The best tepanyaki anywhere

The best tepanyaki restaurant anywhere is in Toronto, Canada. It's called Ten-Ichi and it's located on the Sheppard Avenue just east of McCowen (on the north side of the street). The place is often crowded, so reservation is a must.

Ten-Ichi is an "all-you-can-eat" Japanese restaurant which features four tepanyaki grills in one dinning room and a sushi bar in the next. The tepanyaki room can accommodate up to 30-40 guests while the sushi dinning room can accommodate another 40-50 guests. We have been going to Ten-Ichi for tepanyaki for the past 10-15 years, earning my parents and most recently, Joyce, "VIP" status at the restaurant allowing them a 10% discount off our meal tab each time.

What is special about Ten-Ichi is the quality of food. While we have been to many tepanyaki restaurants around the world (including one in Perth, Australia), Ten-Ichi stands out for the consistency in the quality of its food. The "all-you-can-eat" feature, at a very reasonable price of around CDN$25 per adult which includes a decent variety of sashimi, sushi, maki, tempura as well as high quality steak, chicken, prawn, fish (salmon and flounder), oyster, also add to its attractiveness. The sashimi is fresh albeit with limited variety. It's no wonder that Ten-Ichi is crowded even on a weekday night and reservation is a must, prior to a visit. Fortunately, with our VIP status, we have always been able to get a table, no matter when we call.

Our favorite items, apart what have been mentioned above, are the Dragon Rolls and Spider Rolls (softshell crab) and the tepanyaki beef slices roll (scallion and garlic chips rolled inside of thinly sliced beef and lightly grilled on the tepan.) The steaks and the flounder are always grilled to perfection. Again, since all of the grill-masters have gotten to know us over the years (the generous tips given each time also helped), they have regularly picked the best cuts of beef for our table allowing even Mom (with her bad teeth) to have a few pieces. The kids usually like to top-off their meals with (unlimited) servings of yogurt, ice cream, and other desserts.

Food: **** (out of four)
Ambiance: *** (out of four)

Price: $$$
Repeat visit: Definitely

Holiday Inn Express Taichung

This was our second trip to Taichung as a family. We were down here for the boys' softball tournament and decided to stay overnight. We heard that Holiday Inn Express ("HIE") opened a new location in Taichung this April and decided to try it out. Peter had stayed in the HIE in HK before and was satisfied with his experience -- while the rooms were small, the hotel was centrally located (right behind Time Square).


This hotel is also centrally located, overlooking the Taichung Park, in the older part of Taichung City. We arrived at the Hotel just before 5pm and were promptly checked in. Even though the hotel was only sparsely occupied, we were turned down for an "upgrade" to better rooms. While the parking lot next door indicated a height restriction of 1.6 meter, too short to accommodate our CRV, the Hotel guard convinced us to enter and gave us a space on the first floor of the lot. The lobby is clean, bright and modern with "The Great Room", its only restaurant, located in the corner. We took two connecting rooms, on the sixth floor, facing the city (not overlooking the park). Our room size was decent, probably around 200 - 250 sf. Again, the room's decorations were modern and functional. A long desk on one side of the room, held the desk lamp, electric kettle, mugs, packets of instant coffee and tea. There is a safe in the closet but no mini fridge. There are open shelves in the closets but aren't any drawers to hold one's clothes. Our connecting rooms have the standard combination -- one room with two single beds and one with a queen size bed. The bathroom is fairly simple with a small sink, a toilet and a relatively large walk-in shower (though the shower head was low -- more suited Asians). One complaint we would make would be on the towels in the bathroom -- while they were soft, they were not absorbent -- leaving one wet even after a thorough toweling off.


Apart from the Taichung Park (which is beautiful) across the street, there is GeeGuang Commercial Street (繼光商店街) with probably an active night market just a few blocks away. The breakfast at the Great Room is of a semi-buffet style with one serving of entre (four to choose from -- Western which features scramble or boiled eggs, sausage, ham, hash brown and steam veggies; Chinese which has fried dumplings and eggs; Healthy with yogurt, an egg and salad; Asian which was the Singapore style fried noodles) plus all-you-can eat congee with condiments, toasts, fruit and salad plus coffee, tea and juice. Consistent with the rest of the hotel, the Great room is modern and functional. There are enough tables to seat probably around 100+ guests though there were probably only 30-40 people this morning.

Overall we think Holiday Inn Express is a decent hotel. At NTD3,199 nett, it's reasonably priced but not outstandingly valued. Comparatively, Hotel One where we stayed during our last visit to Taichung, is an outstanding hotel with great services but cost at least 50% more at around NTD5,000 per night. So, depending on the experience you are looking for, Holiday Inn Express can certainly be an adequate choice on your next visit to Taichung.

Middle School Softball Tournament

With both Nick and Matt now playing middle school intramural softball, we decided to go down to Taichung for the annual softball tournament held by Morrison Christian Academy ("MCA") in Taichung. Matthew played for Team One of three TAS sixth grade boys' teams while Nick played for Team Two of the eighth grade boys. The boys had to get up at 5am this morning to catch the team bus down to Taichung while Felicia and I drove down, leaving our apartment at 7:30am. A surprise for us was to find out that the boys will be playing at different facilities this year as MCA is undergoing renovations and two of its fields were not available. Matthew played at a facility near the Taichung Ching-tien-gang Airport while Nick played at the MCA campus. There is a distance of around 13km between the two facilities.

As Matthew's first game was scheduled at 10am, we went to his field first. After watching for a couple of innings, we left for Nick's field. Unfortunately, with the Saturday morning traffic, it took us 45 minute to get to MCA. Upon arriving at Nick's field, we realized that we forgot to give Matt money for lunch. So, after spending about 10 minutes at MCA (without seeing any actions from Nick as his team has just completed its first game) we rushed back to Matt's field again.

At the end of a long day, I was fortunate to catch Nick's first win of his intramural softball career and a great win it was. The game was tied after six innings with Nick driving in the tying run during the top of the sixth. Both sides were held scoreless in the first extra inning and the referees decided to use the "Olympic baseball extra inning rules" which allows the offensive team to put a runner on second at the start of the extra inning. The TAS team put together a string of hits (including one by Nick) and scored a total of six runs during the top of the 8th. The team was able to hold Bethany to just one run in the bottom half, with a couple of comical pop fly catches -- both were bobbled and caught with the second one ending with the game ending double-play -- getting the runner at first after the catch. It was a hard fought game with lots of good hits and defensive plays.

With Felicia stationed at Matt's field, I was able to catch just glimpse of his game. Overall, the 6th grade boys' plays were inconsistent though I did see Matthew making several great defensive plays and getting hits. Overall, it was a great experience for Matt, getting a first taste at competitive sports at the school-level.

Saffron

Saffron is an Indian restaurant that's located just behind the Taipei American School. It was opened about a year and a half ago. Felicia has been there a number of times as have rest of the family members. It's a small restaurant with seating for about 20-30 people, so it fills up very quickly. We've been lucky and able to get a table without reservation each time we have visited. But we have seen people waiting outside of this restaurant regularly.

We've been fans of Indian cuisines since our days in Japan when we frequented an Indian curry house in Hiroo right after the boys' Saturday baseball games. The boys especially are fond of the Indian Butter Chicken which is a mild and creamy red curry, and the garlic naan. They have since developed a taste and appreciation for other Indian dishes as well.

Saffron is the third or fourth Indian restaurants that we have tried during our five and a half years in Taipei. Apart from Saffron, we have been to the Cafe India (reviewed by Nick in his blog) and Spice Garden (which is also located behind TAS). So far, it is our favorite Indian Restaurant. Saffron's food is fresh, rich in flavours, colors and smell.

Apart from the usual curry dishes, there is a wide variety of appetizers, main dishes and desserts. We ordered the grill-chicken salad("Murgh Makhmali Tikka"), fried onion pancake("Onion Bhaji"), two garlic naan and a wheat naan("Lachhadar Paratha"), lamb in white curry ("Safed Rajasthani Ghost"), buttered chicken("Murgh Makhani"), vegetable curry("Peshawari Aloo Gobhi") and saffron rice. Matt also ordered a mango lassi to try. The grill-chicken were boneless chicken thighs marinated in yogurt and spices then grilled in the tandoor and served over a bed of field greens. There were six pieces to an order. When our order arrived we were informed that one piece of chicken was dropped enroute to our table and were replaced with two additional pieces shortly after. The chicken was tender and well seasoned and was perfect with the salad. The fried onion pancake was crisp and not oily. It was served with two different yogurt sauces.

The naan were freshly baked in the glass enclosed area in the front of the restaurant and arrived hot and moist. Unlike the garlic naan which was puffy, the wheat naan was little disappointing as it was a little dry and flat (more like pita). The butter chicken was great. Just spicy enough to make the dish interesting without turning the kids off. The vegetable curry was made of cauliflower, potato and tomatoes. It was a dry curry dish without much sauce but the flavors were intense and left a fragrant aftertaste. The disappointment was the lamb dish. While the lamb was cooked to perfection, tender and moist, the white sauce was a little blend. Matthew's mango lassi was creamy and overwhelm the mango flavor. He wasn't fond of it and wouldn't order it again.

Overall, we enjoyed our experience once again. The staff was very efficient and informative, refilling our glasses regularly. The owner, Sandra, whom we know from ACC was very friendly and came over for a chat each time we've visited. The decor was nice without being over the top. There are enough variety to keep our visits interesting each time. The only negative would be the price. Average tab per person would probably range between NT$600-900 per visit.

Food: ***
Ambiance: ***
Price: $$$
Repeat visit: definitely