Meat Sauce, Rice and other Goodies

We had originally planned to go to the Taipei Story House and have lunch there. Unfortunately, it was closed that day, so we just wondered around the premises for a while, visited the Museum of Contemporary Art and went to this “Rice with Meat Sauce” place you see in the picture above. You’re going to have to excuse my lack of Mandarin reading skills. I can’t translate that…however, if you are reading this and you know how to translate it, I would really appreciate it if you could leave a comment with the proper translation. That would really help! In any case, my mom just told me this place was a “Beef Rice” place and didn’t elaborate.

As you go into the restaurant, you go through a line, much like a buffet, Souplantation or Panda Express. You pick out a bunch of sides, pay and go sit down. While at your table, the server will bring you an order of “beef rice” (see above) which consists of a meat sauce served over steamed white rice. Pretty simple, nothing fancy, but very tasty. The ambiance is very loud thought, lot of people talking, servers yelling orders across the dining room and the clinging and clanging of dishes…you know, typical Chinese restaurant stuff.

These are the side dishes we picked out. Here we have sesame chicken, fried fish, stir-fry shrimp, sea bass (my mom calls it snow fish), chicken curry with potatoes, beef with string beans, veggies and some weird thing on the bottom-right which I don’t quite remember enjoying.

This is a fast food joint, so cheap, quick and easy is it’s main draw. The food was alright, some of the dishes were better than the others. The most memorable dish for me was the meat sauce served over rice and the sesame chicken. The place is pretty cheap and has a wide variety of dishes to choose from (about $30 USD for four people). Now if Panda Express could start serving the meat sauce, sea bass, stir-fry shrimp (without charging an extra dollar!), I’ll be going there every day for lunch.