Taipei: Boba Waffle! Enough Said - Day 3

Day 3 of my trip meant the start of the real reason why I came to Taipei, work. Since all the bigger conventions and shows always take place at the World Trade Center in ShinYi area of Taipei, I had a bevy of options in terms of what to eat around the area. Mostly restaurants, chains, and fine dining since it is a business hub.

For lunch, I got in contact with an old high school friend and we decided to grab lunch at the huge Shin Kong Mitsukoshi 新光三越 in the area, and headed to the A9 building for Saboten 勝博殿!

Saboten, a katsu specialty shop from Shinjuku in Japan, is actually where I got my first introduction to legit katsu, and by legit, I meant grinding the sesame with a mortar for the katsu sauce and realizing that it is important to fry it right so the breading is crispy but pork is juicy. It is also where I learned that there are many different types of pork katsu and the cut used can be a huge difference! I haven't been to Saboten in awhile since I was still in high school the last time I went so definitely excited.

Saboten 勝博殿

Shin Kong Mitsukoshi A9

9, 6F, Songshou Rd., Taipei

新光三越信義店A9館

台北市信義區松壽路9號6F

Saboten.

Part of the menu. Prices have gone up :P

As with all good katsu place, they have unlimited cabbage for you to eat with katsu!

Pickled items. Don't know what type of bean it is but the daikon was tasty.

Grinding your own sesame to release the aroma! Very important! Katsu + grounded sesame takes the katsu sauce to a whole difference level.

I like to grind it fine.

Their katsu sauce. Not too vinegary.

Together.

Cabbage with a little bit of the katsu sauce as dressing. Awesome.

Combo A with tempura shrimp, pork loin katsu, pork belly katsu. $430NT, around $14 US. Not bad.

Pork belly katsu. Of course the fatty belly isn't used, but the leaner parts of pork belly. Extremely juicy since there's more fat and that breading is fried to a perfect golden brown.

Pork loin katsu, which is the typical cut for tonkatsu. A little thinner than what I remembered :P

Tempura shrimp in the same panko breading. Served with house-made tartar sauce.

Miso soup. It is weird... miso soup in Taiwan is always sweeter than the ones in the States. Must be the type of miso used.

Steamed egg! Silky.

The combo also comes with free ice cream so went with the matcha ice cream. Peanut powder is lightly dusted.

Saboten is still a good place to grab some good katsu after all these years. There's also a lot more other katsu specialty shops in Taipei now but Saboten will always have a special place in my heart. Did wish the katsu portions were bigger though :P

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After lunch, I wanted a drink and saw a Ten Ren at the ATT Center, so decided to stop by for a drink. They were offering a combo special and I couldn't resist :P

Boba Chocolate Waffle. Boba. Chocolate. Waffle. How could I resist???

They warm it up for you once it is ordered so the chocolate inside stays gooey. Nice crunchy outside and a doughy inside with gooey chocolate.

Boba inside the waffle! The boba at Ten Ren is cooked in brown sugar so you taste that caramel-y flavor. The boba is still "Q" too. What a genius creation!

Fresh milk green tea. You can never go wrong with any drinks from Ten Ren. So much better than Tea Station in the States.

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For dinner, I was meeting up with a family friend and since she was taking the high speed rail from Kaushiung, I figured we should meet near Taipei Main Station so she wouldn't have to travel far and we ended up at Q Square, which is this new department store.

After looking at our selections, I saw that there was a Thai restaurant and it's been awhile since I've had Thai food in Taiwan we decided on Thai and headed upstairs to 晶湯匙 Crystal Spoon!

晶湯匙 Crystal Spoon

Q Square 4th Floor

1, Lane 1, 4F, Chengde Rd, Taipei

京站購物中心4F

台北市承德路一段1號4F

Ong Choy with shrimp paste. Ong choy, aka water spinach, aka morning glory. Whatever you want to call it, ong choy is one of my favorite vegetables, especially the ones from Taiwan. The Thai-style for preparing these in Taiwan is using shrimp paste versus soy bean sauce. Yes, I am biased so I like Taiwan's version better :P

Grilled Pork Jowl. Pork jowl is the lower part of the pork's cheek so there's a little bit of tendon and muscle fiber but it makes it a very good cut in terms of texture! Comes with a sweet & spicy dipping sauce and oddly enough, kimchi.

One of my favorite Taiwanese Thai dishes, Lemon Pepper Fish. Steamed stripped bass prepped with a mouth-watering lemon dressing. We could've picked between grouper or stripped bass, but we went with the stripped bass since it was cheaper :P

Chicken Red Curry for $1NT! If you spent over a certain amount, you get to order the daily special for only $1NT more. Why the hell not :P A little bit of kick and nice red curry flavor.

Comes with white bread to dip it in. White toasts work with everything haha.

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After I saw her off at the high speed rail, I headed back towards Zhongxiao Fushing to meet up with others at Fourplay, trying to get the to-go cup. Met and made some new friends and we tried a few more of the ones we had last night.

This was definitely the most unique one I tried that night: marijuana. Comes in a shotglass that's shaped like... a bong. They add dry ice in it to imitate the smoke, and you are suppose to lift the orange and drink the shot through the straw! Very creative I must say :P

Went to bed a little sad since it was gonna be my last night in Taipei for this trip, but excited since I'll heading off to NYC once I get back!

Taipei: Quest For 20 Shots - Day 2

Day 2 in Taipei, which was a Monday meant that people had classes or work so after lunch with family, I decided to head out and explore Taipei a little bit. Always been a fan of going to places by myself and exploring Taipei since it's fun to find something new or try something new!

The plan was to do a little exploring then around 7pm, meet up with a few friends for Diana's birthday dinner on her actual birthday since Saturday was just a early celebration.

For breakfast, decided to head to the usual Taiwanese breakfast joint. This time, also got a drink from Ikari Coffee that's in the neighborhood.

Besides the usual fan tuan 飯糰, also got the fried turnip cake 蘿蔔糕! Haven't had good turnip cake in awhile!

Tea Latte from Ikari Coffee. Ikari Coffee is sorta like.. a Japanese Starbucks. Simple black tea with frothed & steamed milk added.

After lunch, decided to head to Xi Men Ding 西門町 since I wanted to try this beef noodle soup place that's getting popular but when I got there, found out they don't open on Mondays!! Definitely frustrated but as I was walking back, saw people waiting in line for Okinawan Grilled Mochi! Decided to check it out!

$25NT per order. One guy grills raw mochi, another flattens it to prevent it from puffing up too much. Flavor is added at the end when it's grilled! Comes in a variety of flavors and separated into sweet & savory. Flavors include condensed milk, cheese, peanut, chocolate, mocha, black sesame, brown sugar, teriyaki, satay teriyaki, spicy thai, and thai curry!

I decided to go with the teriyaki grilled mochi. The teriyaki sauce is very very sweet and not as thick as the teri sauce in the States. Love the texture and the chewiness of the grilled mochi! Nice touch on the seaweed flakes. I really wanted to get another one but didn't want to wait another 15 minutes in line. Moderation is good... :P

Had to get a milk tea to wash it down so got a fresh milk oolong milk tea at one of my favorite milk tea chain, Chin Shin 清新.

I ended up walking around a bit more, went to a few places and by 4:00pm, jet lag was hitting me... HARD. It was weird since it didn't bother me that much so I got off the MRT and headed towards SOGO Department Store, hoping to find a table to rest and saw MOS Burger so decided to grab a burger, hoping it'll keep me up until I meet up with others.

The Yakiniku Pork Rice Burger 燒肉珍珠堡. Still as good as I remembered it!

Oh yea, I also got a green milk tea at Come Buy before I went to SOGO. Very milky.

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I ended up sitting there for about two hours waiting for time to pass and fight the jet lag. Also walked around SOGO a bit but I was too tired, but somehow I was able to last until 7:00pm and met up with others at Fourplay Cuisine, which is this lounge with 2 very very talented bartenders!

Luckily I somehow got through the jet lag and was pretty wide awake when I got there! The cool thing about this lounge is that the drinks have a lot of Asian influence, such as using Asian liquor or food ingredients!

Fourplay Cuisine

21, Lane 270, Dunhua South Rd Section 1, Taipei

台北市敦化南路一段270巷21號

Diana, the birthday girl, decided to start with an aloe drink. Very cool how they add an actual aloe on there!

I didn't know what to get so got an Old Fashioned. For some reason, all the Old Fashioned I've had in Taipei were always muddled. I like it straight more haha.

Christine's Ice Boat. This was one expertly crafted drink: absinthe and Jin Men Gaoliang 金門高粱酒 with a sprig of rosemary. You would think this drink would taste all sorts of nasty but somehow it tasted a little like white chocolate!!

Gaoliang 高粱酒 is a type of liquor that's extremely popular in China & Taiwan. The most popular being from Taiwan's Jin Men 金門, which is a small island off Taiwan, and it is highly sought after by collectors. The older the gaoliang, the higher price it fetches!

Mushroom Pesto Pasta. Of course, since it was dinner time, we had to get some food. Pesto anything is good :P

Thai Fried Chicken Steak. Super crispy skin and a nice sweet & spicy Thai sauce on the side.

Truffled Fries. Truffle flavor not as strong but very nicely fried!

The birthday girl and the free Tiramisu drink! Now that I think about it, the tiramisu drink is perfect since a component of tiramisu is rum and you just have to play with it to make it into a tasty drink with all the right flavors!

Cherry, Blueberry, Pineapple shots. Now... one cool thing about Fourplay is that they are running a promotion where if you can conquer 20 of their specialty shots, you get a "to-go" cup. With the cup, you can order the drink that you'd like and take it home, as well as enjoy a discount on a large drink! Somehow... the night turned into a "let's help Sophia finish the rest of the shots she needs to get the cup!!"

The trio taking the shots!

The bartender asked if we like bitter melon, and we were really confused and a few minutes later he let us try his new creation... bitter melon shots! A little hesitant at first, but wow the shot was good.

Decided to cross 3 more off Sophia's card! Forgot the names of these... but the tastiest was actually the one that looks like a whiskey shot. That one was made with brandy and others then served with a slice of orange. Very smooth.

They also have these weird drinks named after drugs,so we decided to get a few.

First up, Ketamine. Yup. They torch it just like how you would ingest the real deal ahah.

On fire!

The shot is served with a sugared orange/lime slice combo. I don't know what's in the shot, but there's probably absinthe... and it is stronggg.

Sugar "imitating" something... haha.

Cocaine. Now this shot was intense. Obviously made with some sort of brown liquor or maybe it is just bouron straight up, but they light it up, dust it with cinnamon powder, cover it with a glass that was a thing paper film. After the fire goes out, you take the shot and feel the warmness going down, then you take a straw and break through the paper to inhale to cinnamon sugar flavored alcohol fumes trapped in the glass! You feel the alcohol prettyyyy fast.

Forgot what this was... but blue drinks are always a bad idea :P

Another blue drink but this one had a helium balloon attached to it! I couldn't take a picture of myself doing it but you take the shot, then inhale on the helium ballon! There's a minty feeling as you are inhaling the helium and of course for that split moment your voice changes haha.

That was the last that I took and I definitely didn't want more since I still had to go home to relatives. Fun and laidback lounge. We only had 5 more shots left to go before we filled up Sophia's card, so we all decided that we would come back the next day :P

On the way home, I wanted something to help sober up, so went to 85C Bakery and bought a milk tea! I love how the 85C in Taiwan opens so late.

Also got a bit hungry so headed towards Yong Ning 永寧 Nightmarket near my aunt's for some grilled fried chicken steak. It's a fried chicken steak, then grilled and they glaze the sauce usually used for grilled squid! Awesome way to end the night!

Day 3 was when work starts. Boo.