Aurthur James Baron
Photographer Vision
Editor Julien Huang
Aside from dedicated Buddhist establishments, vegan eateries were once quite limited in Taipei, but a proliferation of options has emerged in recent years. Here are two newer additions to the roster that foreground aesthetics, fine dining, and flavorful ingredients to create an experience that goes beyond just vegan cuisine.
The first restaurant is located in Songshan District’s Minsheng Community（民生社區）, a quiet neighborhood known for tree-shaded streets and stylish businesses, most notably boutiques, cafés, and restaurants nestled in the suburban-style verdure.
Clavius
Not far south of Taipei Songshan Airport, on Fujin Street, lies Clavius. In front, a wabi-sabi-style garden with a water fountain and a hand-washing basin filled with translucent beads lets patrons engage in a pre-dining cleansing ritual.
Three paths – grass, shingle, and pebbledash – snake toward the restaurant entrance on one side, while a creek-like waterway resembling Taiwan’s old countryside irrigation channels connects to a pond on the other. In terms of space management and color scheme, the interior has a more Mediterranean feel.
“Balance is our core value and concept,” says proprietor Robin Lee (李怡明). For this reason, he says, the restaurant does not focus on creating a specifically vegan experience, but on delivering healthy and flavorful food for all diners.
Dishes such as the Warm Salad with Smoked Paprika Sauce exemplify this philosophy: red onions, slowly baked to remove sharpness; smoky red and yellow bell peppers; and baby corn, topped off with arugula leaves drizzled in balsamic vinegar and lemon-infused olive oil. For more piquancy, try the Homemade Spicy Sauce and Beyond Meat Patties Pasta, a noodle dish featuring Beyond Meat mince, which is topped with wiry strands of dried, shredded chili. An interesting touch for the Mushroom and Yellow Lentils Green Curry Risotto is the use of shishito peppers – a gentle capsicum commonly found in Taiwan’s markets – which gives the rice its color and relative mildness.
One especially imaginative dish is the Pan-Seared King Oyster Mushrooms with Five Flavors, fashioned into scallops, each topped with an individual flavoring, among these vegan mayonnaise and carrot, mentaiko, and vinegar, and presented on a of guoba-style scorched crispy rice. The waitstaff recommends eating the mushrooms in clockwise order, starting with the mildest flavor, accompanied by a glass of red wine.
Clavius 雲川水月
🚩120, Fujin St., Songshan Dist.
📞(02) 2514-0356
🔗instagram.com/clavius_taiwan
🔗Mon-Sun 11:30am-10:00pm
Our second restaurant is a refined vegetarian operation situated along an alley off Zhongxiao East Road, one of Taipei’s busiest thoroughfares.
Foldie
“Everything here is twisted a bit,” says Andy Chu.（朱安）
For any diners apprehensive about a potentially bizarre gastronomical experience, fear not: the twisting in question refers to surprising and often delightful tweaks to Taiwanese classics and Western-style dishes alike. Chu, who ran a fine-dining restaurant in New York for three years, cites the Cold Angel Hair Pasta with Sesame Dressing and Chili Crunch Paste Oil as an example.
Despite the fancy name of the dish, which is redolent of haute cuisine, this is an imaginative riff on liang mian (cold noodles, 涼麵), a simple Taiwan street food. Noting that the local variety rarely varies from a set script, Chu says he aims to quite literally bring something new to the table. While the julienned cucumber is a standard liang mian garnishing, in place of the strips of processed ham that sometimes accompany the dish, slivers of beer-infused jello make for an intriguing substitute. Providing the perfect counterpoint to the chewiness of this dish/offering is the crunchy homemade chili sauce.
Another menu item that’s been given a thorough reworking is that most iconic – not to mention malodorous – night-market classic, stinky tofu. In the Truffle Flavor Stinky Tofu French Toast, the deep-fried cubes are reimagined as breadcrumb-coated triangles, and feature a combination of truffle-flavored soy protein with the fermented variety. The hefty chunks are best divided and dipped in the accompanying gooey peanut condiment, which provides the ideal complement to the crumbly exterior.
However, perhaps the selection with the most mouthwatering flavor on the menu is a wholly original creation – the Oyster Mushroom Tempura Salad, which includes avocado and contains yuzu juice, giving it a tangy twang.
For most of its dishes, Foldie uses bean and mycoprotein as a substitute for the original meat and fish components. However, Chu emphasizes that the aim is not to just “mimic” the taste and texture of popular meat dishes but to recreate the culinary experiences. He uses the example of the wonton. “A wonton should have a slippery mouthfeel,” he says. “As long as I can get that final purpose, it doesn’t matter how it’s achieved.”
It’s not just the dishes that reflect this attitude. The restaurant’s name is a portmanteau of “foodie” and “fold” – the latter term reflecting the positive “twists” in the approach to the culinary process. Likewise, the restaurant interior, which is dimly lit and juxtaposes warehouse elements with bucolic motifs to indicate blend boundaries. “I call it ‘misty forest,'” says Chu, “because in the darker parts of the wood, you can’t clearly see all the outlines.”
Foldie
🚩11, Aly. 7, Ln. 205, Sec. 4, Zhongxiao E. Rd., Daan Dist.
🔗instagram.com/foldietaipei
🕝11:30pm-3:30pm, 5:00pm-9:45pm
This article is reproduced under the permission of TAIPEI. Original content can be found on the website of Taipei Travel Net (www.travel.taipei/en).
