Happy Typhoon day!
We've had the last few days off due to the two passing typhoons. It really hasn't been so bad, just some strong winds and on-and-off rain and everyone has enjoyed the extra time to get over the jetlag.
I finally got a roommate today. She'd been in a single until today because the hotel lost her reservation. Emily's really had a hard time so far. When she arrived in Taipei at midnight, the airline had lost her luggage and she appeared at a hotel that had never heard of her. Luckily, eveything since has been flowing smoothly and she got her luggage back yesterday.
I had an interesting restaurant experience yesterday. Some of us decided to brave the drizzle/sudden downpour/drizzle to get some lunch. We just walked around until we found a place that looked good. We ended up at a small restaurant that had no menus so we all ordered the seafood special. Now, if any of you have ever seen Existenz you have an idea of what our seafood "special" looked like when it arrived at the table. It was a large bowl filled with random seafood, stringy white mushrooms, cabbage, glass noodles, and a water broth. As we spooned through to see what was in it we found a few surpises: a purple-swirled ball that looked remarkably like a superball you'd buy from a gumball machine (and when fumbled with the chopsticks bounced like one too), fried crab parts (but not the legs), a corndog-like bit, something resembling sausage, squid parts, and something that turned out to be an oyster. Since everything was boiled, the texture left something to be desired (I'm no seafood expert but I don't think oyster should feel like ricotta cheese in your mouth until you reach the chewy center). And since I'd never encountered glass noodles before, at first I thought my bowl had a lot of tentacles in it.
We tried to ask the waiter what the purple ball was, but he couldn't find the word in my dictionary. Later, he handed us the phone. He had called his wife who spoke English to let her explain what it was. Turns out it was Taro fish ball, which explains the purple color. We are reasonably sure that it was a bunch of processed fish shaped into the ball, which tasted oddly like vanilla or something that I would normally associate with sweet even though it was slightly savory. It was weird to chew on it for five minutes while tasting vanilla and thinking fish.
We had a great time though trying to figure out what everything was and we were all shocked that the owner would go through such trouble to call his wife to help us out! My favorite part was when the owner and the cook came out from the kitchen and sat at a table next to us with smiles on their faces, obviously amused by our fumbling with the chopsticks and our reactions to the seafood. We laughed so hard while trying to choke down the more gelatinous foods in there. Everything tasted pretty good, but I still wouldn't want to eat that again anytime soon.
Things to avoid in the future: restaurants with no menus and grape ice cream with raisins...
Another teacher I've spent a lot of time with here has a blog too, if you'd like to read her take on our adventures so far: www.thatswhywewander.blogspot.com
I finally got a roommate today. She'd been in a single until today because the hotel lost her reservation. Emily's really had a hard time so far. When she arrived in Taipei at midnight, the airline had lost her luggage and she appeared at a hotel that had never heard of her. Luckily, eveything since has been flowing smoothly and she got her luggage back yesterday.
I had an interesting restaurant experience yesterday. Some of us decided to brave the drizzle/sudden downpour/drizzle to get some lunch. We just walked around until we found a place that looked good. We ended up at a small restaurant that had no menus so we all ordered the seafood special. Now, if any of you have ever seen Existenz you have an idea of what our seafood "special" looked like when it arrived at the table. It was a large bowl filled with random seafood, stringy white mushrooms, cabbage, glass noodles, and a water broth. As we spooned through to see what was in it we found a few surpises: a purple-swirled ball that looked remarkably like a superball you'd buy from a gumball machine (and when fumbled with the chopsticks bounced like one too), fried crab parts (but not the legs), a corndog-like bit, something resembling sausage, squid parts, and something that turned out to be an oyster. Since everything was boiled, the texture left something to be desired (I'm no seafood expert but I don't think oyster should feel like ricotta cheese in your mouth until you reach the chewy center). And since I'd never encountered glass noodles before, at first I thought my bowl had a lot of tentacles in it.
We tried to ask the waiter what the purple ball was, but he couldn't find the word in my dictionary. Later, he handed us the phone. He had called his wife who spoke English to let her explain what it was. Turns out it was Taro fish ball, which explains the purple color. We are reasonably sure that it was a bunch of processed fish shaped into the ball, which tasted oddly like vanilla or something that I would normally associate with sweet even though it was slightly savory. It was weird to chew on it for five minutes while tasting vanilla and thinking fish.
We had a great time though trying to figure out what everything was and we were all shocked that the owner would go through such trouble to call his wife to help us out! My favorite part was when the owner and the cook came out from the kitchen and sat at a table next to us with smiles on their faces, obviously amused by our fumbling with the chopsticks and our reactions to the seafood. We laughed so hard while trying to choke down the more gelatinous foods in there. Everything tasted pretty good, but I still wouldn't want to eat that again anytime soon.
Things to avoid in the future: restaurants with no menus and grape ice cream with raisins...
Another teacher I've spent a lot of time with here has a blog too, if you'd like to read her take on our adventures so far: www.thatswhywewander.blogspot.com
posted by CJ at 8:18 PM
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