May 16th: Veggie & Vegan Options at Burgery

Actually, there are no vegetarian entrees. But if you ask they'll make you a vegetarian salad (vegan if you ask for no cheese) with either balsamic or orange salad dressing. I prefer the balsamic (can you believe I used to hate balsamic vinegar?!), but the orange is delicious as well. It tastes like Fanta, but more orange-y :D

Vegetarian Salad with Orange Dressing.

 The salad is quite filling, though at NT250 rather expensive.  I'm a pretty happy camper with one of those and a bottomless milkshake (yes, you read that right.  BOTTOMLESS.)

Bottomless Chocolate-Banana Milkshake.

All their drinks are bottomless. Except alcohol, obviously.  All the regular entree meal things come with drinks and you can upgrade to a milkshake or smoothie for NT60.

The banana milkshake is made with REAL bananas, and shitty chocolate chips.  If I got it again I'd ask them to leave off the chocolate, it's waxy and disgusting.  Or, use chocolate ice cream.  I don't know why they don't; they HAVE chocolate ice cream (it's what the chocolate milkshake is made of!)

I've also had the OREO milkshake, which was FANTASTIC and not too sweet (a major factor in consuming as much milkshake as possible; at NT150-160 you've gotta get your money's worth!)

For vegans there are the smoothies, which are just fruit and ice and I think some sort of sweetener/thickener -- I've seen drink places use a mysterious syrup that makes this occur.  It doesn't make me sick, and I'm fairly sensitive to chemicals, so I don't worry about it ^^.

I've had the strawberry smoothie, which was filled with real strawberries and very cold (a deterrent to maximum smoothie consumption).  There's also kiwi, strawberry-banana, hazelnut coffee (probably not vegan), and a couple other ones that didn't tickle my fancy.

Last but not least, there are cheese fries, which are AMAZING.  They're made with nacho cheese and come with a tasty mayo-based dip.  I think it's chipotle mayo but I'm not positive.

I don't know why they don't offer nachos.  It would be fantastic.

GLORIOUS Nacho Cheese. It may very well be the only nacho cheese in all of Taipei.  Or, at least within a 1 mile radius.

Oh yeah all this stuff is su (素), for all you crazy-diet people out there like me ;P

April 2nd: Gua-Bao with Gracie & Tai at the Taipei Compassion Field

Gua-bao is like mantou in a different shape. A handy-dandy one-handed-sandwich-y kind of shape! It's usually filled with meat and pickled vegetables -- we filled them with vege-meat and pickled vegetables and stir-fried cabbage! Oh, and it's topped with peanut powder :)

These were Kathy's idea, so we made some for the Thursday evening youth activity.  There were some leftovers, which I made up fresh filling for when Gracie and Tai came over for lunch.

I MADE IT!!!

I feel like I can never shove enough veggies in it though xD I loves me some cabbage!

Gracie-Faces after the jump!

March 21st: Maiden Diner + Loving Hut

Maiden Diner on Yam

Location: Taipei Underground Mall (Y28 I think...@_@; It's toward the end of the mall, far away from all the respectable institutions ;P )

Disclaimer: We are not otaku in the Western sense.
That being said, maids are f*ckin' adorable and why WOULDN'T you want to go to a cafe with a ridiculously curiously pink train sub-theme and be served cute food by the most adorable waitresses this side of the East China Sea?!  That's right, even the food is cute. Although I was famished and forgot to get pictures of the cute part...but there are some great photos on ABC Lolita of all the moe moe tabemono you can handle.

Also, Gracie had a point card that was almost full~ so we got to fill it up and play a game with one of the maids!

The Brains Behind this Most Epic Scheme: GRACIE!

There are a couple maid cafes in Taipei, and this is one of the best: delicious food (it's a fooding place -- the food BETTER be good), ADORABLE maids (way cuter than the place across the hall -- no buggy-eyed ho-makeup maids here), few creepers (didn't spot any when we were there!), and great service!

More pics after the jump!

SATO Japanese Restuarant at Uni-President Hankyuu

How To Open Japanese Restuarant in Taiwan <- actually, that isn't the store website; I couldn't find the store website.

SATO is on the 7th floor of Uni-President Hankyuu department store. It's connected to MRT Taipei City Hall (blue line) via exit 2.

Reservations recommended but not required; we waited about 10 minutes during dinner rush on a Sunday.

SATO features Japanese cuisine including shabu-shabu, sushi, and tempura. There are set meals, or you can order individual dishes. There are some vegetarian & vegan options, mostly sushi.

We went with a tempura set and a sushi dish. Side note, the green tea they serve is pretty awesome.

Terrible lighting! D: The sushi was reasonably fresh. There were some stringy bits, but the ika was really good, which is hard to find. The tamagoyaki was house-made too (as far as I can tell ;P).

Tempura set. 2 different sets of tempura with dashi & sauce, 3 different types of salt, miso soup (really good!) rice, savoury egg custard, cold side dish, and 2 types of tsukemono.Complimentary dessert! Matcha agar with sweet matcha sauce and azuki beans. It was a little unbalanced imho (too much bitter in the agar and not enough sauce), but a nice way to end the meal. You can order fancier dessert separately too, but they're pretty much 1 scoop of ice cream with some sauce for NT$90, which is ridiculous.

MOAR Fruitless Travel, Sicks, and Yummy Food

As the title suggests, we were once again defeated by bureaucracy and came home without getting a bank account. But this time, it involved waiting 30 minutes for a bus that never showed up! And being more sick the whole time :D

This guy is not in the market for fruitless travel; he's gettin' shit DONE.