The interior of the restaurant was very modern and it wasn't totally packed and noisy which was a nice change and a pleasant surprise considering it was Sunday afternoon.
We sat down at a booth near the back of the restaurant and the server proceeded to turn on the hot plates built into the tables. Next some tongs full of sliced onions was added to the skillet to start producing that nice sateed onion smell that gets ur belly ready for food.
The food started with a delicous fresh salad with a light japanese soy/miding dressing (really tasty). While the food started to arrive we headed over to the drink station where they had all-you-can-drink tea/pop/juices/slushies. I started off with grape juice because the yakult slush was sold out (I later moved on to root beer slush per the recommendation from Ann).
After we sat back down Ali took the reigns of our hot pot/plate (I can't figure out what to call it) and added some soy sauce based broth and water. Next was some delicious and tender strips of beef. This beef is was probably the best beef I've ever had at a sukiyaki place. It was totally melt-in-your-mouth grade. I can see why Alex liked it so much on his visit several months ago.
There were many other different veggies/food that went into the sukiyaki as well. I knew most of them (cabbage, lettuce, tofu, 2 types of mushrooms, corn, eggplant, etc.) and probably the newest thing for me was the Taroyam combination vegetable. It looked like a yam, but it was dark purple. Almost as dark as a beet. But when eaten, it tastes like it has a hint of Taro. I love these vegetable experiments :D Keep up the good work Taiwanese farmers!
I had Ann sit beside me because I wanted to practice her english with me so we sat beside each other and chatted almost the whole time. Her english I think is decent and with more practice she will definitely be much more fluent. She has a big english writing test coming up on Sept 16th, but after that her and I are going to go on a day trip somewhere. My benefit is I get to see somewhere cool with a personal tour guide and she gets some english practice in! Win win :D
I'm not sure how much I ended up eating because Niki and Ali kept cooking the food and putting stuff on my plate whenever it became empty (thanks guys!) but man near the end I was getting so stuffed. And I was a bit scared of getting indigestion so I really slowed down at the end because I was pleasantly full and didn't want to ruin the feeling!
Desert was served and it was simple but really tasty. The desert was green tea ice cream in a little bowl with.. I think were a few sweet red beans on the side. This is Taiwan's favorite ice cream flavour according to Ann. But before we dig into the icecream, there is a plate with thinly sliced lime's on it and a little mound of raw sugar in the middle. How it works is you pick up a lime slice, cover it with sugar, and then eat the whole thing (peel included). The purpose of this (besides being really tasty) is to cleanse the oil off of your palette from the sukiyaki. This reminded me of the "English Breakfast" shot that I had with Marcus and Dru and a bunch of Vienna locals back in 2006 so I recalled the story for everyone.
When it came time to pay the bill Ali's Dad said it was his treat and that it was payment for my english tutoring for Ann (and whoever else was listening). Nearly every time we see each other and we start to depart they say "Thank you master!" (as in English Language Master) and do a mini bow to me. Haha :$ Makes me feel so special and not worthy cause they know 2 languages! And I only know 1 :) They're great for that though. They really know how to make a foreigner feel like a family member :) Thank you Ali's family and Ann and Niki and Ali for the great time today!
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