Indoor BBQ Japanese Style - Fourteen Weeks in Taiwan

On the mid-autumn festival’s Sunday, after visiting the palace museum, we were invited by the lab to a Japanese restaurant, where I probably ate more meat than I usually eat in three months. It was probably the best beef I have had in my life. The chicken, seafood, and fish was also really good. I even tried chicken bones (somewhat crunchy) and beef tongue.

The eight of us sat around a table with our shoes off. The table had three holes for the bbq, two of which we then used to roast mainly pieces of meat, fish, and seafood, with an occasional mushroom. Different raw meats were served on plates cut into pieces that can be eaten easily with sticks. Each of us could take whatever they liked and put it on a roast. When we had finished several piles of meat, the Chinese guys talked to the waiter to order some other stuff, which I didn’t understand and assumed to be the dessert. So I asked what they had ordered. The answer was “more meat”, which I assumed to be a joke. It wasn’t. More meat! There was dessert, eventually, though I don’t remember much of it. Some ice-cream with smileys on it, I think.

Ordering drinks, by the way, is rather optional in Taiwan (unlike European restaurants, or at least Austrian, where not ordering a drink is close to be considered rude). We did order a couple of beers though, but it was perfectly fine to share them. Liquid is often served without a charge in form of a cold or hot soup (bouillon). This is the case in the Chinese eating culture, but I don’t know about the Japanese. In the Japanese restaurant, however, we were served an isothermic bottle with hot chicken soup, which we drank out of small bowls. “Eating soup” is translated into Chinese literally as “drinking soup”, which also reflects the soup’s main purpose of liquid intake.

I can really, really recommend this place and will most likely return. Until then, I’ll be a vegetarian.