Taipei is a haven for connoisseurs of Chinese food. Yet complementing this gastronomic smorgasbord are foreign chefs whose restaurants offer locals a taste of authentic international cuisine and expatriates the flavors of home. Equally interesting are the stories behind these foreign gourmet spots.
Taipei’s first and only Swedish restaurant, Flavors, has won rave reviews. Visitors to TripAdvisor.com, a travel site, voted it “Taipei’s best restaurant,” as did readers of a well-known local English-language food blog, A Hungry Girl’s Guide to Taipei, who judged it Taipei’s “most romantic” restaurant and “best unexpected find.”
Flavors is tucked away in a lane in Taipei’s Da-an District. Prohibitively high rents on more heavily traveled streets explain the out-of-the-way location, according to chef and co-owner Ola Ekdahl. Flavors is now at its second address, having outgrown the original. “The first was 11 pings [36.3 square meters], including the kitchen,” Ekdahl says. “When I opened the oven, my wife Stephanie had to step outside.” Even now, with 46 seats and an average take of NT$1,500 (US$50) per diner, Ekdahl says that “the first two weeks [of each month] you work for the landlord.”
Ekdahl’s business partner is his wife, Stephanie Wang, a native of Taipei. The couple met in the small Swiss town of Le Bouvouret while both were students at the Institute de Hotelier de Cesar Ritz. After graduation, they pursued careers across Europe, but were not always able to work in the same city. Eventually, they gave Asia a try, but had the misfortune to arrive in 2003, the year of the SARS epidemic. “There wasn’t a hospitality job advertised from India to Hawaii then,” Ekdahl recalls.
Bold Flavors
Ekdahl and Wang retreated and spent a year in Sweden before returning to Taiwan, and this time both found work in Taipei hotels. In 2007, the couple quit their jobs and opened Flavors. Ekdahl runs the kitchen and Wang manages the dining area. The menu is based on traditional Swedish food and offers venison, rhubarb and other ingredients seldom encountered in Western restaurants. “Swedish food, like most European cuisines, has much stronger flavors than what is served in Western restaurants in Taiwan,” Wang says. “Our flavors are bold, and this is why so many Westerners appreciate our restaurant. We offer foods they miss.”
Asked why they decided to forgo the security of a steady salary to open a new restaurant—a type of business notably prone to failure—Ekdahl says: “The real reason is we wanted to be together. For us, Flavors is more than just a restaurant. Hospitality is a lifestyle. People know us through our restaurant and we become friends.”
One of Ekdahl’s strawberry tarts (Photo by Chang Su-ching)
“Many people open restaurants but keep their eye on the bottom line,” he adds. “When they do that they lose the hospitality. The bottom line is important but not as important for us right now as being together every day.”
About a kilometer north of Flavors in the Da-an District is Papa Gio’, which is run by Italian chefs Giorgio Trevisan and Matteo Boschiavo. Both men are from near the northern Italy city of Verona and both had established cooking careers back home, although they arrived separately and met in Taiwan.
Papa Gio’ is a landmark for Taipei expatriates, though its current name is a mild rebranding of Papa Giovanni’s, as it was known before Trevisan and Boschiavo bought it in 2009 from its former owner upon his retirement. Papa Gio’ commands a corner in a lane off busy Zhongxiao East Road.
“Papa Gio’ is a trattoria,” Trevisan says, adding that a trattoria in Italy is midway between a ristorante, which serves haute cuisine, and an osteria, which serves everyday fare. “Trattoria means ‘tractor,’” a nearby customer, also Italian, chimes in. “Trattoria are where you see the tractors parked at lunch. That means the food is good.”
Trevisan grew up in a family-owned trattoria outside Verona and learned to cook at an early age. Boschiavo entered the profession through formal training at the IPSSAR Angelo Berti school in Chievo, Italy. At Papa Gio’, Boschiavo runs the kitchen, while Trevisan oversees the dining area.
Matteo Boschiavo, chef and co-owner of Papa Gio’ (Photo by Chang Su-ching)
Trevisan is the older of the two men and was the first to arrive in Taiwan. His departure from Italy was precipitated by a divorce. In its aftermath, he was sitting in a bar in Italy when an industry acquaintance asked if he wanted to go to Taiwan. “I said, ‘Where is Taiwan?’” Trevisan recalls.
The lure of the unknown was hard to resist, and he came to Taiwan in 1999 hoping to cure the pain in his heart. He worked in a series of Italian restaurants before buying into Papa Gio’.
Boschiavo wanted to travel and sought work in the United States and Australia, but when presented with the opportunity to come to Taiwan in 2001, he took it. Like Trevisan, he worked in some of Taipei’s best-known Italian eateries before taking ownership of Papa Gio’.
At Papa Gio’, Boschiavo says he prepares food exactly as he would in Italy. The authenticity isn’t always appreciated, however. For example, some customers are shocked that sardines are so salty. “They think something is wrong,” Boschiavo says. But the biggest misunderstanding revolves around rice—a common food in Italy—because it is normally served al dente—literally “with tooth”—meaning still a little hard. In Taiwan, many consider al dente rice undercooked. “To them, rice is supposed to be soft,” he adds. “Today, when a customer orders a risotto, we ask if they want it Italian or Chinese style.”
Have Skillet, Will Travel
Patrick Cabirol, who was raised on a farm 35 minutes from Bordeaux, France, is another European country boy who has taken up the skillet in Taipei. Cabirol is the founder of Saveurs, a French restaurant also located in the city’s Da-an District.
“When I was young I would sometimes bake pastries at home, and my mother saw I enjoyed it,” Cabirol recalls. “She said, ‘Why don’t you become a chef? People always have to eat. You will always have a job.’” He followed her advice and graduated from Lycee Technique d’Hotellerie in Talence, Bordeaux in 1988.
Beef and seafood favorites from Saveurs’ menu (Photo by Chang Su-ching)
Just as his mother predicted, work was easy to find, but he longed to travel. “In France, there is a newspaper for the hospitality trade, and it has a ‘help wanted’ section,” he says. “Two overseas jobs were offered—one in the US and the other in Taiwan. A week later, I looked again but there was only one—the Taiwan job. So I applied.”
Cabirol’s knowledge of the Far East was limited, however, and he accepted the Taipei position despite expecting to see rickshaws on the streets. His misconceptions were quickly put to rest when he came to Taiwan. “When I arrived, my boss picked me up in a BMW,” he says, laughing.
For the next six years, Cabirol was an assistant chef at Taipei’s Auberge de France. He stayed until he felt trapped, and in 2005, he quit and opened Saveurs.
“The opening was June sixth, and that whole month we had barely any customers,” he says. “If five came for lunch, I was happy. Evenings I had no dinner business. I wondered what I’d done.”
On July 1, however, Saveurs was suddenly packed with customers. “Lunch has been full almost every day since, and a reservation is a must,” he says. “Dinners picked up as well that August. I still don’t know what happened.”
To most Taiwanese, French food is perceived as good, but with small servings and a hefty bill, Cabirol says. “But Saveurs features good food, large servings and a reasonable price,” he says, with a typical lunch going for NT$450 (US$15).
One of Papa Gio’s signature pasta dishes (Photo by Chang Su-ching)
The biggest cross-cultural difference Cabirol sees in Taiwan is the pacing of a meal. “In Taiwan, I could serve a meal in 30 minutes,” he says. “The soup leaves the kitchen and two minutes later it is eaten. The soup is so hot it burns my lips. But poof—gone!—and the customer is waiting for the next course.”
In France, on the other hand, meals unfold in stages, preferably in the company of friends and with lots of conversation. At Saveurs, that leisurely pace is followed each Friday by a group of expatriate French patrons. “Their visit fills the afternoon, and they eat anything French,” Cabirol says. “I just tell them what I have.”
While Flavors, Papa Gio’ and Saveurs are all owner-run European restaurants, The Patio is a Thai restaurant operated by S&P Syndicate PCL, one of Thailand’s major food conglomerates. Included among its many business interests are restaurants, and branches began showing up in such far-flung places as London and Singapore in the late 1990s, while The Patio debuted in Taipei in 1996, the first of two restaurants there to date.
The head chef is Chantana Sae-Han, who was one of seven S&P staffers sent to Taiwan in early 1996. With her was Surang Teeranitikul, operations manager, and today the two Thai women run S&P’s Taiwan restaurants. “A lot of Taiwanese are surprised that the head chef is a woman,” Teeranitikul says.
Taste of Thailand
Sae-Han learned to cook at her family home in Chiang Mai, northern Thailand and later attended S&P’s culinary institute. She says graduates of the school often find work at S&P’s many restaurants. In Thailand, the majority of its chefs are female, and in Taiwan, all of the restaurants’ chefs are Thai women.
Speaking of The Patio, an S&P eatery located on the 11th floor food court of a Sogo department store, Teeranitikul says, “We have five Thai chefs in the kitchen here. I don’t think there is any other Thai restaurant in Taipei that can say that.”
A group of expatriate French patraons enjoys a leisurely Friday lunch at Saveurs. (Photo by Chang Su-ching)
The Patio showcases traditional Thai cuisine. “That is our brand positioning—authenticity,” Sae-Han says. “We try not to deviate from the way we would prepare food in Thailand. Our ingredients come from Thailand, and whenever possible we use fresh rather than dried.”
To the unschooled, Thai food is not much different from Chinese food. Thais eat with a knife and fork, however, and Sae-Han finds it amusing to watch patrons attempt to eat curry with chopsticks. Another difference is that in Thailand, fine dining venues serve fish as fillets, but Sae-Han learned early on to account for local preferences by serving fish with the head attached.
“In Taiwan, people think curry is curry,” Sae-Han says, “and that there is only one kind. What they know is Japanese-style curry, which is thick, but Thailand has many types of curries.” Thai food features dry curries, red curries and yellow curries, and some Thai curries are served as soups, she says.
If the Thai food offered at The Patio sometimes surprises Taiwanese eaters, Taiwan had a few surprises for Sae-Han and Teeranitikul as well. In 1996, Mother Nature greeted them with a wild embrace. A few days before the grand opening of The Patio, a typhoon ripped across the northern end of the island and toppled trees on The Patio’s ... well, patio. “The TV news here is in Chinese, which neither of us can speak, and we had no idea a huge storm was coming,” Sae-Han says.
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Glenn Smith is a writer based in New Taipei City.
Hungry Girl started her blog as a way of remembering the dishes she had discovered while eating out. (Photo by Chang Su-ching)
A Hungry Girl Dishes on Taipei’s Food Scene
Taipei’s chefs all know of her, but few could pick her out of a crowd. Hungry Girl, as she is known, is the anonymous driving force behind A Hungry Girl’s Guide to Taipei, a blog that has covered Taipei restaurants for more than five years.
Taiwan Review managed to track down Hungry Girl via email and, somewhat surprisingly given her desire to keep her identity secret, she agreed to answer some of our most burning questions.
Taiwan Review: How did you come to write A Hungry Girl’s Guide to Taipei?
Hungry Girl: When I moved back to Taipei, I missed the diversity of food in Los Angeles. In Taipei, I couldn’t find much information in English. The blog started out as a personal journal to remember what dishes I discovered with my friends.
TR: Was A Hungry Girl’s Guide to Taipei your first try at blogging?
HG: Yes.
TR: When did you start the blog?
HG: 2005.
TR: Why is your blog anonymous?
HG: When the blog first started, it was a hobby and the readers were friends back home. So it wasn’t that I consciously made it anonymous—no one really cared.
Being anonymous—I don’t think it is a big deal. Today people come to the blog to drool over food and get basic information. As a blogger, it’s less awkward to be anonymous since there is no favoritism at restaurants and you can be honest if you don’t like the food or service.
TR: Do you ever have problems photographing the food?
HG: At a few places, I’ve been told not to take photos and I didn’t blog about them because there’s no point without pictures of food.
TR: How would you describe the Taipei food scene?
HG: Taipei has something for everyone. You can eat all day long and not spend more than US$3 a meal and eat some amazing food. The next day you can splurge and spend a hundred times that.
TR: Any anecdotes about your readers?
HG: I love getting comments about people’s experiences at restaurants I’ve reviewed. Once I gave a particular restaurant a “do not recommend” review after a very bad experience.
The comments I received afterwards were fascinating. Some had bad experiences like I had, but most disagreed with me. But first and last impressions of service counts for a lot, and I was honestly sharing a negative experience.
TR: Your blog is one of Taipei’s most read English blogs. If you could do it all over, what would you do differently?
HG: I had a lot to learn when I first started navigating Taipei. Someday I’d like to clean up the different spellings of street names or foods in my blog and add MRT stops and maps to older posts.
Even though I look back on some early pictures and think they are bad, I wouldn’t change them because they let me reflect on how I’ve evolved. I still have a lot to learn.
—Glenn Smith
Copyright © 2011 by Glenn Smith