One of the things I love about Taipei at the plethora of bakeries. Maybe it’s because ovens aren’t as common in homes here, but you’re never very far from fresh bread in Taipei.
Bakeries back home suck, to put it kindly. Most of them are just supermarket bakeries, the others make boring breads or worse, bagels and such, and their hours of operation are miniscule. I want to be able to buy fresh garlic bread on my way to work each morning.
But back to the story.
We were in the basement of the SOGO Fuxing store and I noticed the FlavorField bakery. Now, since bakeries are a dime a dozen in Taipei, I wouldn’t have given it a second look except they had a sandwich bin with several western looking sandwiches. Several looked promising, so I grabbed a “French Pastrami sandwichâ€, whatever that means exactly, to try when we got home. As we were buying something, we decided to grab some garlic french bread and some croissants, too.
The sandwich was really good. I’m really unsure if it’s supposed to be a “french pastrami†sandwich or a french “pastrami sandwichâ€, if you see my meaning. The meat wasn’t what I typically think of as pastrami, but it was a cured beef of some kind and quite tasty. If was on the freshest french roll I’ve had in years and topped with lettuce, onions, mayonnaise (or something similar) and some oily spices. (The spices might have been integral with the onions, which appeared to have been soaked in oil.)
It was the best sandwich I’ve ever had in Taiwan. (Taiwan is, to be sure, not a nation of great sandwiches, but this one was quite good.)
Coincidentally, the croissants and the garlic bread were excellent also. As bakeries go, this one is a notch above.