What is the true flavor of Taipei or even of Taiwan? The pineapple cakes made by ChiaTe Bakery could be a contender for the title.
Located in bustling Nanjing East Road in Taipei, ChiaTe has been in business since 1975. Its defining moment, however, did not arrive until 2006, when the bakery won the championship in the first annual Pineapple Cake Festival hosted by the Taipei City government.
“In a way, we had been getting ready for the competition since long before it was held,” said Chen Tang-peng, owner and founder of the bakery. “We were just waiting for a chance to prove to everybody else that our pineapple cakes are simply the best.”
The following year ChiaTe won first place again the second time the festival was held. As if to add icing to the cake, it won the silver medal in the first Pineapple Cake Chef Competition as well.
The honors kept rolling in. Taipei put ChiaTe’s cranberry cakes on its list of 10 must-buy souvenirs for tourists visiting the city, while the Association of Taiwan Tour Souvenirs declared the bakery’s pineapple cakes to be one of Taiwan’s 100 must-buy tourist items.
This year, as Taipei holds the 2010 International Flora Expo, it has teamed up with ChiaTe. Visitors with a “Flora Expo Passport” are entitled to receive discounts at several specialty stores and souvenir shops in the northern part of the city where the expo is being held, and, not surprisingly, one of the designated stores is the well-known bakery.
But even without any special discounts, its floral-themed store attracts hundreds of customers every day and thousands of international tourists each year. “ChiaTe almost seems like one of the city’s hot tourist spots,” said You, a loyal customer of the store for almost 10 years.
“We not only have to deal with customers at the store but also with rush orders from around the world, especially Singapore, Hong Kong, mainland China and Japan,” Chen said. “If you want your moon cake delivered on time, you’ll have to order at least a year beforehand.”
Indeed, the store is so popular it simply cannot keep up with demand. “If you go to ChiaTe after work, around seven in the evening, all you’ll find are empty shelves because all our best-selling items are sold out at three in the afternoon,” Chen said.
And what does the owner attribute his success to? “We use only the best-quality ingredients and we ban all chemical additives,” Chen said. “That is really the only secret of our success.
“Customers are discriminating enough to detect even the slightest changes. If we were to try to replace our original ingredients with some shoddy substitutes, they would find out right away,” he added.
“And so when the melamine milk crisis, involving tainted milk originating from mainland China, broke out in 2008, we weren’t in the least bit worried for ourselves, even though we use plenty of dairy products in our cakes.
“We knew we would be all right, as we import only the best milk powder and butter from New Zealand,” the owner said.
Another reason the store’s popularity has never waned is that it has never tried to stick only to its original recipes. Indeed, shortly after winning the championship in 2006, the store began experimenting with different ingredients and it soon rolled out completely new flavors—cranberry cakes and acrospires walnut, for instance.
“I have been trying different recipes to improve the flavor. Some of the trainees who learned their bakery skills with me under the same master were astonished to learn of my innovations,” Chen said.
Although ChiaTe is famous for its pineapple cakes, its traditional “wife cakes” and mung bean cakes are also its best-sellers, You noted.
Asked how he would describe the flavor of ChiaTe’s cakes, You said, “The crust is crunchy and crispy, more like an egg roll. This is not to mention the fresh, mouth-watering juicy fillings, completely different from the preserved fruits found in low-end products.
“It’s a flavor that you will never forget once you’ve tasted it. I fell in love with ChiaTe right after I tried their specialty cakes,” he concluded.
After such huge success, ChiaTe has decided it will try not to overreach. The reason it chooses not to expand lies in its insistence on quality control.
“So far we only own one store in Taipei,” said Chen. Even now, the owner wakes up at 3 a.m. every morning to work along with his 40 other bakers, so as to get the freshest cakes ready by the time the store opens at 7 a.m.
“Since we have so much on our hands, for the time being we won’t consider expanding. After all, we cherish our hard-won success,” Chen said. (HZW)
Write to Michelle Lu at kaiping@mail.gio.gov.tw