The Cherry Field Restaurant, though established by an immigrant from Taipei, has become one of Hualien’s showcase dining establishments. Health is front and center at Cherry Field, as owner Chen Ying-mei (陳櫻美) created the restaurant after coming to Hualien to recover from surgery for thyroid cancer. Friends from around the county, including Hakka, Hoklo and Aboriginal people, told her about many different folk remedies making use of Hualien’s vast selection of flora, much of it ignored by mainstream agriculture. She has included this experience in the creation of Cherry Field, a hot pot restaurant whose main feature is its buffet of five kinds of foraged wild greens that not only provide a unique flavor, but also all kinds of healthful benefits (including reduced cancer risk).
Personally I am always slightly dubious about restaurants that put health before flavor, as their claims for various therapeutic effects seem to be little more than an excuse for dishes lacking either character or balance. I was therefore rather skeptical about Cherry Field, but the buffet of vibrant-looking greens on the sideboard looked remarkably appealing. Staff encourage diners to use a mixture of all five available greens, which are selected from a range of 16, depending on availability. I had not heard of many of these plants, and the selection of nine herbal broths into which these greens were to be immersed was equally unfamiliar, though I did recognize aged radish and ginseng. The broths are all light, and need the wild greens to give them complexity. It is further enriched by meat, fish and other mainstream vegetables. A healthy hot pot (養生火鍋) with meat is NT$390 a head, featuring unlimited access to wild greens, chicken, pork and fish. A vegetarian version with a good selection of mushrooms to replace the meat is NT$300.
If the mix of wild greens is simply too medicinal in flavor (and it has to be admitted, these greens mostly fall into the category of bitter herbs, which accounts for their lack of popularity in the regular vegetable market, and is also a reason why they can grow successfully without the aid of pesticides), Cherry Field offers a wide selection of innovative and mainstream hot pots from heavily marbled “snow flake” prime beef hot pot (霜降牛肉鍋, NT$390 a head) to pumpkin hot pot (南瓜鍋, NT$250 a head). While there are plenty of vegetarian options available, meat eaters are catered to with a plentiful selection of choice and prime cuts.
Photo: Ian Bartholomew, Taipei Times
Cherry Field is primarily a hot pot restaurant and is ideally suited for tables of four and above. That said, the establishment also offers a selection of individual sets and a la carte dishes, many of them vegetarian. Quality is well above average and its pork trotter with dry pickled Chinese mustard (陳梅弄豬手, NT$200) and mountain yam with monkey head mushrooms (山藥猴頭菇, NT$200) are highly recommended.
Although the setting at Cherry Field is casual, considerable care is taken over presentation, and a high point of a hot pot meal is the immersion of a lotus flower into the pot at the beginning of the meal. Inevitably, health benefits are attributed to the flower, but the effect is also quite beautiful, and gives the meal a lovely sense of theater. The big cavernous interior of the restaurant can be a bit intimidating for couples, but the space has been well divided to provide a degree of intimacy for smaller tables.
Service is efficient and staff are helpful in instructing diners in the best way of navigating the complex menu. The selection of food is wide enough that healthy eaters and gourmands can all find some degree of satisfaction, and for those who find something that really flips their switch, many of the condiments used in the preparation of food at Cherry Field (most made by the restaurant), are also available to take home. It goes without saying that Cherry Field’s food ticks all the health boxes from high fiber, organic, low salt and of course no MSG.
Photo: Ian Bartholomew, Taipei Times
That US assistance was a model for Taiwan’s spectacular development success was early recognized by policymakers and analysts. In a report to the US Congress for the fiscal year 1962, former President John F. Kennedy noted Taiwan’s “rapid economic growth,” was “producing a substantial net gain in living.” Kennedy had a stake in Taiwan’s achievements and the US’ official development assistance (ODA) in general: In September 1961, his entreaty to make the 1960s a “decade of development,” and an accompanying proposal for dedicated legislation to this end, had been formalized by congressional passage of the Foreign Assistance Act. Two
March 31 to April 6 On May 13, 1950, National Taiwan University Hospital otolaryngologist Su You-peng (蘇友鵬) was summoned to the director’s office. He thought someone had complained about him practicing the violin at night, but when he entered the room, he knew something was terribly wrong. He saw several burly men who appeared to be government secret agents, and three other resident doctors: internist Hsu Chiang (許強), dermatologist Hu Pao-chen (胡寶珍) and ophthalmologist Hu Hsin-lin (胡鑫麟). They were handcuffed, herded onto two jeeps and taken to the Secrecy Bureau (保密局) for questioning. Su was still in his doctor’s robes at
Last week the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said that the budget cuts voted for by the China-aligned parties in the legislature, are intended to force the DPP to hike electricity rates. The public would then blame it for the rate hike. It’s fairly clear that the first part of that is correct. Slashing the budget of state-run Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) is a move intended to cause discontent with the DPP when electricity rates go up. Taipower’s debt, NT$422.9 billion (US$12.78 billion), is one of the numerous permanent crises created by the nation’s construction-industrial state and the developmentalist mentality it
Experts say that the devastating earthquake in Myanmar on Friday was likely the strongest to hit the country in decades, with disaster modeling suggesting thousands could be dead. Automatic assessments from the US Geological Survey (USGS) said the shallow 7.7-magnitude quake northwest of the central Myanmar city of Sagaing triggered a red alert for shaking-related fatalities and economic losses. “High casualties and extensive damage are probable and the disaster is likely widespread,” it said, locating the epicentre near the central Myanmar city of Mandalay, home to more than a million people. Myanmar’s ruling junta said on Saturday morning that the number killed had