As my in-laws live near Din Tai Fung, you’ll often seen Japanese tourists in the area. It’s no joke that most of them are carrying tour guides to places to eat in Taipei. They come to Taiwan for the eating and the hot springs.
I’ve helped Japanese tourists, in my own bad Japanese, try to find the feeding grounds and I see them with their guides almost every day. The area just behind Din Tai Fung, (To the south of Xinyi Rd and west of Xinsheng Rd) has a couple streets packed with restaurants, surrounding a small park. In addition to locals taking their kids to the park, this seems to be the area where the Japanese gravitate towards. Many of the restaurants have signs in both Chinese and Japanese and they do good business.
Tonight, after a busy day which I’ll describe later, we went to that area to find something to eat. It was after 9, which means many of the restaurants were already closed. It’s a good thing, too. If they hadn’t been closed we wouldn’t have eaten in a Japanese Ramen & Curry shop. Not in any way modest, they claimed to have won the awards in Japan as best ramen and best curry, separately. When you figure they’re in Taiwan, that’s got to be pretty darn good.
It is. I only wish I could tell you the name of the place.
We were both hungry, so we went with curries instead of ramen. Irene had their special beef curry, which was chunks of pot roast, covered in curry with rice. I tried a bite of hers before my dinner arrived and it was excellent. Even though it was mild, it was very flavorful, the beef was tender and moist.
I had a tonkatsu curry. The tonkatsu (pork chop) was flawless. Perfectly cooked, great tasting on its own, no waste. It was absolutely top notch. I also had curry and asked for mine to be spicy.
The sauce was, like Irene’s, excellent, but it was unbelievably hot. I couldn’t believe this was coming out of a “Japanese” restaurant. It was almost too hot to eat, but not quite – once I got hold of something to drink with it.
I highly recommend this place and will post an update with I get their name so they get the recognition they deserve.
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