台湾春天之旅 2013- Dinner in Hsin Chu (新竹凤城之月)

After our visit to  Natural Science Museum, it was time to make our way to airport for our night departure. 姗姗姐had offered to drive us up from Taichung but we declined as it is too far journey. The Taiwanese 热情 was not to be underestimated and thus we settled to let her drive us to 新竹 where we will catch a HSR to Taoyuan and transfer to the airport. This is on the pretext that we are accompanying her back to 新竹 from 台中...

The journey to 新竹 is ard 1 hr and she kept telling us it pretty near..We were so apologetic as she had drove from 新竹 the day before down to 台中 where she stayed at her parents' hse for a night before picking us up this morning. Even her parents' place is a good 45 min away from where we are staying. Faints...

Anyways, before dropping us at the HSR station, she suggested dinner as there is still abit of time left and we left the choice to her since she is the 地头蛇 hahaa..She brought us to this special restaurant named 凤城之月..The 之 is actually a Japanese word "no" since I am unable to type it out, I translated it to chinese. Hee..

Menu that looks like a textbook

The restaurant is decorated to be like the olden days of Taiwan. Its like we are seated amidst an old street in the 60's of Taiwan having our dinner. They have quite an array of display of olden days toys, discs and also make shift barber hse, provision stalls street vendors, moive theater that let you have a glimpse of the olden Taiwan.

As we were rushing for time, I didnt have the time to go ard taking pictures of this special restaurant. Furthermore, it is quite rude to leave my host there alone while we venture to take photos. So, I settled for whatever is infront of me and took some photos. Hehe.

Chapter 1

Even the menu was designed to be like an old chinese textbook, with chapters inside separating the various specialities they have to offer.  Again, we told 姗姗姐 to make the decisions of what to order.

Chapter 2

姗姗姐 decided to order Hakka cuisine（客家菜) as she reckon that we didnt really try it in Taiwan before. True enuff, Mr Love and I usually will concentrate on the 小吃that Taiwan had to offer.. Haha.. So here's what we had:

1). Pork stir fry with 竹笋

I am not a veggie lover, in fact can be consider a carnivore  and thus for this dish, I totally didnt touch the bamboo shoots, only eating the meat. Though it is abit impolite to do this infront of our host, she totally can understand me since we had meals together prior to this. Hehe..

The pork served is super tender and when stir fryed together with bamboo shoots, cashew nuts, chilies and some other veggies I cannot pin point, gives it a very fragrant taste.

Stir fry pork with bamboo shoots

2). 水莲根

I do not know the english name of this dish but I was told that this is a speciality in Taiwan. I had neber seen it in SG before. But since it looks similar to my favourite 豆苗, I decided to give it a try. This is stir fry with mushrooms and 枸杞子 and is quite tasty. The taste is similar of that to 豆苗 and thus I can accept it better though. We polish this off the plate in record time.

水莲根

3). Hakka Style chickedn - 白斩鸡

This is similar to our SG version of Hainanese chicken. The version here is steamed too I believed. The meat is tender and juicy. This is not much of a surprise to us due to the similarity of it to the SG version. But if you really want a comparison, I can only say that the chicken they served here tastes fresher than ours. Haha

Hakka 白斩鸡

4). Salted egg bittergourd - 咸蛋苦瓜

I nearly fainted when I saw this dish served. This is my nemesis. Not only I neber eatten bitter gourd before, any dishes that have this in them, I totally stay away. I mean who likes bitter taste? But then I was too paiseh to decline to try this by now given that I didnt touch the bamboo shoots earlier.

Furthermore,  姗姗姐 keep saying that Taiwanese bitter gourd is not bitter at all. I was not convince at least, if bitter gourd is not bitter that the name itself will be an irony isnt it?

Well, I am a big gal now, I cannot always pout my out of such situations and I decided to give it a chance since it is stir fry with salted egg(my favourite 配料）。

I took a small piece coated with alot of salted egg and tried. Surprisingly, there isnt any tinge of bitter taste to it. Zero, nil, zilch! 姗姗姐 was rite! The bitter gourd in Taiwan is not bitter at all...Yay... All I can taste is the salted egg taste..Furthermore, they have fry the bitter gourd till so soft that it is not crunchy..Another yay since I hated crunchy veggies. Haha.

She later told me that she dun understand why the bitter gourd she brought in SG is always so bitter as compared to the Taiwan version. Neither do I! haha I cannot give her an explaination too..

This is indeed a nice dish and I too helped to finish them all. The bitter gourd I eaten here is more than what I have took in the past 29 years of my life. Haha..

咸蛋苦瓜

The billed came out to around NTD 1000 which is about SGD 50, in my opinion its quite the price since the ambience is good and interesting. I would love have more time here to take pictures of the special settings they had but we are simply rushing for time. Perhaps the next visit, I would be able to appreciate the settings more :)

Restaurant page