July 2026 Shoal Menu
∥July 2026 Shoal Menu｜One Cool Day in a Floating Life∥
The rain came down so hard we wondered whether Shoal itself might float away, so hard we worried that all that water would leave the Irwin mangoes without their sweetness... and then, in high contrast, the blazing sun.
Those who step in from outside carry beads of sweat still steaming at the nape. Ten minutes under that brilliant sun and you are drenched through, a small rain shower of your own down chest and back.
A heat this punishing makes one long for food that is brisk and clean and keen with flavor. Amid the damp, clinging swelter, a taste bracing enough to wake the appetite may yet win us one cool day in this floating life.
With a thought for friends who come to eat on their own, so that they too can share in a family style meal, our dishes are conceived with one person's portion as the base unit; each à la carte price is the price of a single portion. Friends arriving as a group may add as many portions as their numbers and appetites call for. In every case, dishes come to the table family style. Wine, other drinks or cake brought from outside are subject to a modest cleaning and service charge, set at ten percent of the meal total.
Shoal's menu changes each month in keeping with the seasons of the year, and only ten guests are served every thirty minutes. To reserve a table, please send a private message to our page, and we will reply when we have a free moment. If you would rather not use digital tools, telephone reservations may be made in the afternoon, from 14:30 to 16:30. For reservations other than for the current meal, please avoid telephoning during service hours, for in the heat of the rush it is hard to attend to things properly.
July business hours: Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, serving lunch and dinner; weekend afternoon tea is suspended for now, and we are closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. When visiting Shoal 2.0, please make a reservation and note the business hours; as there are occasional unscheduled closures, please take care that your visit is not in vain.
| July 2026 Shoal Menu |
| This translation is provided by Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini, and cannot guarantee complete accuracy. Please refer to the original Mandarin menu for detailed information. |
Shandong Roast Chicken
NT$185
A painstaking, labor‑intensive chicken preparation that serves as the prototype for many roast‑chicken methods: lusciously tender, with aromatic crisp skin that gourmets adore. The legs are first rubbed with fragrant Sichuan pepper‑salt. A blend of assorted spices, soy sauce, and Shaoxing wine forms a deep marinade that thoroughly penetrates the meat. After these two rounds of marination, sweet wheat paste is brushed on and the chicken is fried until fragrant. It is then transferred to a steamer, doused again with soy sauce and Shaoxing wine, and steamed together with the fried spices until meltingly soft. The chicken is torn into thick shreds and served on a base of lightly crushed, crisp cucumber batons; the steaming juices are reduced into a tangy, refreshing sauce, and fresh cilantro lends a final burst of aroma.
Sautéed Green Peppers with Whitebait
NT$200
A personal favourite of our founder, Wen-Wen Su, inspired by her sojourn in Tokyo. Adapting a summer recipe from Setsuko Sugimoto, the author of Kyoto Home Cooking, we stir-fry fresh whitebait with quartered green peppers until the fish essence permeates each wedge. Just before serving, we scatter dried sardine shavings from Shizuoka and fine nori threads, layering oceanic brightness over a light, vegetable-forward dish.
Century Egg with Tomato
NT$180
This salad features lead-free, green grass century eggs awarded the Shennong Award, produced by exemplary farmer Su Qingfa of Tainan’s Yachuang. Sourced from ducks raised at low densities with a 90% egg production rate and fed on corn meal, soybean meal, and probiotics, the duck eggs are marinated in a red earth blend made from grass tea prepared with mimosa, grind board grass, banyan aerial roots, mountain grapes, and lemongrass. Cured for a month and air-dried, they develop a clean, unadulterated taste with silky, black jade-like egg whites and a molten-lava runny yolk. Paired with Taiwan’s most traditional tomato variety—the richly flavored black persimmon tomato, lovingly cultivated to deep ripeness by A-Mei, a female farmer from Nantou—and tossed with slices of Saintly tomato and shredded onions, the dish is finished with a dash of spicy oil accentuated with tsaoko. This refreshing combination evokes the robust flavors of Yunnan cuisine, as referenced in He Guifen’s Yunnan Dishes on the Table: The Explosive Aromatic Cookbook of a Ma Family Daughter.
Tea Leaf Salad
NT$170
A beloved Burmese classic, Lephet Thoke showcases the singular character of fermented tea leaves, tossed with a sizzling medley of fried lentils, fava beans, peas, peanuts, mung beans, pumpkin seeds, and garlic chips, then mingled with fresh tomato, slivered onion, and shredded cabbage. Lemon juice, fish sauce, and shrimp paste lend brightness and depth, creating an appetite-awakening salad. The fermented tea, akin to Chinese olive relish or Hakka pickled mustard, floods the palate with fragrant tea aroma, gentle lactic acidity, and lingering mellow sweetness. Made by time alone through traditional self-fermentation, its layered complexity carries a cross-cultural history.
Ripe Bitter Melon with Black Bean Sauce
NT$210
When white jade bitter melon ripens to gold, its waxy pearls flush apricot and orange, the flesh softens and splits at a touch, and crimson seed pulp glows within—its sweetest, most beguiling moment. The Ming-era text "Jiuhuang Bencao" by Zhu Su records: "Inside lies red pulp, sweet to taste; harvest when yellow-ripe to eat the pulp." We choose first-grade aged soy paste from Tainan’s Yong-Xing workshop, a century-old brew whose refined aroma elevates the ingredient, joining it with the same house’s black soybeans and matured salted mustard greens from Xiushan Tea Garden, Miaoli. With gentle heat, braising melds oil, bitterness, and sweetness; an overnight chill transforms it into an otherworldly fruit, a self-contained universe. Bitter melon, also called "half-lived melon," mirrors life’s flavors—time tempers bitterness into lasting sweetness.
Golden-Jade Chilled Bamboo Shoots
NT$150
We choose Taichung Dakeng “Golden Jade” bamboo shoots, cultivated under soil and cloth so they never meet sunlight. Lifted from the earth at their peak, these premium sunken shoots are plunged into 2 °C water to seal in sweetness. Long organic moso shoots emerge crisp and delicate, reminiscent of iced pear. Because true luxury in bamboo shoots lies in their own purity, we serve them almost unadorned, adding only a gentle dip of Tainan Yong-Hsing sun-dried white soy paste for subtle umami. Li Yu noted in “Xian Qing Ou Ji”, volume 5, “Food and Drink, Vegetables I, Bamboo Shoots”: “Boil until tender, add a hint of soy sauce; the finest things flourish when left alone.”
Coir Raincoat Cucumber
NT$120
Coir Raincoat cucumbers are coiled like a curling dragon, utilizing the artisan's snake-belly cutting technique; the silent fall of the knife cultivates the mind and character. Fresh, crisp, and refreshing, yet richly appetizing; soy sauce, Sichuan peppercorn oil, and rice vinegar form a harmony of spices, dedicated solely to the duty of cutting through richness.
Stir-fried Beef Shoulder with Pickled Cabbage
NT$250
Napa cabbage is rinsed, drained on bamboo trays, then layered with coarse salt, layer upon layer, forming ring after ring, sealed in a clay jar to ferment for thirty days until the sour and yeasty aromas are full and round. Three big crates of napa cabbage, coarse salt from the Zhounan Salt Fields, five stones at two kilograms each, and the vast cosmos inside a clay urn are handed over to lactic acid bacteria to bring forth creation. Sliced garlic, ginger, and chilies are first bloomed in oil, then beef shoulder is flashed in the wok. The earthy, gently pungent note of aromatic roots rises. Our house pickled cabbage, put up for the New Year season, brings a vivid sour tang and a full, fermented depth.
Minced Pork with Spicy Pickled Greens
NT$170
In memory of Shoal’s dear friend Ah-Tsai, a Myanmar national of Yunnan heritage, we recreate a borderland flavor. Yunnan spicy pickled greens put up for the New Year, sour, sweet, hot, and salty, richly layered and intensely aromatic, bold, vivid, and mouthwatering, are stir-fried with minced pork into a deeply savory dish that begs for rice. Ah-Tsai’s private recipe is a keepsake of his parents’ lives, the homesickness of the Chinese of Mogok, Myanmar, thinking of Longling, Yunnan while wandering, and the letter home of one who was once a stateless “human football” pushed from place to place, finally coming to rest and taking root in Taiwan.
Masala Curry Chicken Liver
NT$200
Fresh, velvety chicken livers are soaked in a masala milk bath, steeped with fragrance. Onion is sautéed in olive oil until sweet and aromatic, then ginger, garlic, and tomato are added and cooked with masala into a moist, dense sauce. The livers are simmered in the curry. When the north wind turns sharp, a dozen or so spices interweave and this boldly spiced curry delivers layered, complex, invigorating heat.
Dried Fire Shrimp, Conpoy, Gold-and-Silver Garlic, and Sing Gua
NT$195
In Cantonese cuisine, sing gua is the loofah of Taiwan. In Cantonese, “si” sounds close to “lose,” an inauspicious sign, so it is elegantly called sing gua. Steamed sing gua was originally rustic home cooking, yet it can be made with full refinement. We select dried Donggang fire shrimp and use dried scallop to draw out savoriness; raw garlic’s pungent fragrance and fried garlic’s crisp aroma are blended into an appetite-stirring gold-and-silver garlic, spread fully over the loofah, then steamed over high heat, yielding the gourd’s clear sweetness, fresh clarity, softness, and gentle richness.
Chayote Shoots with Pepper Fragrance
NT$190
From one air-cured chicken, only 39 ml of chicken fat can be extracted. Drop by drop, it accumulates amid the vapors of the bamboo steamer. The fragrance of Sichuan pepper, the pure fragrance of fat, one spoonful of oil gleaming golden can make a plate of greens something special. Plump organic chayote shoots are carefully selected, their crisp sound foretelling a crisp-tender texture. The chicken juices and chicken fat rendered by steaming the air-cured chicken are used to quick-fry the stalks and leaves. Ginger fragrance, Sichuan pepper fragrance, rice wine fragrance, and the clear sweetness of the chayote shoots are captivating.
Ginger Lily and Pork Soup
NT$140
A fleeting seasonal romance. Ginger lily fills a room with its poised yet generous fragrance; in soup it perfumes every sip with refined floral spice. Snow-white blossoms recall butterflies at rest, while their subtle ginger notes pair gracefully with slices of tender pork collar. Light, cooling, and softly aromatic, this bowl brings a distinctive summer comfort and eases the heat with gentle perspiration.
Fragrant Rice
NT$30
A frequent champion among award-winning rice varieties: Tainung No. 71, Yihchuan Aromatic Rice. To commemorate Dr. Kuo Yih-chuan, who bred the rice variety, it was named “Yihchuan.” Created by crossing Koshihikari rice with Taikeng No. 4, it inherits the beautiful appearance of Japanese rice while fully preserving the rich taro aroma of Taiwanese rice. As it cooks, its distinctive rice fragrance already overflows; the grains are lustrous white and rounded, with a soft, glutinous, cleanly sweet texture. We select it from Wufeng, the home of Yihchuan Aromatic Rice and Taiwan’s largest fragrant-rice-growing region. Its mountain-adjacent climate, wreathed in morning and evening mist, and the Wu River, originating from the southwestern foothills of Hehuan Mountain and irrigating fertile fields, together with the natural conditions and the local farmers’ association’s human management, have supported, since 2005, cultivation without pesticides, chemical fertilizers, or herbicides, making it one of Taiwan’s most scaled and systematic natural-farming rice-producing regions.
| Pre-order Delicacies | Two days in advance
Chicken Rice
NT$250
Founder Su Wen-Wen's nostalgic recollections of her childhood and hometown. Originally a family dish made only for a few days during the anniversary celebration, it has accumulated countless fans who praise it as "the world's most delicious chicken rice!" Ma Shifang acclaimed it as "a peerless delicacy," while Feng Xiaofei said, "We need food like Shoal's chicken rice to increase rice consumption." One mother's comment was the most heartfelt: "This is exactly the kind of chicken rice a mother wants her children to eat!"
In a white porcelain bowl, soft and fragrant rice is topped with sweet, tender chicken, drizzled with rich chicken broth blended with aromatic traditional black bean soy sauce, and then finished with a generous pour of rich and fragrant chicken oil... One bite will bring you joy! The fragrant and silky chicken rice, accompanied by various exquisite side dishes, is both homely and refined, making it irresistible to finish every last bite.
| Refreshing Cool Drinks |
Dual Wen Herbal Tea
NT$85
Throughout history, when encountering miraculous herbs, ancient texts would often exclaim, "This is true heavenly herb." These medicinal and edible plants have become a staple of everyday life across the seasons. Each plant of resurrection grass is simmered in a clay pot, brewed into a cooling tea that dispels seasonal heat. Founder Su Wen-wen, with twenty years of study in Chinese herbal medicine, has perfected these cooling remedies, carefully crafting the formulas herself. As the saying from the Shennong Bencao Jing goes, "There is nothing useless in the world, only people who cannot make use of things."
Imperata Root and Bamboo Sugarcane Drink
NT$100
Clean and sweet, relieving summer heat, refreshing the mouth and quenching thirst, it is a staple of Hong Kong-style cooling tea. Bamboo sugarcane, imperata root, corn silk, and candied winter melon are simmered in an earthenware pot: a functional beverage that dispels dampness and clears heat, part of the traditional dietary culture of Lingnan and the folk wisdom of nurturing one's health. Tao Hongjing's Bencao Jing Jizhu likens the white imperata root, in its sweetness, to zha-qin. Feng Zhi of the Tang, in the Yunxian Zaji, writes: "When the thatch ground has had its branches and stalks burned away over the winter, in spring one takes the roots remaining in the soil that are white as jade, pounds them for their juice and decocts it; intensely sweet, it can be made into heart-cleansing sugar."
Prunella & Honey Date Infusion
NT$95
Adapted from Hong Kong food writer Wong Shuang-ru’s recipe in Shuang-ru Talks Food. Bencao Mengquan records: “It sprouts after the winter solstice and withers by the summer solstice, hence the name xiakucao.” The dried flower spikes and fruits of Prunella vulgaris carry a light aroma and help dispel internal heat. Gently simmered with honey dates, they produce a drink that is cooling, mellow, and subtly sweet.
“Elegant Abode” Sour Plum Drink
NT$95
A standout woody bouquet with the deep aroma of smoked black plums and a lingering return of red cardamom. After a long soak and two clay-pot decoctions, the herbal profile is fully expressed. It moistens and quenches without sticky afterfeel or heavy finish. The recipe draws on Professor Chang Wen-te of China Medical University and researches Liang Shih-chiu’s “Essays from the Elegant Abode,” tracing materia medica sources to recreate a concentrated, robust formula.
Preserved Oriental Plum Sparkling Juice
NT$130
Shoal proudly presents its sugar-preserved oriental plums, sourced from wild ancient trees in Yushan National Park and safeguarded by the Bunun people of the Meishan community. Grown without chemical fertilizers or herbicides, these plums ripen into brilliant ruby-like gems—so enticing that even macaques and wild boars are left with a lingering taste. Hand-picked at full ripeness rather than plucked unripe by poles, they are meticulously de-pitted by hand to retain whole fruit pieces. The naturally sweet, sugar-preserved plums are pure and free of additives, exuding a fragrance as delightful and aromatic as cherry blossoms. Blended into a sparkling juice, they yield an exquisitely refreshing cold beverage.
Preserved Plumcot Sparkling Juice
NT$120
These plumcots boast a brilliant red skin and fragrant yellow flesh, yet their short harvest season and low yield make them truly rare. In Taiwan, the most coveted varieties come from Baolian Garden in Lishan—revered in Notes from a Female Farmer on the Mountains and honored as the Taiwanese equivalent of Lakeside Musings, cherished as both a prized and sacred offering. Hand-pitted and sugar-cooked whole using only natural methods and zero additives, they yield a radiant red syrup that is sweet, beguiling, and reminiscent of strawberries—showcasing the captivating fragrance unique to red fruits. The finely pulped flesh reveals layers of plum tang, peachy perfume, and plumcot essence, fresh and refined.
Preserved Pineapple Sparkling Juice
NT$120
Pineapple, so emblematic it’s like holding a Taiwanese ID card, representing the fervent summer of the south. Shoal preserves the whole fruit in sugar, first peeling the skin and boiling it into syrup until aromatic, then continuing to cook the fruit, capturing its fresh taste and fragrance through precise heat control. This southern flair sealed in sugar is bright and sweet. We select Tainong No. 2 pineapples from Songlinmei Organic Ecological Farm in Luye, Taitung, certified by MOA. Forgoing artificial flower forcing, the farm allows natural growth without inducing early bud formation. Farmer He Jiachen thanks beneficial birds for pest control, leaving some fruit for the wildlife. The result is tree-ripened fruit with a distinct acidity, intense aroma, and complex layers of flavor.
| Tipsy Quadrant |
Pomelo Ferment
NT$160
"My brewing represents freedom!" states Kou Yan-ding, author of "You've Committed the Crime of Subverting Taiwan's Fruit Brewing." A single bottle can create a universe, once deeply immersed in Yilan's secluded self-brewed pomelo, before leaving Taiwan, he entrusted his precious brew to Shoal as a living testament to his existence. The brewing process is highly experimental, dissecting the pomelo's peel, vesicles, and seeds to explore the detailed flavors of brewing, a unique and astonishing experience.
| Comforting Hot Drinks |
Sour Mandarin Tea
Preserved Orange
NT$80
A unique Hakka tea drink, sour mandarin tea is made by repeatedly steaming and drying tea leaves stuffed into tiger-head mandarins, following the "steamed into rounds" method dating back to the Tang and Song dynasties. This rare compressed tea is used for health and wellness, with the lightness of aged tangerine peel aiding in vitality and warmth.
Shoal continues the tea-making tradition passed down from Zheng Xingze’s mother, Zheng Wang Qin-zi, who followed ancient tea-making methods. The tea blends twenty-year-old roasted tea with various herbs, following field research on Taiwanese herbal tea formulations, which often adapt to local needs. These practices honor the wisdom of traditional Chinese medicine.
The tiger-head mandarin from Miaoli’s Yuanli is grown with natural farming methods. Thick-skinned and juicy, the fruit’s sour and sweet flavor is released by opening the stem end and stuffing the cavity with tea leaves and herbs. The fruit is carefully steamed, compressed, sun-dried, fermented, and baked, undergoing nine rounds of steaming and drying. Over time, it becomes dark, firm, and shiny, embodying labor-intensive craftsmanship.
After being used in New Year offerings, these mandarins are transformed into tea, symbolizing blessings of peace, hence known as "peace tea." It takes six months to turn a single sour mandarin into sour mandarin tea, with its sweet and mellow flavor becoming richer as it ages, offering a glimpse into the wisdom of ancestral diets.
We select organic-certified, tree-ripened oranges from Chu Chang-hui’s orchard in Xidiyao, Zhongliao, Nantou. Pure, natural, and additive-free, the whole fruit is preserved in stir-fried sugar and aged. A finger-licking candied treat, it is approachable and delicious, dispelling wind and nurturing health.
Mint and Orange Tea
NT$150
Chen Shiduo’s Qing-era “New Compilation of Materia Medica” records an old formula: “When someone is struck by external evils and burdened by stagnant qi and will not take medicine, counsel the use of thin-orange tea for immediate effect. Use one qian mint, one qian tea, one qian orange peel, and pour a large bowl of boiling tea to drink.” “Mint not only excels at resolving wind evils but is especially good at easing melancholy.” We apply this to Shoal’s tankan cakes and candied tankan, hoping to sweep away life’s many wearinesses, the five labors and seven injuries.
Tankan Cakes are whole fruits candied in syrup, sweet, spicy, and aromatically vivid, documented since the Qing and now part of Taiwan’s Hakka foodways. Nourishing and home style, they perfume the teeth and gums. We source from Zhong Jing-feng, head of the production group in Emei, Hsinchu. Following Miaoli Hakka tradition, the tankan is scored, pressed into cake shapes to release their juices, then simmered whole with Zhubaoyuan hand made wood fired malt syrup, Shoal’s winter melon caramel, and red rock sugar until the rind softens to orange, the pith turns translucent, and the syrup is as thick as honey. After an overnight rest they are baked to dry: the peel taut, the flesh tender, textures layered, sour and sweet in fragrant balance. With careful heat and aging, time transforms flavor and the peel’s sharpness becomes supple sweetness.
Starfruit Drink
NT$90
A traditional beverage rich in Taiwanese local flavor. In Taiwan History—Volume 27, Agriculture—Fruits, it's noted: "The fruit has five or six ridges; the sour ones are made into candied fruit or soaked in sugar water to make a drink." The greenish-yellow star-shaped fruit, with ridges like a sword's spine, preserves the sweet and sourness of starfruit with sugar. The clear amber-colored drink overflows with natural fruit aroma. The honey-soaked starfruit transforms into a gentle force, quenching thirst and soothing the throat. We select honeyed starfruit from the Liu family's Starfruit Drink in Tainan, a legacy spanning three generations over 85 years. It brings back warm childhood memories of roadside starfruit juice stands—drinking it is like savoring a gentle poem of nostalgia.
Stewed Pear with Chuan Bei Mu and Rock Sugar
NT$100
Pears are listed second among fruits in the “Compendium of Materia Medica,” where Li Shizhen wrote: “The pear facilitates flow by nature.” We stew wild-grown Hengshan pears from Dongshi whole with Yongliang handcrafted golden rock sugar, adding Chuan Bei Mu for benefit. Pure and additive-free, refined through careful heat and a period of resting, the result is gentle and harmonious. The pear is like uncut jade, and its nectar like jade dew, a clear and softly sweet restorative.
Ylang-Ylang Milk Tea
NT$160
Ylang-ylang is hailed as the perfume tree; as in Li Shangyin's poem "Composed at the Zhongyuan Festival," it is a being of "not knowing the path was lost because the flowers had bloomed." Using Yong-Liang's handmade golden rock sugar, Shoal cold-infuses the golden, ripened petals that dot the treetops like stars to make its own ylang-ylang flower sugar; together with Fourways fresh milk and Sun Moon Lake Assam black tea, it is simmered in a pot into a milk tea, a rich, sweet fragrance that soothes body and mind, drawing out the deep, honeyed sentiment that the tropical blossom exhales once ripened in the sunlight. Fourways has its own ranch, growing its own forage by natural farming methods and using no additives to adjust the flavor, so that its clean, full-bodied milk fragrance gives the sweetness of the ylang-ylang a place to settle. As though a flower were in full bloom within the cup, a warm and abundant floral milk tea.
| Desserts Supreme |
Tremella, Red Date, and Lotus Seed Sweet Soup
NT$150
Using the family recipe of Mr. Ye Xinqing, founder of Taipei Yongfulou, this recreates the dessert once served at Ye family banquets. The sweet glutinousness of lotus seeds, the delicate sweetness of tremella, the distinctive sweet fragrance of fruit and wood in red dates, all are slowly simmered over a small flame into a three-part harmony of sweetness, simmered until the tremella turns soft, smooth, and gelatinously thick, its texture almost there and almost not, balancing and blending with the multiple layers of sweetness, like vital fluids, turning to water as it passes down the throat.
Preserved Oriental Plum Aiyu
NT$150
Shoal proudly presents its sugar-preserved oriental plums, sourced from wild ancient trees in Yushan National Park and safeguarded by the Bunun people of the Meishan community. Grown without chemical fertilizers or herbicides, these plums ripen into brilliant ruby-like gems—so enticing that even macaques and wild boars are left with a lingering taste. Hand-picked at full ripeness rather than plucked unripe by poles, they are meticulously de-pitted by hand to retain whole fruit pieces. The naturally sweet, sugar-preserved plums are pure and free of additives, exuding a fragrance as delightful and aromatic as cherry blossoms. The syruped plums crown hand-washed Alishan aiyu jelly for a dessert of pure elegance. Lian Heng writes in "Elegant Speech": "Aiyu jelly, a specialty of Tainan, stands in summer as a substitute for ice." "Taiwan Poets’ Anthology: Taiwan Miscellany" notes that thirty years before ice was sold on the island, people cooled themselves with grass jelly and aiyu.
Akihime Plum Granita
NT$160
Golden, radiant fruit, sweet and juicy; from skin to flesh, yellow as rapeseed flowers in full bloom, dazzling on the branches in the last month of summer, when cicadas call through the plum rains. In Taiwan, its only producing area is Lishan; the season is short, the yield small, and the fruit prone to cracking. Fully mature, intact Akihime plums are a treasure of high summer. Produced at Lishan’s Baolian Orchard, known from A Woman Farmer’s Mountain Journal, they are especially rare and difficult to obtain; praised with the fine reputation of being Taiwan’s version of Walden, they are divine things, gifts of grace. The whole fruit is sugar-preserved and syrup-simmered, entirely natural, with no additives. The flesh is soft in texture, tart-sweet and fragrant, releasing a distinctive honeyed aroma.
Plumcot and Shiso Ume Granita
NT$160
Plumcots, rare jewels with ruby skins and amber flesh, arrive from Baolian Orchard in Lishan, famed in the memoir A Female Farmer’s Mountain Journal. Each short-season fruit is hand-pitted and gently candied without additives, yielding a shimmering scarlet compote whose bouquet recalls strawberries and other red-fruited delights. We fold the plum purée into shaved ice together with Shoal’s decade-aged shiso ume; the resulting granita mingles tart ume undertones with the honeyed, floral notes of plum, creating a refreshingly elegant tribute to high-mountain orchards.
Orange Granita
NT$175
From Zhu Chang-hui’s orchard at Xidiyao, Zhongliao, Nantou, where eleven years of patient, friendly farming have yielded organic certified tree ripened oranges. All natural, with no additives. Whole fruits are candied, gently simmered, and aged. Garnished with Meyer lemons from a Pingtung supplier practicing friendly cultivation. This gentle citrus lends a clear, lovely freshness that brightens the finish.
