Ala-din Indian & Pakistani Kitchen (阿拉丁) is in the middle of the crowded Raohe Street night market, and if your stomach is growling it might be hard to resist the temptation to sate yourself on the rows and rows of finger food and fried desserts you pass as you wend your way to the restaurant. But if you hold out long enough, Ala-din’s roti rolls will satisfy your hungry belly and its spicy curries will have your forehead beading with sweat.
The restaurant’s grill is out in front to entice browsers with kebabs and vegetables cooking on skewers; a plain and narrow but neat dining room stretches behind. With the exception of a famous oamisua shop at 49 Raohe St (饒河街49號), you’d be hard-pressed to find a better snack (or light meal) in this night market than Ala-din’s roti rolls (NT$80): the chapatti is made right before your eyes from dough that’s twirled then heated on a dry tava, and the portions of meat and vegetables come hot off the grill and are not to be scoffed at.
Because of their extensive menu and customizable set meals, Ala-din’s ordering system for sit-down diners might seem somewhat Byzantine — but, to be honest, the only reason the process was complicated was the two waitresses who hovered around our table and recited a list of options several times despite our insistence that we wanted to take our time with the menu. Perhaps the staff is used to dealing with customers who lack basic familiarity with South Asian cuisine, in which case such over-attentive service might be a plus.
In the end, we picked a beef masala set meal (牛肉濃汁瑪沙拉, NT$650) for two, as well as a plate of beef kebab (牛肉巴比Q, NT$260). Another order for channa masala, or chickpeas cooked in curry, was never delivered, but that ended up being a good thing because of the amount of food in the set meal: the beef masala, a bountiful heap of basmati rice, naan, a plate of vegetables, bowls of tomato and vegetable soup, Indian tea and lemon honey juice.
Diners have the options of having their curries prepared slightly spicy, medium spicy or very spicy. Our beef masala was slightly spicy, but still hotter than curries at other popular Indian and Pakistani restaurants in Taipei, while the chunks of beef were reasonably tender. The vegetables, however, which included squash, peas and cabbage, were a tad overcooked and soggy and both drinks were forgettable, but the basmati rice, soup and naan were delicious. The latter, a flatbread baked in a tandoori oven, was particularly good: chewy and dense enough to scoop up plenty of curry with. The extra order of beef kebab outshone the beef masala. It was tender, savory and moist.
In the March 9 edition of the Taipei Times a piece by Ninon Godefroy ran with the headine “The quiet, gentle rhythm of Taiwan.” It started with the line “Taiwan is a small, humble place. There is no Eiffel Tower, no pyramids — no singular attraction that draws the world’s attention.” I laughed out loud at that. This was out of no disrespect for the author or the piece, which made some interesting analogies and good points about how both Din Tai Fung’s and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) meticulous attention to detail and quality are not quite up to
April 21 to April 27 Hsieh Er’s (謝娥) political fortunes were rising fast after she got out of jail and joined the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in December 1945. Not only did she hold key positions in various committees, she was elected the only woman on the Taipei City Council and headed to Nanjing in 1946 as the sole Taiwanese female representative to the National Constituent Assembly. With the support of first lady Soong May-ling (宋美齡), she started the Taipei Women’s Association and Taiwan Provincial Women’s Association, where she
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) hatched a bold plan to charge forward and seize the initiative when he held a protest in front of the Taipei City Prosecutors’ Office. Though risky, because illegal, its success would help tackle at least six problems facing both himself and the KMT. What he did not see coming was Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (將萬安) tripping him up out of the gate. In spite of Chu being the most consequential and successful KMT chairman since the early 2010s — arguably saving the party from financial ruin and restoring its electoral viability —
It is one of the more remarkable facts of Taiwan history that it was never occupied or claimed by any of the numerous kingdoms of southern China — Han or otherwise — that lay just across the water from it. None of their brilliant ministers ever discovered that Taiwan was a “core interest” of the state whose annexation was “inevitable.” As Paul Kua notes in an excellent monograph laying out how the Portuguese gave Taiwan the name “Formosa,” the first Europeans to express an interest in occupying Taiwan were the Spanish. Tonio Andrade in his seminal work, How Taiwan Became Chinese,