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Tainan's A-Sha Sends a Chef to L.A.

Some of my favorite restaurants are so far away that I can only dream about eating in them again.

Like A-Sha. To get there I flew to Taipei and took a high-speed train to Tainan City in southern Taiwan. But A-Sha was worth the trip. You can read about that extraordinary meal by clicking here.

Recently, I ate A-Sha's food again. Not in a dream and this time not in Taiwan but in El Monte, only a few miles from home. 

Chef Chien-Hao Wu from A-Sha (at the top) flew in to prepare a 10-course lunch and give two cooking demonstrations at the Culture Center of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Los Angeles. 

Again, the food was extraordinary, although Chef Wu apologized for not being able to bring the ingredients from Taiwan. One exception was a bottle of vinegar (above) that he couldn't duplicate here.

We sat in typical Chinese fashion at tables of 10, sharing platters of food. First came a cold plate (above) that included chicken, mushrooms, cucumbers, fresh bamboo shoots, and sweet-tasting nuggets of ground pork and shrimp. 

Alongside this was a famous Tainan delicacy, charcoal-grilled mullet roe (above).

The crab seafood soup that came next was thick and slightly sweet (above). Another soup combined mushrooms and pig tendon.  

At A-Sha in Tainan, sticky rice is topped with crab. Click the link to my story about lunch there to see what that looks like. Here, Chef Wu substituted dried scallops and placed thick, chewy mushrooms on either side of the rice (above).    

The squid in this stir-fry had been cut so that at first glance it looked like baby corn. Sliced garlic and shredded vegetables came with it in a slightly sweet sauce (above). 

Braised cauliflower and red and yellow sweet peppers were followed by steamed fish with an ingredient that I hadn't seen before--preserved Taiwan seeds, sometimes called tree seeds (above).

Tiny and round, they added sharp sweet and salty contrast to the mild fish. The label (you can buy them here) says they're prepared with soy sauce, salt and sugar.  

In the cooking demo, Chef Wu fried yellow croaker, and we helped ourselves to servings of that from his work table (above).

A bowl of Asian fruits for dessert included cubes of egg, cut to resemble tofu (above).

Fresh fruits were accompanied by sweet and salty sour plum powder for dipping, the way they are served at A-Sha in Tainan.

This tangy seasoning, available in Chinese markets here, perks up the flavor of the fruit just as Mexican fruit stands add lime juice and chili powder to cut fruits and vegetables.

The lunch was the highlight of a program of awards to top quality Taiwanese restaurants in the Los Angeles area and Orange County. Click here to see the list.

Yummy Yum Cha in Tainan

A perfect meal doesn't have to be elaborate. It can be as simple as two small bites, delicious little morsels that surprise with their excellence, as happened one evening in Taiwan.

If you've eaten much dim sum, you know that a lot of it is pretty ordinary, and so I didn't expect much when I ordered a couple of plates at Evergarden, a restaurant in Tainan in southern Taiwan.

The chances of getting anything good were extra slim, because it was night, when you're as likely to run into sunbathers as dim sum.

These Chinese small plates are daytime food, from breakfast to lunch. But Evergarden lets you eat them until it closes at 9 p.m.  It's a yum cha place, which means you get the whole meal there, including tea. The dumplings themselves are dim sum. 

With no more expertise than if I had stabbed at the menu, I picked out two dishes. They were vegetable-filled steamed dumplings (in the bamboo container) and pan-fried shrimp and squid cakes (at top).  

By chance, I had ordered a perfect meal. Both dishes surprised me with their goodness.

The steamed vegetable dumplings were so light I could make out the greenery through the sheer wrappers.

The fried cakes weren't doughy and stiff, as I had feared.  They were delicate bundles of seafood in thin wrappers, steamed, then lightly browned on the bottom.

No catsup and mustard with these, like in Chinatown at home. The dip was a thick sweet chile sauce.

Two winners, so why not try for one more? For dessert I ordered milk jelly with mango sauce.

The fragile pudding, covered with sweet mango puree, came in an earthenware bowl, when what it deserved was fine Chinese porcelain.  

The orchid garnish wasn't a surprise, because I was down south to visit the orchid plantations that export overseas, supplying the orchid plants on sale at my neighborhood market. A touch of the exotic and the familiar at the same time.

Evergarden Chinese restaurant in the Evergreen Plaza Hotel, 1, Lane 336, Sec. 3, Chung-Hua East Road, East District, Tainan City, Tainan, Taiwan.

There's a Flower on My Chicken

What's that rose petal doing on my chicken?

In a week of eating Chinese food in Taipei, it's the only floral decoration that appeared on my plate.

The rosy petal wasn't a chef's cute garnish but a nod to Taipei's mammoth Flora Exposition, which opened in November and continues into April.

The dish, broiled chicken with rose sauce, appeared at a lunch prepared by the Ambassador Hotel's Szechuan Court restaurant to celebrate the expo.

Even the appetizers were floral. Picture a slice of lotus root with rice stuffed into the holes so that it would resemble a sausage (right). Or a flower hidden in a rolled slice of cucumber.

Then came abalone soup with chicken, wolf berries and dried chrysanthemums. Lavender appeared next, in a delicate sauce for shrimp. 

Even the dessert got into the act. It was a clear sweet soup that contained jujubes (Asian red dates), lily buds and lotus nuts.

But before that, the restaurant switched to two non-floral dishes, Pei Ping duck and a small whole fried yellow fish garnished with crisp fried perilla leaves (shiso). Both were so good they almost stole the show, and the fish at least offered something from the garden.  

In the West, Szechuan food is usually fiery, but these dishes were not, possibly to avoid overpowering tender  floral flavors. The red chiles that appeared alongside the shrimp were there for decoration, not to assault the tastebuds of the guests.  

Szechuan Court Restaurant, Ambassador Hotel, 12F Chung Shan North Road, Section 1, Taipei, Taiwan.

Finding Din Tai Fung in Taipei

Walking into Din Tai Fung was unreal, euphoric. And unexpected.  I had never thought of going there until I was led in the door to a friend's table.

I'm not talking about Din Tai Fung in Arcadia, near Los Angeles. But Din Tai Fung in Taipei, where this mother of all dumpling houses originated.

It is so legendary that when the Arcadia branch opened, the media went into a frenzy, and the lines to get in were monstrous. 

It's still like that in Taipei. The branch I went to had a line out the door, a mad clamor inside, servers whisking stacks of bamboo steamers back and forth. Crowded tables. A steaming hubbub of food.

Service is fast, and there's no lingering, just serious eating, and then you leave.

I wasn't in the original restaurant but in the second Din Tai Fung. This didn't make any difference, because food for all the outlets in Taipei comes from a central kitchen, I'm told. 

First to arrive was a steamer basket of the restaurant's most famous dumpling, xiao long bao.

These soup dumplings spurted into my teacup in Arcadia, but seemed less loaded with soup here. Perhaps I was just eating them more efficiently.

How does soup get into a dumpling?  Stock so rich that it congeals into aspic is the secret. A spoonful of that goes into the wrapper along with meat. As the dumpling steams, the aspic melts.

Our xiao long bao were filled with pork. There's another, French-inspired version that adds truffle to the pork. The plain pork dumplings are about $6.35 for 10. The truffle xiao long bao are $15 for 5, or $3 each.

A non-stop parade of steamer baskets brought vegetable dumplings with wrappers so thin the green showed through, followed by pork and shrimp dumplings, fluted at the top and steamed on their side. 

Xiao long bao are not fluted. They are round, carefully pleated to the top and steamed upright. 

A style of shui mai that I hadn't seen before had an unusual filling, sticky rice and ground pork. 

The pork was so finely ground that I didn't notice it. Perhaps it only served as seasoning for the rice. The shape was different too, pinched at the waist and ruffled at the top.

We ate cold dishes such as shredded dry bean curd with seaweed, bean sprouts, glass noodles, sesame oil and chile oil; bean curd with fat fresh green beans and deliciously spongy, sweet cubes of bean curd that were red, almost like meat. 

Fried rice appeared too. Then the waitress brought a bowl of beef noodle soup. As quickly as she set it down, she took it away. A mistake, I thought. The soup was meant for another table.  But before long it reappeared, divided into little bowls for each person.

The beef noodle soup that I had eaten at another restaurant in Taipei was dark with soy sauce and seasoned with star anise.

Din Tai Fung's soup wasn't so exotic. It could have passed for American beef stew. The noodles resembled spaghetti.

Our last dish was the restaurant's most famous dessert, dumplings stuffed with sweetened red bean paste, small, simple and all we could eat after such a fast-paced, filling feast.

Din Tai Fung, Zhong Xiao E. Rd. Sec. 4 No. 218, Taipei, Taiwan.  Tel: 886-2-2721-7890.

The North American branch is at 1108 S. Baldwin Ave., Arcadia, CA 91007. Tel: (626) 574-7068.  

Tainan: Food Worth the Trip

 
It's the perfect winter dish, a big stoneware casserole brim full of duck and cabbage in rich broth.

The casserole could be European--the shredded cabbage is like fresh sauerkraut. But other flavors indicate that it is not. You wouldn't find golden needles, black fungus and ginger root in such a dish in France or Germany.

Tasting the casserole requires a journey--to the city of Tainan in southern Taiwan.

It's a specialty of A-Sha restaurant there. A-Sha is famous, but not touristy. The food is homestyle and local, and you'll eat along with Chinese families.

If you are in Taipei,  you can get to Tainan in less than two hours on Taiwan's high speed railway. You could go there, have lunch and come back in a day.

A-sha is definitely worth the journey, and not just for the duck casserole but for an extensive menu of interesting food.

Its seafood dishes are superlative, among them a casserole of glutinous rice topped with crab, crab roe and mushrooms (in the photo below the diners), a sweet and sour eel casserole, a bowlful of beautiful shrimp, and sliced smoked fish to eat as an appetizer.  

A seafood soup that includes fish stomach, crab, fish, daikon and delicate mushrooms is good enough to rival the duck casserole.

Shrimp sausage (at the left in the photo at right) is another specialty. You dip it in Japanese mayo turned pink with seasonings that I couldn't deciper. That's liver sausage  on the right in the bowl.

A-sha isn't fancy. Bottled sour plum juice, cold tea and other drinks were set out on the table, but there was fragrant hot jasmine tea too

Dessert could be fruit. A plate of rose apples, guava, melon and pineapple to dip in salted sugar goes well with A-Sha's rich and varied cuisine.

Or you could have a big bowl of tender white almond jelly combined with  jujubes (Asian red dates), taro, beans and tapioca pearls that have been tinted pink,  a Chinese conglomeration foreign to western tastes, but delicious.

Outside, I noticed a motorcycle bristling with chopsticks. Were they from today's lunch, heading out for cleaning, or a new batch arriving?  I don't know, but the sight was startling.

It's only a short walk from the restaurant to Tian Gong Temple, which was Taiwan's first temple, constructed in 1854.

From there, you can meander along a shopping street to inspect the wares of Chinese bakeries and wonder what appetizing dishes people are eating as they sit at sidewalk tables and chairs so small they could have been designed for a nursery. 

Then back to the depot for the smooth ride to Taipei, with plenty of time left for shopping at the underground mall in the railway station and then dinner.

A-Sha restaurant (sometimes spelled A Xia or Asya), 7 Lane 84, Jhongyi Rd, Sec. 2,Tainan City, Taiwan. 

 

Getting a Real Taste of Taiwan

 
This was the most delicious German-style ham, crusty, juicy, and paired with zesty mustard and sauerkraut.

But it turned up in Taipei, not Germany. Yes, I did eat good Chinese food during a week's stay in Taiwan, but there were other tastes that I didn't expect.

The ham is one of the most popular dishes at Ba Köln, a restaurant on the way to Beitou, a hot springs resort that is known as the Hollywood of Taiwanese movies, because so many were filmed there.

That same restaurant passed around deep dish pizza, stringy with pale cheese.

The lunch buffet, which meandered from one room to another, included sushi and kimchi, along with a sturdy Russian meat stew with carrots and potatoes, beef with bok choy, tempura vegetables, onion rings and many other dishes designed to please anybody from anywhere. 

From the drink dispensers, you could pump out white gourd drink, which I've never seen in Los Angeles. The mellow flavor is similar to pandan.

The most unusual meat dish that I came across was curried ostrich to wrap in lettuce cups--an update of minced pigeon in lettuce cups, which is a Chinese classic.

The ostrich was part of a lunch at Jianshanpi Jiangnan Resort in Tainan County, a pretty place with a lake and gardens.   

And what is this? Mexican pan dulce spread out on a stand at a street market in Taipei? No, it's Chinese bread, but the resemblance is uncanny.

Some of the breads looked just like conchas. A big white bun, lightly glazed with chocolate, was light as air, more delicate than anything from a panadería.

Nearby, Lungshan Temple was full of food, but only for the gods. The offerings, which weighed down a long table, were placed there by the devout seeking help with their wordly issues. 

The scent of incense was strange, overpowering. The burning sticks perfumed prayers to Taoist deities.

Lungshan  is a stop on the MRT. From the temple, it's a short walk to the Hua Xi night market, where you can look at displays of fish heads, have a foot massage, give alms to Buddhist monks and nuns, drop into a seafood restaurant, buy ice cream, fresh medicinal herbs, a jacket or a purse.

Whatever you do, you'll have to dodge the motorcycles that drive right through the crowds.

Subtropical Taiwan produces a lush variety of fruits. Its dragon fruit is better than any I have tasted elsewhere.

I also ate supersweet pineapple, watermelon and  passion fruit on the half shell.

And what could be more tempting, and unusual, than tart-sweet fresh passion fruit seeds mixed with peach yogurt?

At the Taoyuan District Agricultural Improvement Station, I marveled over crisp, juicy, just-picked fuyu persimmons, Asian pears and green guava.

But if you're after seriously sugary sweets, try the chocolate truffles at the Grand Palace Hotel (the lobby is at right).

Or a cheesecake from 85C Bakery Cafe that is silky and light as a cloud.

The 85C chain of coffee shops and bakeries has hundreds of outlets in Taiwan (and one in Irvine, California). Its top drink is sea-salt coffee, sweetened coffee topped with cream whipped with a dash of sea salt.

I didn't taste that, but I did have delicious, foamy, caramel milk tea at the National Palace Museum in Taipei.

Thin strands of caramel crisscross the top of this steamy drink. It's nice to recuperate with after you've spent hours viewing the museum's imperial treasures.

Tea appears  in pastries too, like a green tea loaf cake with sweet whipped cream filling on the breakfast buffet at the Evergreen Plaza Hotel in Tainan.

And I couldn't stop eating  jasmine-flavored tea jelly (right) at Ba Köln, a golden dessert as fragrant as a garden filled with jasmine blossoms.   

Almost everywhere that a tourist might go, tea is set out for tasting, from the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport to Taipei 101, which was the world's tallest building until overtaken by a skyscraper in Dubai.

Oolong, green tea and jasmine-flavored green tea seem to be the most popular, from the displays that I saw.

But I also tasted rose tea and brought home Ten Ren's coffee flavor tea, a black tea lightly flavored with cassia and vanilla.

The photo shows a tea ceremony at the Japanese pavilion at Taipei's Flora Expo, which continues into April. Shops at the expo sell teas produced in Taiwan, and you'll find a good supply in city markets too.

My last purchase, at The National History Museum shop at the airport, was a set of magnets modeled on Qinghua porcelain, which dates back to the 13th century.

These graceful miniature plates and vases now decorate my refrigerator door. It's like having a daily taste of China, even if I'm only eating pizza.   

Ba Köln Restaurant, No. 12, Daye Road, Beitou District, Taipei, Taiwan.

Jianshanpi Jiangnan Resort, 60, SyuShan Village, Liouying Township, Tainan County 735, Taiwan. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Three-Day Soup from Taipei

When I ordered the Sheraton Taipei's beef noodle soup, I had no idea that I had made the perfect choice.

This soup is famous, I learned. It has been the hotel's signature dish for more than 20 years, and people go there just to eat it.

It's on the room service menu too, so that hotel guests can have it at any hour.

This is more important than you might think.  In Taiwan, dinner is early. The Sheraton's restaurants close by 10 p.m. If you go in  "late," say 8:30 or 9 p.m., you have to order everything at once to beat the kitchen's 9:30 p.m. deadline. And if you go in at 9:30, forget it.

I ordered the soup in the Lounge, which is the hotel bar. It's a big bowlful of meat and dark broth, perfumed with star anise. The chewy meat is U.S. beef, the noodles are fat, like udon, and baby choy sum adds a nice touch of greenery.

The condiments on the side are diced fresh red chile, pickled mustard greens, marinated cucumber and a halved duck egg that looked like it had been soaked in soy sauce.

The soup was so good that I asked for the recipe. Just a simple job of boiling meat in a soy sauce broth with a few seasonings, I thought.

Not so. It took me three days to make it, most of the time devoted to long hours of boiling. If you cooked everything in one day, it would take at least 10 hours, plus additional time for preparing the noodles and vegetables.

You'll need another day to shop for the ingredients.  Any supermarket has stewing beef, but you'll have to go to a specialty market for beef tendon. My bowlful at the Sheraton didn't include tendon.  I'm guessing that the server reported to the kitchen that a westerner had placed the order, and they left it out.

Instead of the usual recipe format, I've divided the procedure according to days. I've put in all the ingredients listed in the hotel recipe, even amomum tsaoko, which turned out to be Indian brown cardamom. The Chinese also call this spice grass fruit and add it to stews for subtle, but special, flavor. 

My proportions may differ from the original, which I cut down to four servings, but the soup turned out quite well.

This amazed me, because I had to guess at so much of what I did. My noodles were thinner than those at the hotel, but they were authentic Chinese wheat flour noodles, which retain their consistency in hot liquid. Italian pasta would go flabby. I've put them at the top of the bowl (above) so you can see. The meats and broth are underneath.

You may make your own adjustments, using different noodles and leaving out the tendon. Just don't use tender beef that falls apart after long boiling. The servings are generous. You won't need any accompaniments, except perhaps a tall Taiwan Beer, which is what I had.

SHERATON TAIPEI BEEF NOODLE SOUP

DAY 1

THE STOCK

6 to 8 ounces beef knuckle bones
Bones from 2 chicken drumsticks, or other chicken bones
10 cups water
3/4 inch gingerroot, peeled and sliced
1 dried red chile
1 green onion, white part and some of the top, chopped
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon rice wine
1 tablespoon Chinese soy bean paste
1 ounce Chinese rock sugar or 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
3 whole star anise
1 teaspoon Sichuan peppercorns
1 (2-inch) piece cassia or 1 inch stick cinnamon
1 small whole clove

Place the beef and chicken bones in a Dutch oven. Add the water. Bring to a boil over high heat and skim off the foam. Reduce the heat and boil gently for 2 hours.

Add the ginger, red chile, geen onion, soy sauce, wine, soy bean paste, sugar, star anise, Sichuan peppercorns, cassia and the clove and boil gently for 1 hour longer.

Cover loosely if too much water boils away. There should be at least 4 cups stock. Strain, place in a covered container and refrigerate.  

DAY 2

THE MEATS

3 pounds beef for stewing 
8 cups water
Salt
8 to 10 ounces beef tendon

Place the beef in a Dutch oven. Add the water and bring to a boil over high heat. Skim off the foam. Reduce the heat, add salt to taste and boil gently for 2 hours.

Remove the beef from the stock, place in a covered container and refrigerate.

Add the tendon to the stock. Add more water if necessary to cover. Boil gently for 2 hours. Remove the tendon, cool and wrap in foil. Refrigerate overnight.

Strain the stock and freeze for another use.

DAY 3

COMPLETING THE SOUP

1 tablespoon oil
7 green onions, including some of the tops, sliced
3/4 inch gingerroot, peeled and sliced
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 small fresh red chile, sliced
2 whole star anise
1 piece dried orange or tangerine peel
1 small bay leaf
1/4 teaspoon Sichuan peppercorns
1 Indian brown cardamom pod
The cooked beef and beef tendon
8 cups water
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon rice wine
1 teaspoon sugar

Heat the oil in a wok. Add the green onions, ginger, garlic and the chile and stir-fry 2 minutes. Remove from heat and cool.

Prepare a double thickness of cheesecloth. Place the green onion mixture in the center of the cheesecloth. Add the star anise, orange peel, bay leaf, peppercorns and cardamom pod. Bring the sides up around the seasonings and tie to make a pouch.

Place the cooked beef  in a Dutch oven. Add the spice pouch, the water, soy sauce, wine and sugar. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat and boil gently for 1 1/2 hours.

Remove the beef from the liquid and set aside. Add the tendon to the liquid. If necessary, add more water to cover. Boil gently 1 1/2 hours.

Remove the tendon from the liquid and cut into bite-size pieces with a heavy knife. Set aside.

Strain the braising liquid. There should be at least 2 cups.

Combine the braising liquid and the stock from Day 1. There should be 6 cups liquid. If you don't have enough, add some of the reserved stock from Day 2 or water.

ASSEMBLY

4 stalks baby choy sum
3/4 pound dried Chinese wheat flour noodles
The beef and tendon
The stock and braising liquid
Chile oil, optional

Heat 4 large deep soup bowls.

Trim off the ends of the choy sum. Separate the leaves and wash.

Bring a large pot of water to a boil.  Add the choy sum and boil 1 1/2 minutes.  Remove from the pot with tongs and set aside.

Add the noodles to the pot and boil 4 minutes. Drain.

Divide the beef and tendon among the soup bowls.  Divide the noodles among the bowls, then the choy sum. 

Heat the combined stock and braising liquid to boiling. Taste for seasoning and add soy sauce or salt if needed. Pour 1 1/2 cups boiling liquid into each bowl.

Serve with chile oil for seasoning, if wanted, and optional garnishes such as pickled cucumber strips, pickled mustard greens, minced fresh red chile and halved, soft-boiled eggs.

Eat with chopsticks and a Chinese soup spoon.

Makes 4 servings.

 

 

 

 

 

Bring more water to a boil.

pIf necess beef and bAdd the gre

 

Spuddy Stars at Taipei Expo

The last "person" I expected to run into in Taipei was Spuddy Buddy.

Spuddy is a doll, a stuffed potato in a red suit who promotes Idaho potatoes.

My Spuddy sits on a stack of cookbooks in the kitchen. The Taipei Spuddy and his colleagues clamber over what looks like a cotton exhibit in the American pavilion at the 2010 Taipei International Flora Exhibition.

This huge horticultural show opened November 6 and continues through April 25. One of the features is  a Global Garden with 22 international exhibits, including that from America. 

I felt a bit puzzled as I walked in and found a hodgepodge that incorporates an imitation log fire, an artificial moose couple and the Spuddy collection. It's housed in a soaring wooden structure that made me think I was in Borneo, not at home.

The wood, from sustainable forests, is intended to demonstrate evironmental consciousness. A solar panel system on top represents efforts to promote cost-effective, renewable energy.

These are lofty concepts, but how does a potato ad fit in? Plants around the structure include cacti, azaleas, magnolias and roses.

Perhaps a themed exhibit such as romantic gardens of the old South with southern belles twirling their hoopskirts or plants of the southwestern desert with cowboys and Indians would have drawn more crowds. 

Hawaii did much better, with hula girls and tropical plants. People lined up to have their photos taken with the dancers.

Chile stacked poles to symbolize the Andes and lined garden beds with yellow stones to represent the rescued miners (photo below the orchids). 

Thailand showed off a replica of a royal barge and gorgeous Thai girls in costume (below Chile). Japan drew spectators for a tea ceremony demonstration. Holland had tulips, and Chinese gardens (above) were poetically beautiful.

The most prominent flower throughout the show is the orchid, because Taiwan is the world's leading orchid exporter. If you have ever bought a Phalaenopsis, the most common variety, it probably came from there.   

The expo has 14 theme halls and pavilions and so much to see that you would have to spend a week, maybe more, to take it all in, including live entertainment and cultural shows. 

The most dramatic building is Eco Ark, which is constructed of recycled steel beams, bamboo and bricks composed of crushed recycled plastic drink bottles, about 1.5 million of them.

On a smaller scale, the plastic bricks would be an interesting idea for a garden room, as they provide an airy look and good insulation.

The Pavilion of Dreams is like a floral Disneyland, with interactive exhibits where flowers appear at your touch, dance, scatter pollen (little lights) over you, and you can sit on a circle of grass and whirl up through the clouds, then down into a panorama of Taipei's landmark buildings.

The grass doesn't whirl. The scenic views projected on the walls do. And if you're not sitting down, you'll probably fall over, the effect is so dizzying.

There's a floral meditation area too, near which I spotted a cafe with some good-looking frosted cakes.  

As a food person, I was interested in a display of the home of the future, where edible plants grow indoors, and gardens mingle with everyday living.

Imagine a kitchen where you can pluck lettuce from a cabinet that enables it to grow in the house. You can't get fresher, or more convenient, than that.

Or think of watching the Food Network from a lounge chair with edibles sprouting behind your head. Or staging a reception where the drinks and appetizers are spread out on a long table with flowers growing in sunken boxes at either end. That eliminates any worries about tipsy guests tipping over vases.

Every section of the exhibit offers something to eat. You could have Taiwanese dishes such as soy-sauce stewed meats, oyster omelets and beef noodles  or local specialties such as Tainan style danzai noodles, Changhua meat dumplings and Taoyuan duck.

If you want international food, you can find anything from Korean bibimbap and Japanese set meals to  spaghetti and French desserts.

The food court I saw was crowded early on opening day. I only had time for a sip of starfruit juice. Sweet, with a touch of salt, it was delicious.

I would have liked to learn about Taiwanese teas at the Palace of Floral Teas, but my guided route didn't go there. No matter, I bought lots of tea in a market near my hotel, including green tea powder to use in cookies and breads and coffee-flavored black tea for breakfast.

The expo, which is spread over four parks in the center of the city, is well organized. You can reach it easily on the MRT, where stops are clearly marked in English and Chinese on maps of each line.

The expo hours are 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily.  Free shuttles provide transport from one exhibit area to another. Tour guides will help you to navigate the show.

No detail has been ignored. A press conference I attended said there would be floral toilets. I didn't find those, but the label on the container of seat covers in the bathroom I visited said "Blossom."