baking/supplies: i recommend YIXING DIY BAKING SUPPLIES

YIXING DIY BAKING SUPPLIES
No. 578 Fujin St., Songshan District
台北市松山區富錦街578號
(02) 2760-8115

MRT: Songshan Airport Station

$-$$

Visit reviewed: 12/3/2014

If you love to bake, I'm sure you've done your share of searching Taipei and the internet, wondering where to find baking supplies in Taipei. Looking for things like the most basic cake pans, baking powder, cupcake paper cups, sprinkles seem elusive when you're used to going to your local supermarket or Target and finding whole aisles for it. I've lamented about this over the years- looking for things at Ikea, Muji, City Super, Carrefour, Jason's, Hands Tailung, Nitori, the Taipei International Baking Show and Bake it Yourself and sometimes paying a premium. 

But there's actually a lot of little local shops, usually with the words DIY on the store's sign, that have a treasure trove of goods and supplies if you're willing to sift through it. This shop on Fujin Street has shelves crammed full of flour, ingredients, baking tools, mixes, cake pans, cookie cutters and even ready to bake pie crusts, phyllo dough, mixers and waffle irons. No English signage for the non-Chinese speaker and the store isn't as pretty as Bake it Yourself, but the lower prices make it worth the trip.

don't these look like Runts? remember those?

vegetarian/western: i recommend CAFE SHOWROOM

CAFE SHOWROOM

No. 462 FuJin St. 台北市富錦街462號

(02) 2760-1155

MRT: SongShan Airport

website: Cafe Showroom's FB page

hours: 11AM- 9PM; 11AM - 11PM on Friday, Saturday

$$ 

Kid friendliness: no high chairs spotted

Visit reviewed: 3/14/2012

Those of you that follow me on Facebook know that sometimes I post photos of things I'm eating in "real time" or before I have time to organize the pics and write up the post. One photo that caught the eye of many readers was of the quiche from Cafe Showroom, an interesting cafe & art gallery space in the Song Shan district near the airport. The whole street was lined with interesting shops and cafes to revisit someday, and Cafe Showroom was the perfect place to start. My friend said it reminded her of Brooklyn somehow, or maybe the Larchmont Village for those of you in LA, a neighborhood to walk around and shop.

The front has about 3-4 seating areas for groups with spartan white walls and a few pieces of curated art dotting the walls.

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Tucked in the back is the art gallery space, or the Showroom, where there are new exhibits every few months.

After glancing at the restrained menu, I realized everything was vegetarian, which sounds limiting, but once the food arrived, the simple yet fresh fare fit the atmosphere quite well. There's only four main dishes available, but on weekends, brunch sets are offered. The cafe's coffee offerings include Chai Tea Lattes and various teas like sweet ginger peach tea and high mountain Oolong tea.

Farmer's salad (NT$200) was quite bright, and the only salad on the menu.

The crowd pleaser was the feta quiche (NT$160) which had soft broccoli, tomato, peppers and olives in it as well. The thin flaky crust was a nice contrast to the creamy egg. We ordered to share that day, but usually each order comes with a small side salad.

I was also pleasantly surprised by the mushroom spinach panini (NT$180) since it didn't sound that exciting, but the bread was so good and the touch of balsamic vinegar gave the sandwich an extra boost of flavor.

The burrito (NT$180) on the other had fell a little flat- it was more like a veggie wrap or pressed soft taco and not as fulfilling as the panini and quiche. 

The yogurt with fruits (NT$120) was served with the sweetest fresh peaches and blueberries and served in a cute glass jar.

We split the desserts, so I didn't get a shot of the originals, but cheesecake and waffles are also available.

One of my friends said that this Astoria coffee machine was the Porsche of coffee machines... it was very sleek and shiny.

But save room for the nutella banana panini (NT$120) which you could totally make at home with a jar of nutella smothered atop some good french bread, but if you don't want to keep a jar around, this is the place to try it.

So another neat little space in Taipei, probably the perfect place to bring a notebook on a rainy day, drink some coffee and detox from last night's mala with a light lunch.