Taipei Gourmet

For a late 2pm Saturday lunch I stopped by Taipei Gourmet. The establishment was one-third full, so I received a seat immediately. I ordered the beef noodle soup ($15.95) and vegetarian leek pie ($9.95). Both came out within 10 minutes. The beef noodle soup had the thin flat wheat noodle ubiquitous in Taiwanese noodle soups. The soup was well-flavored with stock. Too many of these sorts of places over-rely on soy sauce, making a salty yet thin and underflavored bowl. Not here. I will nitpick and say that I would like larger chunks of beef, not the sort of cubed stew beef you see at the supermarket. The vegetarian leek pie (as it's called in the menu) is a pastry stuffed with chive (not leek), egg, and vermicelli. It was decently salted and hot. The portion sizes were quite satisfying as

The pork was discolored and hard, and the 'Sour Pickled Cabbage Whole Fish’ was basically just a whole un-fresh fish boiled together . What a weird, unsettling meal. I totally regret eating here.

The General Tso's chicken has barely any chicken, mostly the dough. Many of the pieces lacked the meat altogether. It was like eating fried dough. The cashier claimed that this is the proper way. I think it's ridiculous to even call it General Tso' CHICKEN when there is barely even any meat. I've ordered from many other restaurants and received actual meat, so I don't know why they would do this. Very disappointing.

Authentic asian cuisine. Pleasantly surprised. Ordered from the weekend dim sum menu and thoroughly enjoyed each dish. Good selection of dishes available on their menus. Looking forward to returning and trying other dishes. Update: as of March 2023...new ownership. Menu is different and now offers more Szechuan dishes. They do still offer a few of the previous popular dishes like the soup dumpling and soy drink. Overall food still seems to be decent and worth trying. Will continue to try other dishes. More wait staff & improved service.

I’m not from Taiwan or the region, so I’ll leave the remarks about authenticity to others. I did stumble on a Taiwanese restaurant during a trip to China, and had an eggplant dish that I’m still thinking about five years later. So I thought I’d give this place a try. I was just about the only non-Asian diner—on a Saturday, the place was full of families. They were kind to find a spot for a solo diner.I ordered the Taipei beef noodle soup, which is spicy but not in a sharp jalapeño way, more of a dark warm heat. I also had the eggplant in garlic sauce, which resembled that dish I had years ago, though it was sweet (actually as if sugar was added) and what I had before was a bit dryer, and had just a bit more of a roasted flavor. This was a lot of food, but it all was so good that I almost d