chinese/dim sum: i recommend SWEET DYNASTY

SWEET DYNASTY 糖朝
No. 201, ZhongXiao E. Road, Sec. 4, Da'an District
台北市忠孝東路四段201號
(02) 2772-2889 

MRT: ZhongXiao/DunHua

hours: 24 hours

$$ (average NT$400+/person)

Kid friendliness: restaurant is on second floor with lots of stairs, though upstairs roomy with room for large parties

Visit reviewed: 12/29/2014
Last review reviewed: 8/2005

I haven't been to Sweet Dynasty in years, and I've always gone with people from out of town, so this was the first time I've been since they moved to their new location near Luxy and Starbucks on ZhongXiao, at the former Shin Yeh Table location. It's definitely amusing reading my old review in 2005 and seeing how much I've improved at taking photos (and how much better our cameras/iphones/easy photo editing tools are now)! I used to just say whatever I wanted, not worrying about the readers or the haters and letting my thoughts just flow. So being a new year, I hope to be able to do the same in 2015- not overthink things, share photos and places sooner than later and hopefully still help you guys find some good places to eat in Taipei.

Sweet Dynasty is a Cantonese restaurant known for its desserts and dim sum and its new digs are roomier, more stylish and perfect for a night of modern Chinese dining. If you have room and enough people, order the soy tofu in the bucket that you can scoop out yourself. Unfortunately, we didn't have room that night for it, so I don't have pictures of it, but maybe another night.

The menu is thick with pages of noodles, congee, dim sum, seafood, rice and stir-fried family style dishes, but if you only have two people like we did that night, you can still find some options. Large photos highlight popular menu items and the menu is in both English and Chinese.

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The wonton & beef brisket noodle soup (NT$200) comes with four rotund pork and vegetable wontons, beef brisket and egg noodles- perfect if you want to have a taste of both wontons and beef, though remember that the noodles and broth are Cantonese style and not Taiwanese beef noodle soup style. Pretty decent sized bowl and amount of wontons and noodles and we finished the bowl.

The shrimp rice noodle (NT$180) came at the same time as the noodle soup and I was slightly surprised to see that it wasn't drowned in sauce.

I always have to order the xian shui jiao or deep fried crispy glutinous rice shrimp dumpling (NT$100) when I see it on the menu, and I'm glad I did. Perfect crisp on the outside, sticky and sweet on the inside of the shell and plenty of filling on the inside. So good, but so bad for you.

I pretty much forgot that the truffle shu mai was coming as it came much much later after we had finished our food. We were pretty much ready for the bill when it finally came.

And it wasn't until we had left the restaurant that I realized we didn't even get the matcha dessert that Clarissa had ordered. It's too bad since I did want to try it, but I was pretty full by the time the shu mai came, so it ended up not being a big deal to us. Trip Advisor has overwhelmingly negative reviews for Sweet Dynasty, but besides the ordering issue, the service was fine for me that night.

With the opening of two Taipei branches of Michelin starred Tim Ho Wan (review coming soon!), all the dim sum joints in Taipei have some fierce competition and should step up their game. But not everyone wants to wait one hour plus for food, so if you're looking for a chill place for some noodle soup and dim sum in the East District (Dong Qu) then you could give Sweet Dynasty a try (even at 4AM since they are open 24 hours, and then you can wander over to 24 hour Eslite bookstore down the street). Thanks Clarissa for dinner and conversation- it's always great to meet other food lovers/writers and I look forward to following your adventures this year.

japanese/noodles: i strongly recommend FU YU WU SANUKI UDON

FU YU WU SANUKI UDON 

富玉屋 讚歧烏龍麵 

No. 14, Lane 83, DaAn Rd, Sec. 1 

大安區大安路一段83巷14號 

(02)2778-5255

MRT: ZhongXiao/DunHua

website: wanpan.tw

hours: 11:30AM - 2:30PM / 5:30PM - 10PM

$$ (cash only)

Kid friendliness: lots of options for udon loving kids to eat. no high chairs spotted

Visit reviewed: 9/25/2012

Sanuki udon is made daily at this cute udon shop tucked in the alley between Lao Yo Ji and Rakumenya Ramen. Opened in May 2012, Fu Yu Wu Sanuki Udon takes over the corner that used to be Kitaro. 

I haven't had good udon since my previous Xinyi District favorites Jika Udon and Tenpura Sanuki Udon had closed down. So I was pretty excited to try this with my cousin.

The open dining room has seating mostly for couples and small groups, and is brightened by the distinctive graphic patterns decorating the columns and walls. Looking over the menu, we kept talking about how we could bring our dads (or my grandma) here. It was also a good sign that the customers behind me were speaking Japanese.

The menu is only in Chinese and Japanese (unfortunately no English menu), but has photos of their prime attractions- the bowls of hot and cold udon. The sets run from NT$280-500 with the options of ordering ala carte or pricier hotpot, as well a business lunch set at NT$180. With each set, you get a choice of appetizer (steamed egg, soft poached egg, tempura or salad), udon and on weekdays, they include dessert. There are some distinct cold udons, including one in a sweet tomato bonito broth, and about four different hot variations to choose from. We were hungry so we decided on sharing two of the NT$500 sets, which allowed us to pick udons from any set and get full sized shrimp or chicken combo tempuras, as well as an appetizer and dessert.

Giant spoon to help you get your noodle on later.

A small bite size starter arrives promptly- the first day was sweet burdock slivers. Another day a small cube of sauced cold tofu.

Set menu appetizer options are steamed egg (chawanmushi), soft boiled egg or side salad. Give me a soft boiled poached egg anyday! I thought about dipping my udon in this and mixing it up, but I ended up just enjoying the lightly sauced slippery egg in a few slurps. 

Runny egg deliciousness!

The cold udon came out first, long strands tangled atop a light woven basket. 

Loved the chewiness of the cold udon at the first bite. Too bad it didn't come on ice like the photo, but it was still very QQ.

The dipping soy sauce comes with chopped green onions and grated radish and tiny dash of ginger. It would have been nice to have a tad of wasabi too as a choice.

The NT$500 set that we ordered came with a choice of shrimp and vegetable tempura or fried chicken with vegetable and we ordered one of each to share. Super crispy and hot, the shrimp had panko crumbs while the vegetables had a sheer coating for the tempura. So good!

I was surprised to see the Japanese beef noodle udon that my cousin ordered was much like a Taiwanese style clear broth beef noodle soup. The flavor was good, but very light and the noodles were quite soft, bordering on mushy, in contrast to the al dente chewiness of the cold noodles. We did eat the cold noodles before touching the hot noodles, so it's possible that the noodles absorbed too much soup while we were busy.

I preferred the cold noodles over the beef noodle soup since the soup noodles were much softer and the beef was a tad tough. I didn't finish my half of the bowl. Next time I'd probably try the curry udon or the pork slices instead for a hot udon or the salad cold udon.

So crispy. Crunch crunch. Devoured. Half a mushroom, plenty of sweet potato and pumpkin and four pieces of fried chicken.

The set dessert was a small panna cotta with what I thought was the typical caramel sauce, but was actually a refreshing peach flavor. 

I came back a week after my first visit and tried the cold tomato broth udon (NT$300) with the vegetable tempura cluster, or yasai kakiage. There was actually a lot of crunchy slivers of vegetables woven into the compact deep fried goodness. And at first bite, my tastebuds didn't know what to do with the sweet, cold, tart flavors of the tomato broth udon, but the bowl was a surprising joy to eat.

moved/taiwanese/desserts: i strongly recommend ICE MONSTER (ZHONGXIAO) & HAPPY 7th BLOGIVERSARY TO ME

ICE MONSTER 冰館
No. 297, ZhongXiao E. Road, Sec. 4 台北市忠孝東路四段297號
(02) 8771-3263

MRT: SYS Memorial Hall

website: icemonster.com.tw

hours: 11AM-10:30PM

$$ cash only

visit reviewed:  6/21/2012
previous visits reviewed: 12/2009 and 6/2009

Hello hello!! HungryinTaipei is now 7 years old!

There's been over 1 million hits since I started this blog 7 years ago. Wow! Thanks so much for reading, commenting, facebooking, twittering, instagramming and being hungry along with me. I even have an app now for quicker searching and creating your own Taipei rolodex on the iphone/ipad and started adding Chinese to the blog this year for the first time for the app.

So where was the very first place I posted about seven years ago? 

Ice Monster. I remember when I first came back to visit Taipei in the late 1990s and I had no idea where to go, and my aunt said, just get in the taxi and tell them the "shaved ice place on Yong Kang Jie." It was a must try destination as a tourist and though less so when I moved here, I'd still take friends who visited me. Now it's closed its Yong Kang Street location for good after a brief stint as Yong Kang 15 (which I never made it to), which I found out a few weeks ago when I tried to take some friends from Manila and discovered it was boarded up. (Did you know it had closed?! Or that it had reopened?)

Thanks to my friends on twitter, I found out it had moved to bigger, shinier 東區 digs on Zhongxiao East Road. No more huddling in the shack like shop, waiting for a table. Now there's air conditioning, plenty of seating and even restrooms!

I passed by it with some friends last week and we had to give it a try on a rainy afternoon after spotting it didn't have much of a wait outside. A rainbow of mini popsicles and canele shaped konyaku tempt you from the front cooler counter.

You order from the menu from the front counter- the old school shaved ices topped with ice cream and fruit are aptly called Avalanches, the creamy snowflake ices are Sensations, or you can drink up a Mocktail or Freeze. The names of the desserts are in English, but the descriptions are in Chinese.

Ice Monster for the new age- bright yellow monster napkin holders on each table for posing in photos, even the napkins and restroom signs have the distinct drawings. Maybe it hasn't reached the rest of the world yet, but in Taipei, everyone seems to be taking photos of their food, or with their food, or eating their food, armed with everything from an iphone to a heavy duty DSLR.

While we wait for our number to be called to pick up our shaved ices, a bowls of samples get dropped off at our table to try new flavors. So don't order too much, you might get a new flavor or two to try. I know the table next to us was also surprised to get one.

Finally our Mango Avalanche (NT$180) comes and it really is an avalanche of cubed mangos, pudding, condensed milk, syrup, topped with a snowball of mango sorbet. It seems to come in a smaller bowl with less shaved ice than I remember, but luckily they don't skimp on the mango so there's still plenty to share for 2-4 people. Drool.

But of course, my friends and I didn't share just one ice. We were greedy.

The Fantastic Mix Avalanche (NT$180) also looks familiar, with the combo mango, kiwi and strawberry fruit cascading down a hill of shaved ice and topped with mango sorbet. The fruit doesn't need so much condensed milk, but it is still blanketed in a layer of it.

The Bubble Milk Tea Sensation (NT$160) is a bowl of thick, creamy ribbons of sweet shaved milk tea flavored snow with a side of sweet tapioca balls. Like a frozen boba milk tea deconstructed and frozen for the Taipei heat.

There's also more traditional shaved ice options (mung bean, grass jelly, red bean, taro) as well as summer options like the Lemon Jasmine Tea Sensation which comes with a touch of passion fruit.

With the opening of Ice Monster at the new location, hopefully not too many tourists will taxi this summer to Yong Kang Street to find their hopes to fill their mango ice cravings dashed. Though we didn't have to wait when we arrived, when we left there was a short line of 7 or 8 people. Ice Monster's prices are definitely slightly higher to pay the Dong Qu 東區 rent, and while there's quite a few other comparable mango ice places in town now, I'll hold a special place in my heart for Ice Monster for being my first after seven years and counting!!