noodle soup restaurant.  Despite its youthful looking decor, the menu is still pretty old school with no pictures, just a piece of paper with various dishes listed in Chinese.  My mom and I each opted for the spicy beef noodle soup ($4/bowl) and an order of pea shoot tops ($2) which is one of my favorite vegetables.  The noodle soups came out pretty quickly and it looked bright red from tons of red chili oil and I was worried that my tongue was going to burn off.  Either my tolerance for spiciness has vastly improved or this really wasn't that spicy.  The chunks of beef were super super tender and had the perfect balance of meat and fat to it (it looked like a chuck cut).  My one gripe about this dish was that there wasn't enough noodles to it.  I slurpped down most of dish but was left with tons of broth and nothing to go with it.  I would have also liked it to be a notch spicier/more flavorful but overall, it was a great mid-afternoon snack.  The pea shoot tops were sauteed in garlic and it was great.  It was the perfect size because usually in most Chinese places in the US they give you a dish the size of a house and it costs $15+.  For $2, it was the perfect size for 2 people.  I had walked past this place another night and there was a long line of young kids waiting to get in, so it looks to be pretty popular with the younger crowd.  Price, decor and food wise, it's definitely worth checking out if you're in the 'hood.

Suabu -  4 Forks - No. 440, Guangfu S. Road, Da-an District, Taipei City, 10695

One of the few places I remember from my last visit to Taiwan was this awesome hot pot place right across the street from my grandpa's apt.  I love hot pot, but rarely eat it in the US because you generally need a big group for it.  But here they give you individual servings and you have a choice of picking from a variety of combinations or ordering a la carte.  By default you get the below bowl of basic items - cabbage, tofu, fish cake, tomato, pumpkin and enoki mushrooms.

For my main entree, I opted for the beef and seafood combo ($11) which comes with about 6 very thinly sliced pieces of red meat, squid, shrimp, mussels, clams, a good size fillet of salmon and a fillet of white fish.  You also get a choice of rice or noodles.  We got an order of these vermicelli-like see through noodles, which is a great type of noodle to use in hot pot.  All this food combined with the standard veggie plate you get is a ton of food. 

They have a sauce station in the back where you make your own dipping sauce.  I got your basic light
soy sauce, garlic, cilantro and scallion.  The broth was a standard chicken broth and you essentially dip each item into the hot broth and wait for it to cook.  Everything was great and even though it was 1,000 degrees outside, hot pot remains one of my favorite types of food because it's so easy/healthy/tasty.  The noodles are best put in last after your broth has a bit of flavor from all the other ingredients you've had soaking in there.  If you still have room, they also have a freezer full of ice cream that's included in the price of your meal.  I just wish I got there earlier because we only had an hour to eat and felt a bit pressure to eat quickly but that was our own fault for walking in at 9:30pm when we knew they closed at 10:30pm.