Persian Heaven, which opened five years ago, stands out on Taipei’s dining scene as one of the few places to sample Persian cuisine. Founded by an Iranian businessman, the dining lounge on Nanjing East Road (南京東路) features regular belly dance performances. Subdued lighting, loud music and cabinets filled with knick-knacks like busts of ancient Persian kings add to the fun and slightly kitschy atmosphere.
For an extra NT$150, most entrees are available as set meals, which are a bargain if you want to get a sampling of Persian Heaven’s expansive menu. Each set comes with a full-sized salad, soup, appetizer, side dish, dessert and drink, in addition to the main course.
We paired ghorme sabzi, or stewed beef cooked with split peas and vegetables (NT$370), with an order of Iranian bread (NT$60). Made from white flour, the bread was thin and chewy, like a tortilla, and not particularly memorable. The beef in the ghorme sabzi was juicy and the dish would have gone better with Persian Heaven’s saffron polo (NT$80), or white rice flavored with fragrant saffron.
The upbeat-sounding triple happy kebab king (NT$530) features a skewer each of beef, lamb and chicken and is probably the most attractive dish on the menu, with the gleaming chunks of meat set off by a colorful assortment of vegetables. The meat was succulent but had little seasoning, so we made sure to douse each skewer in limejuice to set off the flavor. On a separate visit, I ordered the meat and seafood combo kebab (NT$550), which came with two meaty, perfectly grilled tiger prawns, along with lamb (beef is another option).
Most of Persian Heaven’s salads use potato as the main ingredient, including the delicious chilled salad Olivier (NT$100), in which the tuber is diced and mixed with celery and chicken. There are only two appetizers. The seafood plate (NT$100) is a patty of chilled mashed potatoes served with a steamed prawn and garnished with relish and dill. It was OK, but the heaven chicken roll (NT$100), a light crepe stuffed with chicken and garnished
with a savory cream sauce, is much better.
Persian Heaven’s soups are passable, but if you aren’t ordering a set meal, I suggest skipping them to save room for dessert. Made from semolina and butter and flavored with honey and saffron, the hal wa (NT$80) was surprisingly delicate instead of overpoweringly sweet. The texture was like a thick pudding, making the treat a great comfort food. It tasted especially good with a glass of tart lemonade, which came with the set meal. Another good bet is the thick, creamy rice pudding (NT$80). It was complemented by a glass of cinnamon-y iced Iranian tea (NT$120, also available hot).
Our servers were uniformly polite and helpful on both visits, but we waited half an hour for our main entree (the triple happy kebab king) on a busy Sunday night — enough time, in fact, to watch the cheerful belly dancer teach two diners how to roll their hips. Dinner on a weekday moved at a quicker pace — each course was served as soon as I had finished the previous one.
Feb. 17 to Feb. 23 “Japanese city is bombed,” screamed the banner in bold capital letters spanning the front page of the US daily New Castle News on Feb. 24, 1938. This was big news across the globe, as Japan had not been bombarded since Western forces attacked Shimonoseki in 1864. “Numerous Japanese citizens were killed and injured today when eight Chinese planes bombed Taihoku, capital of Formosa, and other nearby cities in the first Chinese air raid anywhere in the Japanese empire,” the subhead clarified. The target was the Matsuyama Airfield (today’s Songshan Airport in Taipei), which
On Jan. 17, Beijing announced that it would allow residents of Shanghai and Fujian Province to visit Taiwan. The two sides are still working out the details. President William Lai (賴清德) has been promoting cross-strait tourism, perhaps to soften the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) attitudes, perhaps as a sop to international and local opinion leaders. Likely the latter, since many observers understand that the twin drivers of cross-strait tourism — the belief that Chinese tourists will bring money into Taiwan, and the belief that tourism will create better relations — are both false. CHINESE TOURISM PIPE DREAM Back in July
Could Taiwan’s democracy be at risk? There is a lot of apocalyptic commentary right now suggesting that this is the case, but it is always a conspiracy by the other guys — our side is firmly on the side of protecting democracy and always has been, unlike them! The situation is nowhere near that bleak — yet. The concern is that the power struggle between the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and their now effectively pan-blue allies the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) and the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) intensifies to the point where democratic functions start to break down. Both
This was not supposed to be an election year. The local media is billing it as the “2025 great recall era” (2025大罷免時代) or the “2025 great recall wave” (2025大罷免潮), with many now just shortening it to “great recall.” As of this writing the number of campaigns that have submitted the requisite one percent of eligible voters signatures in legislative districts is 51 — 35 targeting Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus lawmakers and 16 targeting Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers. The pan-green side has more as they started earlier. Many recall campaigns are billing themselves as “Winter Bluebirds” after the “Bluebird Action”
RSS