Days of chewing carefully: why so complicated?

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Nowadays I don't get to see The Compatriot often, as neither of us are in Taiwan much. But he happened to be in Taipei this week so we made last-minute plans to meet up for dinner. I didn't have any place I needed to try, especially given my current condition, so I happily went along with his suggestion of Hosu (好嶼).

I had never heard of the place, but these guys apparently have themselves a Michelin Green Star. They do seem to use exclusively locally-sourced ingredients, with dishes inspired by Taiwanese banquets (辦桌). Well... I'm not really "local" enough and left Taiwan very young, so I don't think I've ever been to a proper 辦桌... So the ingredients and the flavors are gonna be pretty unfamiliar to me.

Our welcome drink was a cup of tea from Yilan (宜蘭) with some plum from last year.

Before the meal started, the staff brought us a fortune sticks and asked us to each pick one. I thought it had something to do with giving us different chopsticks or whatever, but we wouldn't find out till much later.

Amuse bouche (前菜): we have a whole series of these, representing four of the five cultural groups (五大族群) in Taiwan. Well... this idiot didn't even realize they were five cultural groups!

Sweet peas / Hakka fu chai / pork bacon (甜豆 / 客家福菜 / 豬培根) - representing the Hakka (客家). The éclair came with some sweet peas, smoky bacon, and some bitter gourd (苦瓜) that wasn't so bitter. Maybe that was what they meant when they listed fucai (福菜), but using this instead the usual leafy mustard?

Shaoxing wine / gentian grouper (紹興 / 龍膽石斑) - representing mainlanders (外省人). Replacing the chicken in drunken chicken with fish, where the fish and a slice of bottarga were sandwiched between two layers of jicama, and topped with wolfberry jelly and fish floss. The fish was fairly firm in texture, and I didn't think it worked well with the bottarga and the fish floss.

Beef tongue / satay / runner pepper (牛舌 / 沙爹 / 假蒟) - representing the new residents (新住民) from India, Indonesia... etc. Inside the pie tee is diced beef tongue flavored with satay sauce, topped with shredded wild betel leaves. The pie tee was too hard and crunchy and the texture wasn't to my liking. The beef tongue was really chewy, but the satay flavors were pretty nice.

Squid / tomato / Stracciatella (中卷 / 番茄 / 絲綢乳酪) - said to represent "Taiwanese (台灣人)", which I can only assume to mean the Hokkien group. I guess the rest of us aren't Taiwanese, then... Served with sweet chili sauce (海山醬). Some of the strips of squid were kinda chewy.

The starters represent the fifth cultural group - the aborigines (原住民) of Taiwan. Specifically the Atayal people (泰雅族).

Cold dish: trout / ailanthus prickly ash / fungus (冷前菜: 鱒魚 / 刺蔥 / 木耳) - the trout from Yuanshan Township (員山鄉) of Yilan (宜蘭) was aged for 10 days. The sauce was made with prickly ash and koji (麹) water, with some snow fungus and dots of kaffir lime leaf oil and mountain marigold (芳香萬壽菊) oil.

Cold dish: foxtail millet / rakkyo / arrow bamboo (冷前菜: 小米 / 蕗蕎 / 箭筍) - we had a piece of crunchy millet cake (小米糕) on a square of shell ginger leaf (月桃葉), and a piece of pork marinated with spices like mountain litsea (馬告). Garnished with some rakkyo (蕗蕎) and bamboo (箭筍). This was OK.

Hot dish: marble goby / frog / water bamboo (熱前菜: 筍殼 / 田雞 / 茭白) - the steamed marble goby (筍殼魚) came with a soup that was made by boiling snow fungus to death until the collagen liquefied, then mixed in with chicken stock and clam broth. There was also a ball of frog's legs deep-fried with a batter made with 紅頭吻仔魚, the fry of monk goby (坊主鯊). Then there were thin wafers of water bamboo (茭白) and lotus root on top, while a few deep-fried young leaves of white jute (麻芛) were dropped into the kombucha made with pomelo flowers and Oolong tea that has been accented with oil made from Chinese mugwort (艾草). Of course the kombucha tasted acidic and alcoholic with fermented flavors. The fish reminded me of the Shanghainese dish of fish fillet in lees marinade (糟熘魚片).

Hot dish: melons / tofu / "'am" (熱前菜: 瓜們 / 豆腐 / 米泔) - we've got a deep-fried zucchini flower stuffed with some nigari tofu (鹽滷豆腐) and different types of melon/gourd, sitting on a chunk of tofu. On the side we had different types of melons and gourds like water melon, salted unripe watermelon known as 西瓜綿, loofah... etc. The sauce was based on chicken stock and brown rice water (米泔水), with some dots of vegetarian mayo made of oil and koji. This was kinda smoky, which was unexpected.

What looked like jamón was actually strips of dehydrated watermelon with strips of pork back fat. This was very sweet and pretty interesting.

Chicken soup (雞湯) - boiled with conpoy and salted unripe watermelon. Maybe it's the preserved watermelon but somehow I tasted that classic stinky and fermented flavors of Taiwanese marinated bamboo shoots.

HOSU dish (主食) - now the main event... with 3 different small dishes made with different types of rice.

Hông-Lâi-Bí (桃園3號) - the rice was cooked in bamboo with kombu dashi and white tea, and served with green soy beans and bamboo shoots.

Golden Fragrant Glutinous Rice (香糯米) - the dumpling came with shiitake mushroom, pork, a big chunk of chestnut, and also a chunk of scallop. We were asked to drip a few drops of the special chili sauce on top.

Tsāi-Lâi-Bí (再來米) - the traditional bowl rice cake (碗粿) was cooked with clam broth instead of water, with quail egg and shiitake mushroom inside.

Main dish: local pork / marinated pork liver / dried preserved mustard leaves (主菜: 雲林豬 / 膽肝 / 梅乾菜) - so the pigs were raised on flaxseed and came from Farm Around You (農場晃晃) in Yunlin County (雲林縣). The filet was served with a sauce made with plum "whisky", and a little taro ball stuffed with Hakka air-dried pig's liver (客家膽肝) and topped with shavings of the same liver as well as some peppercorns. Then there was also a candied 桃接李 topped with some fennel and fennel fronds. The pork itself was tender but chewy with crunchy tendons. I wish it had not been served tepid.

Main dish: seasonal fish / red bell pepper / ginger lily (主菜: 季節鮮魚 / 紅椒 / 野薑花) - the sweet and sour longtail snapper (長尾鳥) was made without refined sugar but with the natural sweetness of red and yellow capsicum, while the acidity was provided by ginger lily kombucha. The fish was so tender and succulent it was literally dripping with juice.

First dessert: limnophila / plum / vagu lees (冰點: 大葉田香 / 梅子 / 酒粕) - the sorbet was made with plum and wrinkled marshweed (大葉田香) and sake kasu, with some winter melon marinated with Chinese plum at the bottom. While the plum flavors were really nice, I wish they would have used gold instead of silver foil...

Main dessert: Loquat / local cocoa / canistel (主甜點: 枇杷 / 可可 / 仙桃) - the semifreddo was flavored with a liqueur made of loquat (枇杷) seeds, and came with some loquat in the middle. There was also some eggfruit (仙桃), ganache made with cacao from Pingtung (屏東), hazelnuts, and orange.

The liqueur was really nice and fruity, with a base of sweet potato before the loquat seeds were added.

Petit four: aiyu / green mango / chayote (茶點: 愛玉 / 芒果青 / 佛手瓜) - inspired by the fruit platter at Taiwanese banquets and the green mango shaved ice (情人果冰), with some of my beloved Taiwanese aiyu (愛玉), and a wafer of dehydrated chayote.

Petit four: strawberry / Pouchong tea / "Lamumu" (草莓 / 包種茶 / 圓葉胡椒) - on top of the Paochong tea-flavored biscuit we had a mousse made of Taiwanese strawberries that had been accented with green Sichuan peppercorn.

We were offered a glass of wine to start but I was really, really hesitant at first. I had some terrible experiences with the WE range of wines from Weightstone (威士東), and nearly did not survive my hotel quarantine three years ago. Thankfully this was much better...

Weightstone WE Frizzante No.6 - fruity, lively, kinda happiness-inducing wine. Lots of lychees here, and just seems so happy.

My generous friend decided to bring a very nice bottle to dinner, and I did not get to contribute tonight.

1990 Latour - this was really nice and smooth now. Second pour for me was about 1½ hours after opening, and now it was pretty sweet on the palate, with smoky and leather notes. Really nice after 2 hours as the wine was very open now, with fragrant woodsy notes. Started to have a little pencil lead on the nose. After about 2½ hours, finally felt some tanins on the palate, while the woodsy fragrance was really, really now nice. In fact, it was so fucking good after the wine really opened up.

This was an interesting meal, and made me realize how much of a "fake Taiwanese" I am. There are so many dishes, flavors, and ingredients that were foreign to me... compounded by the fact that I'm unfamiliar with many ingredients' names in Chinese.

P.S. As I sit here 2 weeks after my meal writing this up, I grew more agitated and even a little angry. Here's why:

Even as I listened to the description of the dishes during the meal, I was experiencing similar emotions that I had while dining at places like VEA or Racines in Hong Kong. The dishes were just too complicated with too many elements. Having garnishes and sauces is definitely welcome, but when garnishes have too many ingredients in them it can become a little bewildering. And at times you really do wonder how much some of these extra ingredients really contribute to the dish, and whether 95% of the diners would even notice them.

The other issue I had with the chef was that, while he took great pains to source local ingredients from different parts of this "good island" - which is the meaning behind the restaurant's name - and many are indeed very special and esoteric - I felt a lot of it kinda went to waste. I had never known about the monk goby fry (紅頭吻仔魚) until now, and never realized how special it is and that it can cost multiple of "regular" anchovy fry. But why was such an interesting ingredient crushed up and used as the coating for frog's legs - where people can easily overlook it as "just batter"?! Why couldn't it be used more prominently and its uniqueness highlighted?!

The Hakka air-dried pig's liver (客家膽肝) that was stuffed into a taro ball and served on the side with the pork... would most people even know it wasn't "regular" pig's liver if they hadn't been told? Would they be able to tell the difference when it's inside a fried taro ball? Could it not be used in a bigger portion where its special flavors could shine a little more?

In putting so much effort into bringing so many ingredients to the diner's attention, some of it invariably gets lost. This was the discussion I had with The Film Buff nearly 7 years ago. Well, some chefs do this thinking the diners would be impressed - and indeed quite a number of them may be. But this kinda stuff doesn't speak to us, and maybe in some cases, "less is more".

The final issue for me? After taking so much effort to try to re-interpret the classic Taiwanese banquet, sourcing the right ingredients, scripting the story to tell diners... the reality was that the dishes weren't all that memorable for me. There wasn't a single dish that I was dying to have a second serving of. So what would be the 'pull factor' to bring me back for a repeat visit?