Wrong Danny

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The name Danny's Kitchen has been known to me for a while.  One of my foodie friends seems to frequent this place and knows the owner well; and I keep seeing their makeshift counter at Eslite (誠品) in Tianmu, where they are selling wines from their selection.  When it came time to try another restaurant in Taipei tonight, I made a reservation here and dragged my friends here.  I made the reservation rather late, and I think we got just about the last table in the basement...

We were presented with one menu for the three of us.  I don't know why restaurants keep doing that... Yes, a few tables had just walked in at the same time, and the table behind me was doing their ordering and hogging a few menus... but still!  Anyway, I was surprised when I saw the menu, and kinda suspected that I had really wanted to go to the other restaurant in town with the name Danny in it - Danny & Company.  Oh well... we were already here, so we should just make the best of it.

Seafood disaster

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I had long read about Osteria by Angie from a few local blogs - apparently it is one of the newer and popular restaurants in town.  As I continue to eat my way across Taipei, in search of newer discoveries, it was inevitable that I would tick this off my list of places to try.  So when my Very Very Very Single Friend (added a third "Very" at his request) asked me where I wanted to go, I didn't even hesitate before blurting out the name of this place.

I arrived on time despite having been warned by the Very Very Very Single Friend that he would be late, and for the rest of us to start first.  I gave the bottle of wine to a waiter and asked for it to be opened.  The cork was promptly pulled out, and the bottle marked with a sticker to indicate which table it belonged to.  But it was left on a counter far, far away from me.

I saw a couple of decanters on the shelf, and proceeded to ask a waiter to have the bottle decanted.  The junior flunky probably knows absolutely nothing about wine, and didn't really know what I was talking about.  His fellow senior waiter got the message, and proceeded to give the flunky a decanter and told him to dump the wine in it.  And dump he did... every last drop from the bottle... in about 10 seconds.  Thankfully this was a Burg from a relatively weak vintage, and there wasn't any visible sediment.  Sigh...

Diplomatic pampering

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Family gathering time, and it's been a while since I last saw Diplomatic Uncle as he's been posted to the Holy Land.  Turns out tonight was his 65th birthday!  Thankfully I vetoed dad's plans to dine at Dragon Restaurant (龍都酒樓)... and asked my Very Very Single Friend to hook me up with Chiou Hwa (九華廳), the Cantonese restaurant inside the Gloria Prince Hotel.

I decided against going for a preset menu, as I wanted to pick and choose the dishes I wanted to sample.  Dad had made the executive decision of reserving a roast Peking duck, because it's supposedly one of the restaurant's specialties.  Now why is it that all these Cantonese restaurants - in Taipei, no less - are claiming Peking duck as their signature dish?!

Poor service ruins the fun

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I was meeting up with some friends who I haven't seen for a long time, and they suggested going to Chef Show Time (阿正廚坊).  The restaurant had moved to a new location, and the design of the space seemed better.  Somehow my vague memory tells me that I didn't like this place so much after my last visit.

My friends ordered a bunch of dishes while I stuck to just three.  We decided to share the first few dishes, which were mostly appetizers.

Choucroute in Taipei

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Our family are big fans of the Ritz Landis Hotel in Taipei.  We have spent numerous birthday and anniversary celebrations at Paris 1930, and mom regularly buys her bread from the hotel's Liz Gourmet.  Mom had been wanting to try out the current promotion on regional French specialties for a couple of weeks now, and we finally got around to booking a table at the Brasserie for tonight.