TAIWAN CAFE
As I had mentioned in the previous post, Tom and I headed down to Chinatown on Tuesday night. I needed a break from the routine of cooking at home and I was also craving duck. (If you remember from last year, I have duck cravings when it gets cold. But I have it more under control this year.) We were lucky enough to land a parking space really quickly and headed over to Hong Kong Cafe. Unfortunately, as we opened the door, we were told that they were closing. (Apparently they were closing early for some Chinese New Year thing (which I really don't get cause Chinese New Year is on February 18th this year.) So I had to make a quick decision on where to go instead, and we headed over to the often reliable Taiwan Cafe.

It'd been almost a year since I'd been to Taiwan Cafe and my stupid duck craving clouded my judgment. I really should've stuck with the more traditional Taiwanese dishes, but instead, I ordered a Taiwanese soy sauce duck. Tom ordered everything else, and we shared.

The first dish out was the fish cake.I was hoping for some homemade fish cakes, but these guys were just the frozen kind fried up. Not to say that they tasted bad, but I could've made it at home. Also, they were so greasy that the dipping sauce couldn't adhere to the actual fish cake.Next out and the best dish of the night was some bok choy with shitake mushrooms. It was very fresh and simple.Then came my duck. As I said, under normal circumstances I never would've ordered it, but I needed to satisfy my craving! Unfortunately this was not a dish that customers order very often, so i t was clear that the duck had been refrigerated and just microwaved before they served it. So the meet was tough and not very flavorful and really very disappointing. I figured I'd take it home and turn it into duck porridge. Lastly, Tom had ordered a deep fried soft shell crab. It wasn't too bad, but the crab had clearly been frozen. (Soft shell crab season is in the summer after all). The freezing had caused the crabs to acquire this soft, gummy texture, which wasn't helped by the sheer amount of batter that coated it. Overall, dinner at Taiwan Cafe wasn't fantastic. But I've eaten here before and know it can be better. We just didn't do a very good job at ordering. It's kinda like at Victoria's. They have great authentic Chinese food, but if you ever ordered the Chinese American dishes, they taste awful. I'll do a better job ordering next time, but then again, hopefully Hong Kong Cafe will actually be open next time.

Just as a side bar, after we headed back to the car, I noticed that there are a bunch of "Resident Parking from 6pm-8am" signs up that had never been there before. As we headed back home, I noticed that they were all over Chinatown. So just as a warning, it'll be even harder to find parking in Chinatown. Luckily, we didn't get a ticket, but I'll have to be more aware next time.