pizza/delivery: i strongly recommend CHICAGO PIZZA FACTORY

CHICAGO PIZZA FACTORY
No. 1, Lane 11, Jianguo S. Sec. 2
(02) 2707-2121

website: none but you can see Japan's website chicago-pizza.com Japanese

hours: 11AM - 8PM

$-$$

Kid friendliness: delivery fairly fast for hungry people

Visit reviewed: 9/15/2009 & 9/20/2009



Is a pizza just a pizza? Maybe not, if the name is one like "Chicago Pizza Factory." With this name, I started daydreaming about stuffed pizza with spinach and mushrooms like Zachary's, with tall buttery crust that held in all the baked goodness inside.



Stuffed pizza it's not. But it's good pizza, and more importantly, good service.

I wanted to order pizza for a party over the weekend, but I wanted pizza where the crust wouldn't get hard if people didn't eat it right away. I'd never tried Chicago Pizza Factory, but they won last year for "Best Delivery" on my Hungry Readers Best of Taipei poll, so I thought I'd order a test run few days earlier.

When I called to ask for delivery, the owner said it was only possible with 2 pizzas from how far I lived from them, but they were having a special 2 pizzas for NT$800. I was okay with that and the owner happily made recommendations since I didn't have a menu (and they don't have one online, but you can try to decipher this one.) with pizza names like Boss No. 1 and Chef's Special. I ended up ordering a large Hawaii (No. 10) and large Chicago No. 8 (which is like a "Supreme combo" with extra cheese, pepperoni, sausage, ham, black olives, green pepper, mushrooms, onions).



Once the owner could tell I was speaking English, he easily switched to English and asked if I was from the States. When I responded I was, he suggested that I get my pizzas with "extra sauce because the locals like it with less sauce" and people from the US like it with more. You can also choose between thin crust, thick crust or extra thick crust. I opted for one thin and one thick.

He was right- when I got the pizza, it didn't seem like it had more sauce, it seemed just right.

The pizzas arrived promptly before I knew it in about 40 minutes, and came hot. The only slight mishap was the Combo No. 8 pizza slid and was smooshed on one side.



The difference between thin and thick crust is not huge (like the difference between Pizza Hut's thin and pan pizza).



The pizza reminds me a bit of Papa John's- it's not gourmet, but it tastes kind of like home- loaded with fresh ingredients and cheese with lots of sauce and a pliable hearty crust. But if you want to get something for your relatives, they have pizzas topped with shrimp and corn too. Chicago Pizza Factory is actually a chain in Japan and you can see on their website that they have a lot of other localized variations, complete with a tic-tac-toe grid of mayonnaise.



I liked how the crust doesn't get hard when it cooled unlike the pizzas I've had from Famous Larry's or Alleycats, which doesn't deliver. While Famous Larry's does deliver, I've had two bad experiences with their delivery which each took over an hour (the first time over an hour and half) and the second time my order was messed up without much apologies when I called to inform them when I found out. I like their pizzas by the slice when eaten hot, but their crust tends to get rock hard when cooled.

If you're looking for an even better deal, if you eat in or get your pizza to go (rather than delivery), you can get 2 pizzas for NT$500. (Which is what I ended up doing for the party since I was ordering 6 pizzas... NT$1500 vs NT$2400- it's worth it to pick it up yourself!).

But if it's a rainy typhoon kind of night, you can just stay in and wait for your pizzas. Just don't forget to ask for extra sauce.


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CLOSED dessert/frozen yogurt: i recommend HIELO

HIELO
No. 124, Zhong Xiao E. Road, Sec. 4
(02) 8772-6632

Editor note: This location spotted closed a/o 9/2014

website: hielo.com.tw Chinese and English

hours: Sun- Thur 11 AM - 10:30PM; Fri/Sat 11 AM - 11:30 PM

$-$$

Kid friendliness: lots of space and frozen yogurt

Visit reviewed: 9/18/2009



Wrapping up what seems to have turned into dessert week this week on the blog, here is a look at Hielo, the latest addition to the new frozen yogurt wave in Taipei.

First of all, let's talk about the name.

Hello! Helio? Hielo?

How do you spell the name and what does it have to do with frozen yogurt? From a distance, you might not even know that this store across from the Starbucks near Dun Hua Sogo has anything to do with food, much less desserts. Is it just me, or does it looks sort of like a phone or tech store with the Hello-my-name-is... dialogue box, with Hello misspelled. (After all, we've all seen plenty of things misspelled everywhere around town.)



After some digging, it turns out the "hielo" is the Spanish word for ice. But it's so strange that you're naming a froyo store in Spanish in a country that dubs Dora the Explorer in Chinese or lacks popularity of Mexican or Spanish foods.

But I digress... Don't get me started about (the lack of good) Mexican food in Taipei...

The store is cute and inviting enough for frozen yogurt experts and novices. The cashier helpfully offers little cups of samples and asks if you have any questions.



There's plenty of area to sit down and eat.



The signs make it fairly easy to decipher how to order- pick a flavor, pick a size, pick your toppings. Hielo offers two flavors- original tart and uji matcha AKA green tea. You can also get a shake or coffee, or cushion your yogurt in a waffle bowl.



The toppings range from the typical fruits and berries to the cereal/cookie toppings, including watermelon, pineapple, orange and kiwi. What was slightly annoying was that if I wanted to pick a raspberry or blueberry topping, I had to pay an extra NT$40 per topping.



So we decided against that and got a small original flavor with strawberry and mango (NT$115). The small is definitely enough to share between two people. My friend who was with me had never had Pinkberry before and enjoyed the tart and sweet flavor of the yogurt and fresh fruits.



I'd probably stop by again as I'm in this area often, but with this pricing, I'd probably revisit the self-serve pay as you weigh Yogurt Art down the Zhong Xiao road, as they have more flavors and rumored fruits and berries now, or wander over YoFroyo, which is nearly half the price. I also wish one day one of these places would have yogurt chips. Yogurt chips, please!

For those of us who are a few years over Pinkberry/Yogurtland/Red Mango, Hielo might be a little late, especially with the weather cooling. But for those who are new to the tart-is-in flavors, Hielo might be a refreshing change from the corner shaved ice or too sweet ice cream choices.

And btw, has anyone been to Yogurt Me lately?


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CLOSED desserts/japanese: MICASA DOLCI PATISSERIE

MICASA DOLCI PATISSERIE
No. 462, Ren Ai Road, Sec. 4
(02) 2345-7669  CLOSED

MRT: Taipei City Hall

hours: 10 AM - 7 PM (although I've passed by at 6:30PM and they were closed)

$$

Kid friendliness: no high chairs, lots of desserts

Visit reviewed: 9/2/2009



If eating is an art, then Micasa Dolci presents its desserts for your viewing and tasting pleasure.

From the purple umbrellas that welcome you at the entrance to the chandelier-decked vibrant walls in the decor and menu to the intricate plating of the desserts, to appreciate Micasa Dolci one probably has to appreciate the entire "experience."




Because if you just take the food for face value, it's going to be a pricey bite per dollar ratio. While I enjoyed most of the artfully crafted sugar rushes, it's not everyday you'll spend NT$400 on one of the smallest chocolate molten cakes I've seen yet.



But maybe that's the point- To savor the flavors and enjoy each bite. And since these desserts were split among girlfriends, we pretty much all got just a taste or two. And you could taste the richness of the chocolate they used.

The dusting of matcha powder on the cake led the way to a scoop of house-made green tea ice cream which had a wonderful aromatic flavor. We weren't sure what to do with the spoonful of raspberry sauce, decided to dip a little of the cake in it.



My favorite though, was the caramel ice cream with banana (NT$350), garnished with savory sabayon sauce. The whipped custard sauce tasted as if it had been topped with sugar and caramelized which gave the caramel ice cream slightly burnt crunchy creme brulee coating. It was like two awesome desserts married in one- creme brulee meets banana split makes the perfect dessert baby.



Less impressive was the cream puff (NT$70), which I picked partially because it was one of the cheapest desserts on the menu (though more expensive than most other cream puffs). It turned out to be a moot point, as there was a minimum NT$200 per sitting customer amount each person had to spend, so we ended up having to order some tea for the table.



The puff itself was a bit dry and lacked moistness and flavor in the meat of the pastry that the cream wasn't able to compensate for. The other ladies at the table barely touched it, and it went unfinished. I would have rather eaten a puff and half from Beard Papa's instead.

You can give the sculptural baked seasonal fruit pie with ice cream (NT$350) a try, which looked like a dressed up, grown up version of the Hostess fruit pies I used to love as a kid, decked out in strings of sugar and dusted with powder.



Somewhere under there is some strawberry ice cream and apple pie, which is more crust than filling. It would have been great if they could have stuffed it a little fuller with apples to balance out all the flaky crust.



So if you're a dessert first person or looking for a place to sit down after taking touristy pictures across the street at the Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall, you can give Micasa Dolci a try. I'm not sure if I would go out of my way again to eat there again, but it's worth a visit if the desserts look worth the price to you. Other exotic sounding desserts on the English, Chinese and Japanese menu included coffee jelly with vanilla pudding and caramel sauce, tiramisu with sesame ice cream, sweet potato montblancs or grenandine peach compote and honey ice cream. They offer some lunch sets as well, that day curry or tea sandwiches were available.

You can even pick up pints of their ice cream from the freezer or boxes of cookies to go. Just call ahead and make sure they are open because the last few times I've driven by at different times, it looked closed.




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CLOSED! dessert/frozen yogurt: SHERRY's FROZEN YOGURT

edit 10/12/09- CLOSED!

SHERRY's FROZEN YOGURT
No. 23, Lane 187, Dun Hua S. Road, Sec. 1
(02) 2775-4610

website: sherrysyogurt.com

$-$$

Kid friendliness: some seating, mostly to-go

Visit reviewed: 9/8/2009



We've come a long way from the meager days of drooling over Pinkberry and Yogurtland in the states. Now there seems to be new pink frozen yogurt places popping up everywhere I turn.

I was meeting up with a new friend and we wanted to get the waffle from Room From Dessert. The last time I was there, I wasn't able to get any good pictures and they had one of the best waffles I've had in Taipei, plus it came with a small side of frozen yogurt!

But when we went there, we realized it had closed down!!!! And was now a second hand luxury goods shop. ARGH! So we wandered down the alley and saw the sign for Sherry's Frozen yogurt and decided to give it a try.



Inside, it's pretty tiny, but has a few bar stools to sit on, or a table outside. Their frozen yogurts come in S, M or L (NT$85-130) or you could get a shake (NT$135). With four flavors to choose from- Original, Strawberry, Mango and Blackberry- they gave us samples to try all four, which were surprisingly all tart. Also, they had a special promotion since they had just opened a few weeks ago for 20% off all orders.

I ended up getting a Mango Shake (NT$135) which was blended mango yogurt and fresh mangos. It was a bit thick and there were no bits of mango, so kind of like drinking a melting frozen yogurt.



My friend got small strawberry frozen yogurt with mango and oreos (NT$90). The oreo cookie was placed whole and not pre-crumbled, so she just ate it like a regular cookie.



They also had some other fruit, berry, candy and cereal toppings, but it was hard to see in their covered trays. The selection isn't as huge as Yogurtland or YoFroyo and price is more expensive, maybe to account for rent in the area?



The week after I spotted this place, I spotted Hielo and gave it a try (review coming soon!). Overall, Sherry's Frozen Yogurt and the new wave of yogurt places are an improvement on the city's first attempts at frozen yogurt last year- >Yogurt Me and Sweetberry.

I do wish that Room for Dessert was still around. Anyone know where to get good waffles now?

news/taipei: one more month to see Pixar: 20 Years of Animation in Taipei

We all have our memories of the various Pixar movies over the years- I laughed out loud at Buzz and Woody and the aliens in TOY STORY. I teared up at the "When She Loved Me" Sarah McLachlan montage in TOY STORY 2 and of course, at UP. I loved feeling silly for ever being scared of my closet after MONSTERS INC. I was giddy like a fan after shaking Brad Bird's hand and getting an autograph after an advance screening of THE INCREDIBLES. Being fascinated by the behind the scenes drama of Pixar's rocky start when at first no one wanted to distribute Toy Story or make its toys in The Pixar Touch. I also remember the first time I pored over "The Art of Monsters Inc" and was fascinated by the hand drawn art, the changes in design and story, and the four to six years process that it takes to make an animated feature, that I ended up collecting each one that came out, like the newest Art of UP.

So getting to see all the storyboards, character models, hand drawn art and animatics in real life is like taking a walk down memory lane- can you believe it's been almost 20 years since Toy Story first came out?!

Pixar: 20 Years of Animation is at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, which is a 5 minute walk from the Yuanshan MRT stop.



Inside, you'll have life sized sketches of Mike and Scully greeting at every turn.



Headsets are available to listen (in Chinese) for more details at certain points. I also picked up a NT$150 program that makes a nice keepsake.



Once upstairs, the entrance is the last place you are allowed to bust out your camera, until you exit the exhibit. (But if you want a peek, one person was able to get some snapshots.) I felt like I was entering into another world, with the appropriate images of the assembly line of closet doors to whisk us away.



Isn't it cool to see how Pixar takes a black and white sketch and creates full blown 3D characters that we've grown to love? It's always more than just the images, it's also the stories that have created a worldwide fanbase.





It was fairly crowded on a Wednesday afternoon when I went yesterday, so I can only imagine that the weekend could be nuts. It makes it hard to get up close to see the detail of some of the drawings, but there's hundreds to look at, as well as some multimedia stuff towards the end.

Watch some of Pixar's early short films, an installation called Artscape, or my favorite, a zoetrope that brings a spinning disk of still models from Toy Story 2 to animated life in front of your eyes.

Walking through the exhibition, you marvel at how everything is archived and then shipped around the world. I can only imagine all the packing, unpacking, hanging, taking down, and repeat! Props to Elyse Klaidman, who is Pixar's in-house curator and who first came up with the idea for having an in-house gallery in 2000.



And of course a chance to buy some Pixar goodies at the end before you leave the museum. The exhibition is around for another month until November 1st, so catch it before the last week gets crazy crowded!

Pixar: 20 Years of Animation
Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM),
No. 181, Zhongshan N Rd, Sec 3
(02) 2595-7656

When: Until Nov. 1. Open Tuesdays to Sundays
hours: 9:30am to 5:30pm and until 8:30pm on Saturdays
online.tfam.museum/pixar

Some fun Pixar sites
http://www.pixar.com
http://www.pixartalk.com/
Pixar stuff at Amazon.com

my kitchen/news: oatmeal chocolate chip cookies

Thank goodness for ovens and Betty Crocker. I love freshly baked cookies out of the oven. I think I must have eaten at least three yesterday... and two more this morning.



I also have been drooling over the tastespotting.com and the archives of justjenn whose rants and raves cracks me up.


from justjennrants.blogspot.com

I love the Hello Kitty cupcakes, firetruck and dinosaur cookies, and crazy creativity she has in her baking and decorating and sense of humor in her writing. I definitely want to try a lot of stuff she's made someday- if only I could get over my fear of fondant.

Also, this is what I call service... do you think the Far Eastern hotel will keep the burgers and steaks supersized after the visiting NBA players leave? And while the players get taken to all the required touristy spots this week- do you think they'll get taken to a night market? That's where I'd want to go!