Osaka Grill Meat (大阪燒肉) in Taipei

When traveling in Japan, many tourists must eat ramen and sashimi. Besides these two popular dishes, the other one of favorites is the grill meat (燒肉) of Japan. However, after coming back to Taiwan, I can’t help but keep missing the awesome taste of the grill meat in Japan, so I try hard to find a good restaurant of traditional Japanese grill meat in Taipei.

 

Osaka Grill Meat

After a Osaka grill meat (大阪燒肉) restaurant, which have more than 20 branches in Japan, started to operate in Taipei, my dream of eating traditional Japanese grill meat finally came true. Many people will think Osaka Grill Meat is from Osaka. In fact, the reason why Osaka Grill Meat used the Osaka, a city in Japan, in its name is just because the boss of Osaka Grill Meat was born in Osaka.

In Osaka Grill Meat, they do their best to keep the restaurant as same as the ones in Japan. For example, they also write their menu in Japanese. Moreover the way they souse the ingredients are almost the same with the ways in Japan. The common grill meat will use the fire which is right below the barbecue grill; on the contrary, Osaka Grill Meat use the fire which comes out from the two side of the barbecue grill. With using this special way to heat the meat, the meat will be tenderer and juicier after being grilled. If you still worry about that you are not good at grilling the meat, you should not be hesitate and ask the waiters for help!

 

The Menu of Osaka Grill Meat

At the beginning, the waiter will give the costumers some appetizers, like the cucumbers with spicy sauce, spicy pickled vegetables, and the potato salad. After the appetizers, it is time to eat some grill meat. In Osaka Grill Meat, the ingredients, except for the vegetables, are all about cattle. Therefore, if you are a beef-lover just as me, you must enjoy the time in Osaka Grill Meat. The pictures below are the ingredients in Osaka Grill Meat. In addition to the photos, I will also share the tastes of these food!

The cucumber with spicy sauce

 

Potato Salad

1. Ox tongue

The ox tongue slices will be ticker than the beef slices, so the grilled ox tongues will taste crispier than beef slices. I recommend to eat the ox tongue with chopped green onions.

2. Cattle rib meat

As the in Osaka Grill Meat have abundant greasy on its surface, it becomes very delicious after grilling for couple minutes. You don't need to any seasoning, and you can feel the origin taste of the beef. 

3.Sushi with grilled beef slice

They will grill the beef for couple seconds to let the greasy of the beef comes out, and then use the grilled beef slice and mustard to make a sushi.

4.Beef slice with sea urchin

They put the grilled beef slice and sea urchin on the laver, purple perilla, and the chopped green onion. The tastes with all the ingredients will mix up after you put it in your mouth. 

5.Raw beef with egg yolk

Stir the raw beef with the row egg yolk, and then the egg yolk will make the beef taste tender. Besides, you can also add some lemonade in it to reduce the gamey taste of raw beef.  

Last but not least, the location of Osaka Grill Meat is just around the Chung Xian Fu Xing MRT station, which is quite easy to get. As a result, next time, if you are missing the traditional Japanese grill meat when you have no time to travel in Japan, you can give Osaka Grill Meat a try. The nice services, fresh ingredients, and the Japanese cooking way in there must give you a happy and unforgettable meal time. 

A Rou Ting(鵝肉亭) in Minhsiung

In my family, it is a hard task to invite my grandparents to have a meal in a restaurant, since they always think eating in a restaurant costs too much and eating the food prepared by ourselves is healthier and more delicious. However there is a restaurant which locates in Minhsiung can attract my grandparents for more than ten years. This restaurant is A Rou Ting (鵝肉亭) , which means “a stand selling goose ” in Chinese.

A Rou Ting

The fresh goose in A Rou Ting

In A Rou Ting, the most popular ingredient is definitely goose meat. They use mature goose to cook their dishes. The meat of mature goose are juicier and has good texture. In addition, the way they cook their gooses is also the key factor of why the goose in A Rou Ting is much more delicious than other restaurants in Minhsiung. The way A Rou Ting cook the gooses is putting the whole goose in the boiling water for couple minutes. Maybe some people will think this way seems to be too simple and become curious about what the magic power in this cooking way?

Goose with gingers 

 This simple way can easily maintain the water of the goose so that the goose meat will taste tender and juicy. Once, when my family and I visited another restaurant which also provides goose, we thought the goose meat in that restaurant is so dry and bland. Hence, we decided to ask the cook their cooking way, and we got the answer that they steamed the goose. Due to the long process of steam the goose, the water inside the goose will keep losing. At the end, the goose will become so hard and tasteless. As a result, choosing the right way to cook the gooses is a quite important issue for the cooks.

Tender goose slice and special sauce

Besides the goose meat, in A Rou Ting, they also have many special sides. For example, the goose gizzards, goose livers, goose intestines and goose blood cake. The ingredients of those sides are all washed carefully, so they are not scary at all. Some people may think these sides will taste gamey. In my personal opinion, I think they are not. Furthermore, A Rou Ting also provides a special sauce, which taste a little bit spicy and sweet to let customers eat with the sides and goose. In addition to the special sauce, they use bean sprouts and gingers to reduce the gamey smells of the dishes.

Goose gizzards

Goose blood rice cake

Vegetable sides 

Last but not least, the prices in A Rou Ting are very fair! The whole goose in A Rou Ting only costs 900 NT dollars, but the whole goose in Taipei costs more than 1500 NT dollars. Thus, every time when my family visit A Rou Ting, we can get very satisfied and only spend less than two thousand dollars. No wonder, every time when my mom invites my grandparents to have a meal with us, my grandfather is always willing to spend one and half hours driving to Minhsiung to taste the fresh goose!

There are always many people in A Rou Ting

Yi-He Sour Cabbage Hot Pot (頤和酸菜館) in Kaohsiung

The weather in Taiwan becomes frozen suddenly during this week.  People start to take out their jackets, coats, and scarfs. When the temperature keeps declining, people are easier to get hungry and tend to eat more food to keep their bodies warm. However, what kind of food is the most popular one during the winter? Ice cream will definitely be kicked out from the list, while the hot pot will become people’s new favorite in Taiwan.

Hot pot is our good friend in winter

Hot pots have many different kinds of savors, for example, spicy hot pot, Cantonese hot pot, bouillon hot pot, and vegetable stock hot pot, and so on. Among all of the savors, my favorite is sour cabbage hot pot. In sour cabbage hot pot, people only put pork slice rather than other kinds of meat. There is a sour cabbage hot pot restaurant in Fengshan, Kaohsiung, which is called Yi-He (頤和). This restaurant doesn’t locate in a noticeable place and the decorations inside is mediocre. Nonetheless, the soup and ingredients of Yi-He are all excellent!

Yi-He sour cabbage hot pot restaurant

 In Yi-He, the cook will put some ingredients in the pork stock in advance, including, sour cabbages, squid fish balls, sausages, dried bean curd, and duck blood as the base of the hot pot. In these ingredients, my family and I like the squid fish balls, sausages and duck blood the most. The squid fish balls in Yi-He have a lots of squid chunks inside. Due to these chunks, the squid fish balls will stay chewy after cooking in the hot soup for a while. In addition, those squids are all from Penghu where is popular with its fresh seafood. On the other hand, the cook in Yi-He use chicken to make the sausage rather than pork. Hence, the taste of the chicken sausages in Yi-He are quite different from the sausages we eat during our daily lives. Last but not least, the duck blood is also an important ingredients of the hot pot. Especially, when the duck blood is cooked with sour cabbage, the duck blood will taste kind of sour rather than gamy. 

Food in Yi-He 

Besides the ingredients I mentioned in last paragraph, the pork slice also plays the main role in the sour cabbage hot pot. First, Yi-He will cut the pork in very thin slices so that when customers put the slices into the boiled soup, the slices will be cooked thoroughly in few seconds. This process can prevent the pork slices from being over cooked. Second, they also choose the pork with abundant grease to make the pork have better texture after cooking. Moreover, Yi-He provides the sour sauce which is made by leek sprouts under a thin layer of the soil to let the customers eat with the pork slices.

The pork slices

The sour sauce

When eating the hot pot, we still need some staples and vegetables in order to have a balance diet. In Yi-He, the staple they provide is bean thread; and the vegetables will change according to the season, as a result, they can make sure all the vegetables are fresh. After the meal, even though Yi-He doesn’t provide any dessert, they will give each customer a glass of juice which is made by dark plum fruits. The plum fruits will urge our stomachs and bowels to digest the food we eat.

In conclusion, next time when you travel in Kaohsiung, you can go to Yi-He to enjoy a delicious hot pot which contains multiple ingredients, fresh pork slices and vegetables. However, the business hours of Yi-He sometimes will change a little bit; hence, you have better to make a phone call before heading for Yi-He. I’m sure the Yi –He sour cabbage hot pot will be a nice choice for you in this frozen winter! 

Yi-He sour cabbage hot pot