Dining Out

Karl Wells

Taiwan Restaurant

394 Kenmount Rd.

Ph. 753-1818

I'd wager that St. John's has more Chinese restaurants, per capita, than any other city in Canada. Sometimes they appear conspicuously in a location, other times inconspicuously. There are also times when a restaurant calls attention, yet still doesn't manage to catch your eye. Such was my experience with Taiwan Restaurant.

Fortunately someone recently made me aware of Taiwan Restaurant. When I saw it I had one of those moments where you say to yourself, "How is it I didn't notice this place before?" Standing as it does on a large lot across the street from VOCM, the sprawling light brick building with portico, framed by concrete lions, certainly wasn't playing hide-and-seek.

Inside, Taiwan is quite a pleasant dining space. The foyer presents a very attractive wall-mounted waterfall of copper and slate. A gold coloured divider of Chinese design, featuring four-legged deer-like animals with snarling dragonheads, separates a long cocktail bar from the dining tables.

Guest and I were shown to a table - very effectively hidden inside a high maze of glass dividers. The dividers were designed to give privacy but made me feel somewhat claustrophobic. This forest of opaque glass was overkill in the extreme, obviously a good idea that got out of hand.

Taiwan’s menu won’t make your eyes glaze over from too much choice. That worked for me, because it’s been my experience that restaurants with very large menus have difficulty delivering quality on every single item on the card. Better they should keep the menu compact and do a really fine job on everything offered.

The choice of wines by the bottle was also limited. (Wine by the glass wasn’t an option because my palate tells me that inexpensive Canadian wine is just plain awful.) However a few bottles of drinkable red were offered so we chose a bottle of Nottage Hill merlot from Australia. I thought it went fairly well with most of our choices, excepting a couple of spicy hot ones. They might have been better matched with a cool Black Horse or Dominion.

Taiwan’s hot and sour soup was a smash hit. An alliance of alchemy and gastronomy seemed at play in the creation of this one. It was tangy, spicy hot and subtly sour. All flavours were perfectly balanced. The soup had substance as well: baby shrimp, finely sliced vegetables (like carrot) preserved Chinese greens, mushrooms and melt-in-your-mouth silken tofu. I highly recommend it.

Taiwan’s won ton soup consisted of a mild flavoured broth hosting a company of pork-filled won ton parcels. Several slices of tasty barbecued pork and pieces of green onion swirled about the plump pasta packets. Each component of this soup had good flavour but its sum made a superb soup.

After a few very crispy and perfectly fine spring rolls, a parade of stainless steel serving bowls arrived with Taiwan 5-0, mo pao tofu, koo loo luk, buttered scallops and Taiwan fried rice. The scallops and rice were as straightforward as their brief descriptions. The scallops tasted very buttery and perfectly cooked. The rice was satisfactory but too dry for my taste.

Taiwan 5-0 (Why do I feel the urge to say, “Book’em Dano”?) got its name from “five” principal ingredients: shrimp, scallops, chicken, barbecued pork, beef and vegetables. Again the seafood was cooked perfectly, i.e. not too long. This dish was a vegetarian’s nightmare but for someone with a healthy appetite for animal protein, a dream come true.

Koo loo luk was Cantonese style sweet and sour pork with pineapple. The pork was boneless, lightly battered, stir-fried and mixed in a fairly typical sweet and sour sauce, save a welcome hint of tomato and chunks of fresh pineapple. (If it wasn’t fresh pineapple, it was fresh frozen because that kind of zip can’t be had from canned.)

Another of the hot dishes was a very spicy mo pao tofu. Chunks of silken tofu dotted a minced beef sauce, looking like snow-white icebergs on a viscous sea. The mo pao tofu did contain a generous helping of red pepper. Not for the faint hearted, this dish can rev-up your engine on a cold day.

Finally, a word about service. Apart from the occasional take-out customer we were the only paying patrons in the Taiwan that night. So, the attention paid us was, as you might expect, keen - but not intrusive. Our server, May, knew the menu, the wine list, and made a mean Harvey Wallbanger. May even brought us hot hand towels at the end of our meal. Yes, “steaming” hot hand towels. Sing praise sing praise! There is yet hope for civilization!

Our meal for two (that could have fed three) including cocktails, a bottle of red and gratuity, cost $154.48.

The Taiwan Restaurant was not wheelchair accessible and the noise level was low.

Best Points:

Food and décor.

Areas for Improvement:

Moisten your Taiwan rice.

Ratings Category:

Taiwan Restaurant gets 8 out of 10 points.

7 points = satisfactory, 7.5 points = good, 8 points = very good, 9 points = excellent, 10 points = perfection