The Boston Phoenix
June 17 - 24, 1999

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Taiwan Café

The real downtown restaurant of the moment

by Robert Nadeau

DINING OUT
Taiwan Café
(617) 426-8181
34 Oxford Street (Chinatown), Boston
Open Mon-Fri, 11 a.m.-1 a.m.; Sat and Sun, 9 a.m.-1 a.m.
No credit cards
Beer and wine
No smoking
Up seven steps from street level
Someone told me he saw on television that Radius, a newish restaurant downtown, has been named one of the 50 best of something. I haven't reviewed Radius, but I have eaten there, and I've noticed that reviews seem to depend on holding out for one transcendent dish -- always a dish I didn't have.

On the other hand, I had at least two, maybe three transcendent dishes a few blocks away from Radius, at Taiwan Café, a place that has barely been noticed by the English-language press and has yet to be named among the best of anything.

Taiwan Café is, in fact, one of the best restaurants ever in Chinatown, although it is also probably the restaurant in Chinatown least concerned with attracting non-Chinese customers. Not that there's any hostility, but there are untranslated specials on the wall, a lack of forks (supplied immediately on request), and no credit cards accepted. None of the menu headings -- appetizers, soups, noodles, vegetables, specialties -- are translated at all. So the English-only reader is immediately confused. (By the way, the Chinese name of the restaurant is not Taiwan Café. It is something like "Seaside Flavor," if my trusty copy of McCawley's The Eater's Guide to Chinese Characters is up to speed.)

However, there is nothing more reassuring than the good smells and good-looking dishes around the room. We asked our waitress to explain the specials on the wall, which she did; we asked two young women at a nearby table what their good-looking dish was, and they helpfully looked it up for us on the English side of the menu. We ordered a lot of things, and the waitress repeated them back exactly.

Our confident ordering seemed to melt any remaining reserve, and for the rest of our meal servers vied for tableside rights -- more French-type service than one usually sees in Chinatown -- and the manager made small talk with us. It also helped that everything was quite good, and we pitched right in. One of my companions wondered if I'd been recognized as a restaurant critic. Since the room was by this time filled with customers, and we were the only non-Asians present, I suggested that this restaurant wasn't too concerned about how it was reviewed in English.

The only thing we had that any reader would find unusual, however, was "spicy anchovy" ($4.50), an appetizer of tiny dried fish and green chilies that actually had a very appetizing balance of heat and mild fishiness. This was the waitress's suggestion, since they were out of "small clams with garlic." Steamed vegetarian ravioli ($4.95) were absolutely first-rate by any standard, evidently homemade, with thin, delicate skins and a filling that would make anyone want to be a vegetarian. "Pork and mushroom thick soup" ($3.25 to serve three or four) -- a complete shot in the dark -- was thickened with a little cornstarch, but was basically a clear, slightly tart soup with delectable pork balls and effective shreds of cilantro and wood ear.

The most amazing dish we had -- Radius, take note -- was home-style sautéed eggplant with basil ($6.95). Don't try to take this home: the effect depends in part on fried Chinese purple eggplant hitting the table at a steaming hot, succulent peak. The sauce is a little spicy, but strongly aromatic, with a distinctive Asian-basil aroma.

A close second was our concluding steamed flounder ($18.95). This came to the table undercooked in a chafing dish, with alcohol lamps underneath actually finishing the cooking. The fish looked like three halibut steaks under the usual blanket of fine-shredded ginger. But its flesh, once boned and served by eager waiters, was so much lighter than halibut in texture, with such a buttery-rich flavor, that it could only have been cut from a large flounder.

Taiwan Café also has a superb version of "sautéed sprout of snow peas" ($9.95), in which the delicate tendrils are neither overcooked nor drowned in garlic oil. We saw a dish on a neighboring table that turned out to be "Chinese vegetable with black mushroom" ($6.95) and ordered ourselves one. The "Chinese vegetable" part was a bright-green baby bok choy as addictive as any junk food, and the plumped-up dried mushrooms went quickly as well.

Tea-smoked duck ($14.95) had the usual lovely flavor and tender texture, as well as the usual fatty skin and bones. They do give you the entire duck, so this cool-temperature dish could cover your meat needs on a hot night. "Sweet-sour and spicy squid roll" ($12.95) sounded like it would be weird, but was actually a fairly familiar sweet-and-sour dish, and the "squid roll" turned out to be rings. It wasn't batter-fried, but it was a prosaic dish on an otherwise dazzling table.

Rice at Taiwan Café is quite good, aromatic, and a little sticky. Weak tea is served in large mugs. Tsingtao beer is the alcoholic beverage of choice here; it may even be the only choice. We didn't second-guess it for a minute.

The menu lists no desserts, but the manager volunteered what he called the "summer special." This is a big dish of crushed ice mixed with some condensed milk, red beans, candied barley, cubes of stiff jelly, and a few lotus seeds and gingko nuts. Waiters apportion this into smaller bowls, and you have something vaguely like coffee ice with some solids. This was a good way to end the meal, and I ate all of mine with relish. I think it may cost $2.50 per person, but I wouldn't swear to that under oath.

The atmosphere at Taiwan Café is minimal. It's a small room, and most of it is taken up by people intent on eating incredibly delicious things. There do seem to be a lot of servers in Taiwan Café T-shirts, and they put things on plates the way fancy French waiters do, but the dishes aren't highly decorated. This is certainly not the ornamental Taiwanese cuisine of Taiwan's TV chef, Fu Pei Mei. She would never put up with the awful racket of the ice-crushing machine in her dining room.

One of the local critics who said Radius would be a great restaurant also said not to go there for a year. I don't think you need to wait on Taiwan Café, but I also don't want to flood the place with Phoenix readers all at once. So you can go this month if you promise to order and eat sea cucumber, duck tongue, or liver and spinach soup. Another group can work on the $5.95 lunch specials. And readers whose last names begin with M through Z can go after 10 p.m. on weekdays. The idea is to encourage this venture, not trample it or drive it underground.

Robert Nadeau can be reached at robtnadeau@aol.com.


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