Post-cancer journals: Where I eat my sadness, and swallow my loneliness in Taipei
MAY 27 — When you begin to understand that endings and outcomes are out of your control, that only your effort is what you can determine, life, and decisions, get easier.
I have found that just letting my nose, and not Google, decide where to eat serves me pretty well when I’m in a strange place.
A café opened in a PJ mall and I rightly predicted it wouldn’t last long.
It served coffee and pastries but when I walked past it, I could smell neither.
A place I used to frequent for its bamboo noodles is now off my list because the store is now poorly-ventilated, the air stale, the ghosts of old smells lingering and what used to be a bustling eatery is now nearly empty at lunch time.
How awful it must be to be on holiday and have a cold.
Scent, as much as taste, determines the level of enjoyment when it comes to food and in Taiwan I followed scents but also sounds, the crackle of scallion pancakes on griddles, the busy clatter of rice bowls and spoons and where there is no sound, nor good scent, there can be no good food.
Yu Chocolatier was what I’d hoped it would be — a chocolate and dessert place good enough to make me call an Uber.
I am cursed (some say blessed) with a rich person’s palate in a peasant’s body because I can taste the difference between a cheap or fake chocolate and ones that would make me cry as I hand over my card.
Yu’s specialty is bonbons, the chocolatier’s founder being so enamoured with chocolate in his teens that he tried, as a teen, to learn the secrets of its making at home.
What bonbons would you like, they asked.
Surprise me, I said.
They did. I am glad I don’t live in the city; in a few weeks I would soon resemble a bonbon.
With chocolate you need to get the ratios right, with bonbons you need the chocolate to be at just the right level of sweetness to counter the bitterness of cocoa.
You don’t want the chocolate to be overly thick, nor too insubstantial. It needs to last just long enough so you can savour the notes as you would a good wine, with a taste that would linger just enough to be memorable.
I also ordered the dessert of the day. It was a decadent, gorgeous creation with a fancy name I cannot remember but I do recall that it was pleasing and as lovely to taste, though not as lovely as the bonbons, as it looked.
I only visited one night market when I was in Taipei as I didn’t think my legs would be able to endure them for too long.
Yet I forgot how sore my legs were and I walked miles before I realised my endurance was spent, hunting down food like it was prey.
I walked through markets, through quiet streets, up stairs, past rows and rows of shoplots, never stopping until I found something worth stopping for.
By chance I happened on this stall that had won a Michelin star at Ningxia Night Market the 方家雞肉飯 (Fang Jia shredded chicken on rice).
It doesn’t look like much. A small quarter-cup of rice, with shredded chicken drenched in sauce on top, with little else.
Yet when I sat there, in the compianable presence of locals, it felt like the best thing on earth to have.
It’s so easy to eat, the warm, savoury combination of soft meat with rice just what you could appreciate after a long day though the uncle next to me ordered a couple of other dishes to have along with his bowl.
After finishing my bowl, the air felt less cold, my bones less grating and I could forget, for a while, the melancholy that dogged me in my final months of treatment.
Warm food in my belly on a cool night out, the simplest of pleasures.
The first place I would probably go to when or if I go back to Taipei is however NAKA Taipei, a lovely little coffee place with interesting combinations.
It is my only regret that I could not taste all the coffee on its menu because one needs to sleep after all.
The lychee long black at NAKA is an unlikely delight of a pairing; I was expecting something odd or cloying, but no, it’s like they made a long black with the spirit of a lychee drink, refreshing on even the warmest of days.
I also tried their tiramisu latte, which is also another surprising combination of dessert and coffee, each mouthful like drinking liquid tiramisu but in the best possible way.
They say food is best shared with company but sometimes, if the food is good enough, it is enough to keep your heart warm even when there is just one seat at the table.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
المصدر: Malay Mail
