Tucked away on a quiet residential side street just two blocks away from the Takishimaya Department Store and the Shilin Court House in Tianmu is a small oasis of tranquility called DC Cafe.
In fact, it is so well tucked away that most of the almost two-year-old cafe's business comes from friends telling friends about it. There are no big, garish letters on the outside, just a discreet sign and a short walkway that takes you past a little garden and pond, setting the stage for what's inside.
The cafe is three light-filled floors, outfitted with a few tables and comfortably upholstered chairs and decorated with Chinese antiques, including a lovely robe on one of the ground floor's walls.
PHOTO: DIANE BAKER, TAIPEI TIMES
The menu is similarly low-key, offering a mix of Western and Eastern dishes. There are seven "Combo Dining" meals, ranging from vegetable curry with rice, shrimp or pork dumplings and fettuccine with smoked salmon to India curry and chicken with rice. Each comes with a choice of either soup or a drink. A list of five specials includes roast cream rice with potato and shrimp, lasagna with beef and mushroom and spaghetti with seafood and Marseilles Soup.
There is a wide list of non-alcoholic beverages, including several coffee options, various hot and cold teas and fruit juices as well as a page of tempting desserts, such as apple pie, pumpkin cheese pie and baked banana or apple.
The meals range in price from NT$350 to NT$380, and the drinks and desserts from NT$130 to NT$200. The afternoon tea set costs between NT$360 and NT$390, depending on your choice of desert.
The pumpkin soup is a good way to start off the meal: Rich, creamy and lightly seasoned, the taste of the pumpkin is allowed to shine through. A clear favorite among cafe regulars is the fettuccine with smoked salmon. A piquant cream sauce lightly coats the noodles, which are garnished with abundant chunks of salmon. My two friends who ordered this cleaned their plates fairly quickly.
The vegetable curry is also recommended, although with the caveat that this is a Japanese-style curry. Personally I prefer a bit more bite, but obviously this dish is designed to curry favor with those whose tastebuds are not so bold.
Dec. 16 to Dec. 22 Growing up in the 1930s, Huang Lin Yu-feng (黃林玉鳳) often used the “fragrance machine” at Ximen Market (西門市場) so that she could go shopping while smelling nice. The contraption, about the size of a photo booth, sprayed perfume for a coin or two and was one of the trendy bazaar’s cutting-edge features. Known today as the Red House (西門紅樓), the market also boasted the coldest fridges, and offered delivery service late into the night during peak summer hours. The most fashionable goods from Japan, Europe and the US were found here, and it buzzed with activity
US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo, speaking at the Reagan Defense Forum last week, said the US is confident it can defeat the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the Pacific, though its advantage is shrinking. Paparo warned that the PRC might launch a “war of necessity” even if it thinks it could not win, a wise observation. As I write, the PRC is carrying out naval and air exercises off its coast that are aimed at Taiwan and other nations threatened by PRC expansionism. A local defense official said that China’s military activity on Monday formed two “walls” east
The latest military exercises conducted by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) last week did not follow the standard Chinese Communist Party (CCP) formula. The US and Taiwan also had different explanations for the war games. Previously the CCP would plan out their large-scale military exercises and wait for an opportunity to dupe the gullible into pinning the blame on someone else for “provoking” Beijing, the most famous being former house speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August 2022. Those military exercises could not possibly have been organized in the short lead time that it was known she was coming.
The world has been getting hotter for decades but a sudden and extraordinary surge in heat has sent the climate deeper into uncharted territory — and scientists are still trying to figure out why. Over the past two years, temperature records have been repeatedly shattered by a streak so persistent and puzzling it has tested the best-available scientific predictions about how the climate functions. Scientists are unanimous that burning fossil fuels has largely driven long-term global warming, and that natural climate variability can also influence temperatures one year to the next. But they are still debating what might have contributed to this
RSS