"For the second instalment of the "Michelin Star Search in Taipei", my friends and I chose to go to Tairroir, which has become a hot spot recently. We prepared well in advance and managed to grab a table on the official website 30 days ago. The restaurant has been awarded one Michelin star since 2018, and was upgraded to two stars the following year. It is also one of the 1,000 best restaurants in the world by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and has achieved such good results in less than two to three years since it opened. Chef Ho Shun Kai is a native Taiwanese, having worked at the Singapore branch of the renowned 3-star Michelin starred Guy Savoy.
”Tairroir is a French-Chinese fusion dish, its English name Tairroir means a combination of ”Taiwan” and ”Terroir" (terroir), a concept from France, and it is a French dish with the soul of Taiwan.
Located in Zhongshan, a neighbourhood full of starred restaurants, this French restaurant has a modern and simple layout with few seats. The open kitchen allows you to see the workings of the kitchen through the large glass.
The chef revises the menu once every three months, and the Seasonal Menu for the dinner that day consisted of 11 dishes, priced at NTW4280+. The names of the dishes are all thoughtfully composed of harmonies, showing the chef's sense of humour.
"The Bread of the National Master".
After ordering the drinks, we were served with the Red Quinoa Cinnamon Nut Bread, a special bread made by Taiwan's national treasure baker Wu Baochun for Tairroir, as well as the Little French Stick Bread and the very special Tofu Milk Flavoured Bread. The butter here is also made in-house and has a rich, creamy flavour. The breads are coated with butter or sprinkled with salt to enhance the flavour, and the taste is amazing.
The Fish is Born from the Same Root
The green one is a pickled Buddha's hand melon with dragon pearl cabbage, the black one on top is caviar from Taichung, some clams and slices of wood fish are placed next to it, and the orange sweet and sour broth is a citrus sauce. The overall freshness and flavour of the dish makes it a good appetiser.
Oyster Omelette.
Oyster omelette is not as simple as the traditional Taiwanese oyster omelette, and it looks completely different. This dish is made by frying oysters from Penghu until they are medium-rare and served with duck egg mousse and baby bok choy, with a layer of green shells made from chives on the outside, and duck egg crunch on the top, and topped with teriyaki sauce to add a layer of flavour.
"Truffle Barley
It is a reinterpretation of the traditional Shikigami Soup with Karibao, Job's tears soup garnished with black truffle and served with the chef's homemade pickled cabbage stuffed brioche. The truffle flavour is a little stronger than the barley. The soup and the salty and sour brioche were a perfect match, and overall it was a good meal.
Solitaire (Law of the Sea)
Based on the concept of Italian Tomato and Cheese Salad, it is a very healthy and refreshing salad using a variety of genetically unaltered Taiwanese tomatoes, some ricotta cheese on the side, basil flavoured sorbet on the green side, and more unusual kombucha jellies, lotus roots, olives and so on.
"Jade is not common.
The white flower in the middle is made of white radish. The concept and practice of the Taiwanese soup "Three Generations of Radish Chicken Soup" is used to make the stewed pork ribs soup. This soup is made with three different kinds of carrots: fresh carrots, dried carrots, aged carrots and preserved vegetables for seasoning, as well as Zhaoqing microbrews for flavour extraction, and a creamy cream of rotting skin and hand-torn spare ribs at the bottom to enhance the texture and taste, full of the traditional flavours of Taiwan.
"Duck with Taro Paste
This is one of the restaurant's signature dishes. The lid of the bowl is filled with a few ingredients, namely: duck bacon, fried taro, sakura shrimp and diced spring onion. When the lid was removed, it was filled with my favourite mashed taro and half-cooked spaetzle egg, then drizzled with liverwurst oil. To eat, pour all the ingredients on the lid into a bowl and eat with the egg and mashed taro, but do not mix the egg with the sauce. The mashed taro was creamy and smooth, but I felt it lacked a bit of taro flavour.
"Bob's Not Talking
I thought the dumplings were the usual chicken wing dumplings, but one bite revealed that the dumplings were stuffed with braised abalone in a slightly spicy Argentinean green sauce. The juicy chicken wings were very tender, and the abalone was so soft and chewy that it left a lasting flavour in the mouth.
The restaurant provides greaseproof paper for customers to eat with their hands. The waitress explained that this is also one of the specialities of Tairroir, the chef hopes that guests can "experience" the ingredients with their hands, and it dawned on me, no wonder we ate many of the dishes with our hands.
"The Techno Ducks
This is the grand finale of the day and it looks like a duck perched in a bird's nest. The explosive Pingtung Peking Duck is stuffed with duck leg meat, jujube and thyme between the meat and the skin in the form of sausage. When the duck is roasted, the whole body is covered with rosary flowers. The bones from the duck are simmered with the duck breast and other vegetables for seven to eight hours before the duck is stuffed to make another very sweet and refreshing duck soup.
After the photo is taken, the restaurant will cut the duck into slices and distribute them to everyone. The top layer was filled with duck leg sausage, the bottom layer was red duck meat grilled to medium rare, and then there were side dishes such as cabbage sprouts and Japanese Honjiki mushrooms. The duck meat was very tender, the skin was crispy, the sausage part was also tender and springy, and there was a distinct aroma of thyme and roselle. Ordering some sour roselle sauce together with the sauce made from the duck meat made it even more flavourful, and it was worthy of being the restaurant's signature dish!
Bandung Bansi
This dish is characterised by the use of both Eastern and Western cooking techniques and ingredients to make this grouper. The grouper was first steamed to bring out the flavour of the fish, then topped with a sprinkling of winter vegetables, served with squid feet and green beans, and a celery-based combustion sauce on the side. I thought the fish had a good texture, but the flavour was a bit bland compared to what I had before.
Dessert After Dinner
The Berry Wakame Ume-flavoured meringue frosting is served with a tart, hawthorn-flavoured sorbet and topped with blueberry crunch.
Then the two desserts of choice were "South of Coriander" and "Ecru Fenghuang Puff Pastry".
South of the Coriander Rhombus is a dessert made of rhombus and coriander. Crisps, cakes and ice-cream made from lozenges, with coriander whipped into a foam on the side, served with Earl Grey tea and a jelly made from French liqueur - a bit like eating Love Jade.
A variation on the traditional phoenix pastry, we heard that this dessert is presented differently each time we come to eat it. The waitress advised us to choose this dessert if we don't like alcohol or coriander. This time, the presentation was a salted egg yolk biscuit sandwiched between chocolate and bitter tea oil flavoured cream, with pineapple sorbet and topped with a pineapple crisp.
As in a traditional French restaurant, a small dessert and coffee are served to finish off the meal.
Address: 6F, No. 299, Lequn 3rd Road, Zhongshan District, Taipei 10462, Taiwan
Opening hours: Monday to Sunday 12:00-14:30, 18:30-22:30, closed on Tuesdays
Telephone: +886 2 8501 5500
Website:https://www.tairroir.com
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