Indian cuisine has struggled to find its place in Taiwan’s international food scene. Not rare enough to be cast among the “exotic” types that have but a handful of representative restaurants in Taipei (think Peruvian, Russian or even Turkish), nor popular enough to join the mainstream giants (Italian, Thai, Korean), it occupies a culinary no man’s land where most restaurants stick to the predictable Taj Mahal formula to get noticed.
My passion for the condiments of the subcontinent began back in college, cooking with my Indian roommate. Years spent bonding over the rituals of onion chopping and roti tossing, we not only forged a lasting friendship, but also fine-honed a string of curries that have been the talk of countless dinner parties I’ve hosted since. I’m the kind of person who has a list of favorite Indian restaurants, and I’m always looking to add to it.
And so it was with high hopes that my wife and I came to Saathiya (莎堤亞), located on a second floor on Xinyi Road (信義路), just above Dongmen MRT Station (東門). You’d miss it if it weren’t for the orange, green and white menu stand at the bottom of the stairwell. Nothing, (except perhaps the Taj Mahal), says Indian restaurant quite like the country’s trademark tricolor.
.jpg)
Photo: Liam Gibson
We sit by a large window at the far end of the space which overlooks Xinyi Road. Its low-key for a Saturday night. The place is almost empty except for a couple of tables. The walls of the place are lined with abstract paintings of a remarkably consistent style, courtesy of the owner’s friend and long-term Taiwan resident, artist Sagar Telekar. The paintings are aesthetically pleasing, but stand in jarring contrast next to the flat-screen monitor playing an MTV-like stream of Bollywood dance scenes. The seats are Ikea-chic: simple, black and covered with a nice padding that upon second squeeze feels like one of those thick, cushy mouse pads that gamers use.
We are served by a young Mongolian waiter/waitress duo. Neither can speak Chinese, (nor Hindi for that matter), “Only English,” they say. My wife lets me order.
Flavoring a curry’s gravy with methi (fenugreek seed powder) takes experience. Believed to have special medicinal properties, it’s something of an acquired taste, even in India. I’ve ruined plenty of curries crossing the threshold where stimulating acidic bite becomes bittery awfulness. Saathiya’s methi malai paneer (NT$350) past the test. The methi flavor is subtle, but noticeable, just as it should be.
Photo: Liam Gibson
A plain lassi (NT$100) is a must if you’re sampling multiple curries in one sitting. Its tangy/salty sharpness helps bring your palate back to ground zero in a quick neutralizing gulp. This one delivered the palate-purging hit and a satisfying mouthful of yoghurt-milky frothy goodness.
The aloo paratha (NT$125) was a major disappointment. Undercooked, damp, oily and served on ugly pieces of paper towel.
One critical test for any restaurant, but especially so for Indian ones, is whether or not they can tailor the spice level to your specifications. Saathiya needs to work on this. I asked for the Hyderabadi special chicken curry (NT$380) to be very spicy and it was medium, at best. If they can’t get it right using their preferred English, I can’t imagine how they’d fare in Mandarin.
Photo: Liam Gibson
The spinach-based gravy of the palak paneer (NT$320) was smooth, thick and just a little pulpy. Unfortunately, that was all this dish got right. The paneer was sliced into cubic pieces, chewy but bland. Lightly frying paneer with jeera (cumin seeds) really transforms its flavor. But it seems they’d rather skimp on the seeds here, and so its aromatic potential was left unrealized. Inch-sized onion slices were an unpleasant surprise. This faux pas would have been permissible if it were accompanied by other veggies such as bell peppers, (as is usual in dishes like paneer tikka masala), but as it was the only vegetable in the gravy, it was hard to overlook.
For desert, we ordered rasgulla (NT$90) as gulab jamun wasn’t available. Two white balls come soaked in a little pool of syrup. To really relish the heady-sensation it offers, rasgulla, like gulab jamun, should be taken in one bite. One bite of heavenly bliss. The ball’s sponginess resists the weight of your jaws as they slowly clamp down, letting the syrup slowly ooze and flow out over your teeth and tongue. The sponge becomes firmer as you push into the core before finally splitting and filling your cavity with a sugary mouthful of sinful proportions.
I wish the rest of the meal had delivered similar levels of sensory satisfaction, but all in all, it was hit and miss. At just over a year old, Saathiya is a new arrival on Taipei’s indistinct Indian scene, and like a toddler, still trying to find its feet. Above the MRT, it’s very accessible and a stroll around the pretty backstreets of Dongmen is nice after dinner. Yet I wouldn’t go out of my way to come back to Saathiya.
Photo: Liam Gibson
Photo: Liam Gibson
Taiwanese chip-making giant Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) plans to invest a whopping US$100 billion in the US, after US President Donald Trump threatened to slap tariffs on overseas-made chips. TSMC is the world’s biggest maker of the critical technology that has become the lifeblood of the global economy. This week’s announcement takes the total amount TSMC has pledged to invest in the US to US$165 billion, which the company says is the “largest single foreign direct investment in US history.” It follows Trump’s accusations that Taiwan stole the US chip industry and his threats to impose tariffs of up to 100 percent
From censoring “poisonous books” to banning “poisonous languages,” the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) tried hard to stamp out anything that might conflict with its agenda during its almost 40 years of martial law. To mark 228 Peace Memorial Day, which commemorates the anti-government uprising in 1947, which was violently suppressed, I visited two exhibitions detailing censorship in Taiwan: “Silenced Pages” (禁書時代) at the National 228 Memorial Museum and “Mandarin Monopoly?!” (請說國語) at the National Human Rights Museum. In both cases, the authorities framed their targets as “evils that would threaten social mores, national stability and their anti-communist cause, justifying their actions
In the run-up to World War II, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of Abwehr, Nazi Germany’s military intelligence service, began to fear that Hitler would launch a war Germany could not win. Deeply disappointed by the sell-out of the Munich Agreement in 1938, Canaris conducted several clandestine operations that were aimed at getting the UK to wake up, invest in defense and actively support the nations Hitler planned to invade. For example, the “Dutch war scare” of January 1939 saw fake intelligence leaked to the British that suggested that Germany was planning to invade the Netherlands in February and acquire airfields
The launch of DeepSeek-R1 AI by Hangzhou-based High-Flyer and subsequent impact reveals a lot about the state of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) today, both good and bad. It touches on the state of Chinese technology, innovation, intellectual property theft, sanctions busting smuggling, propaganda, geopolitics and as with everything in China, the power politics of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). PLEASING XI JINPING DeepSeek’s creation is almost certainly no accident. In 2015 CCP Secretary General Xi Jinping (習近平) launched his Made in China 2025 program intended to move China away from low-end manufacturing into an innovative technological powerhouse, with Artificial Intelligence
RSS