Check out the mouth-watering offerings and curious bicultural idiosyncrasies in Taipei’s little slice of Jakarta.
The News Lens
Date: 2017/05/11
By: James Baron
Aside from their banality, clichés such as “hidden gem” and “best-kept secret,” are
powerd by Cyberon
nonsensical descriptors. Unless you’re the sole customer on opening day, someone knows about that restaurant. In Taipei where almost every dank back-alley eatery has been blogged, there are no secrets.
But there still are places that get little, if any, press. The Indonesian food street that comes to life each weekend on Beiping West Road, close to Taipei Main Station, is one of these. Segregated from the clamor of the main drag by railings, steps and a line of trees, it’s literally in the shadows in the Taiming neighborhood (泰明) of Zhongzheng District (中正區).
Around the corner in an alley off Zhongxiao West Rd., there’s Sinar Terang, a small restaurant that is slightly better-known, though outside my single-digit coterie of familiars, I’ve yet to see any Westerners there in the four or five years I’ve being going. Remarkably, I’ve come across only one, rather bewildered-looking, Taiwanese couple in all that time, too. [FULL STORY]
