June 2026 Shoal Menu
∥June 2026 Shoal Menu｜The Art of Surviving the Burning House∥
The summer of the Bingwu year is a boundless burning house. The whole city is like a hot-stone bath, and to venture outdoors is all resolve and trial.
Happily, this is also the season of bitter melon and bamboo shoots. These cool, refreshing summer vegetables are a necessity for escape, the antidote to a bitter summer. Fermented black beans, sour bamboo shoots, pickled plum ginger… the salvation of clear, bracing things, deliciously rousing the appetite. And with one more cup of cooling tea, one comes into a small pure land.
Out of consideration for friends who come to dine alone, so that they too may share in the family-style dishes, the menu is designed with one person's portion as its base unit, and the à la carte price is the amount for a single portion. Friends who come to dine as a group may decide the number of portions they need according to the size of the party and their appetites; in every case, the dishes are served family-style.
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.
June 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.
| June 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. |
Drunken Chicken
NT$350
A recreation of the family banquet dish by Ye Xin-qing, founder of Yongfu Lou, embodying the gourmet tastes of the 1970s aristocracy. Amber-colored yellow wine carries the fragrant aroma of fermented rice wine. Without diluting with broth, fresh chicken thighs are soaked in pure wine sauce for seven days, seasoned with sea salt and yellow wine, creating a robust and unparalleled flavor. The wine's rich and mellow aroma, combined with the tender and juicy chicken, creates a deeply satisfying dish.
Pork Trotter Aspic
NT$190
Yunnan-style Pork Trotter Aspic, intensely spiced and refreshingly appetizing, is a unique dish often described by enthusiasts as an "edible work of art." To achieve a crystal-clear aspic, it requires slow, labor-intensive simmering. Various spices, soy sauce, and rice wine are gently simmered with pork trotters for three hours. In a deep pot, the slow bubbling resembles a blooming chrysanthemum. The trotters must be cooked until tender, releasing all the collagen, then diced and set in molds with refined broth. Time works its magic, turning the broth into a perfectly set aspic. The dish is finished with cilantro, sesame, crushed peanuts, and a sharp contrast of spicy sauce and chili oil.
Salted Pig Tongue
NT$180
One of Shoal's most delightful cooked meat dishes. Soft and tender yet chewy, offering a taste experience comparable to abalone; the texture and quality are determined by precise heat control. Processing pig tongue is laborious and time-consuming; cleaning the tongue coating can be daunting and requires patience. Offal emphasizes freshness, and the original flavor is the ultimate test. Beyond texture, aroma is key; sea salt, along with scallions, ginger, and star anise, removes any off-flavors, leaving a clear and pure taste that bestows an elegant character upon the pig tongue. Served with a spiced oil made by sizzling scallion whites, chili, and garlic in hot oil, the aromatic and spicy notes are like a gorgeous attire for the pig tongue.
Tofu with Century Egg, Pickled Plum & Ginger
NT$180
We use award‑winning, lead‑free grassy century eggs from model farmer Su Qing‑fa in Tainan’s Duck Village. Duck eggs are coated in a red clay blended with an herb tea boiled from acacia, Indian goosegrass, banyan aerial roots, mountain grapes, and lemongrass, then cured and dried for a month, producing translucent ebony whites and lava‑like molten yolks with an exceptionally clean taste. They pair with Jia‑Hsiang tofu, noted for its fresh bean flavor, and the urn‑aged, premium Yong‑Xing soy paste from Tainan. The secret weapon is pickled plum ginger: young ginger with ivory buds sliced thin, skin on, and marinated in aged perilla‑plum syrup for a sweet‑spicy elegance. Minced perilla plum is added, and the plum syrup is folded into the soy paste, imparting a hint of plum perfume that whets the appetite. Recreating founder Su Wen‑wen’s childhood memory, this refreshing midsummer appetizer feels both intimate and distinctive.
Assorted Mushroom Salad
NT$150
Yum Head Rwm, learned from our friend Nong Mei, who grew up in Mae Sot, a town on the Thai-Myanmar border. In Thai, "Yum" means to grasp and season the ingredients by hand. Enoki mushrooms take the leading role, joined by tea tree mushrooms, shimeji, and oyster mushrooms… a colorful, bustling profusion; the cherry tomatoes and baby cucumbers, succulent and full of juice, are sweet, clean, and cooling; together with the sour-and-spicy fragrance of a dressing pounded from garlic, chili, and lime, it carries a fresh sense of vitality, crisp and light. Nong Mei makes liberal use of the mortar and pestle, as though becoming acquainted anew with each spice; the pounding makes the aromatics all the more vivid, and grinding the dressing together lends it a raw, unrestrained vigor, so that a bright crimson flower within the body abruptly unfurls.
Honey-Glazed-Bonito Eggplant
NT$150
We begin with Yong-Hsing’s crystal-bright light soy sauce from Tainan, marry it with bonito dashi, and braise eggplants over the gentlest flame until silken, then chill so they drink in every note. They pair with nostalgic honey-glazed-bonito—a sweet pickle once hawked from pushcarts during the Japanese era in Taiwan. Recipe inspired by Murakami RECIPE: in Norwegian Wood, Midori Kobayashi invites Watanabe to her family’s bookstore and serves a lavish Kansai-style meal featuring eggplant, followed by her riff on strawberry-shortcake and love.
Slow-Braised White Jade Bitter Melon
NT$240
When bitter melon ripens to a golden blush, its pearly vesicles collapse and the rind fissures at a touch; the scarlet-cradled seeds shine—an instant of magical sweetness unique to the White Jade cultivar. The Ming-dynasty Jiuhuang Bencao notes: "Inside lies a red pulp, sweet to taste; pick when yellow-ripe and eat the pulp." We simmer the fruit in Yong-Hsing’s unsweetened soy, coaxing out gentle bitterness in an oil braise, then chill it overnight. The result is something close to myth—a single fruit, a self-contained universe where bitter and sweet resolve into perfect accord.
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.
Balinese Braised Beef
NT$365
A traditional Balinese celebration of spice and sauce, mellowed by coconut milk and palm sugar. Chef Ami from Crystal Palace family kitchen shares the craft of her Indonesian home, its excellence confirmed long ago by Taiwanese democracy veterans Mr. Michael Lin and Ms. Hu Hui-Lin. We cut beef shank into hearty cubes and grind candlenut, shallot, garlic, chili, and ginger in a mortar until fragrant. After the aromatics bloom in hot oil we add the beef and tomatoes, season with Indonesian sweet soy and palm sugar, then simmer until the meat yields. Torn kaffir-lime leaves and thick coconut cream complete a sauce rich with roaming spices, summoning the exuberance of the tropics.
Tai-tiao Seaweed Sea Bass
NT$290
Fried fish pieces for which tai-tiao seaweed is the secret code of savor, a method that originated in Ningbo. Tai-tiao is hutai, a green, thread-like seaweed, like shore grass, like stone-hair, its thallus long and slender, clinging to the rock surfaces of the intertidal zone; eaten fresh its texture is smooth and tender, and once dried its aroma is rich and distinctive. A delicacy of the reef rocks, it is a freshly landed sea product of the snack shops along Taiwan's northeast coast. The hutai is fried crisp, crumbled, and stirred into the batter; the sea bass is split flat and boned, then sliced on the bias with the skin left on, the pieces marinated in Shaoxing wine, coated in the tai-tiao batter, and slowly fried before being lifted from the pan, the fish tender, the sea greens savory, the Shaoxing wine fragrant. Freshly landed barramundi, carefully selected by Lin Kai-lun of "The Fake Fishmonger in the Kitchen."
Sautéed Pork Belly with Green Dragon Peppers
NT$225
The green dragon is the Fushimi amanaga pepper, a variety introduced from Japan; in Japanese cuisine it is usually called amanaga togarashi, originally a specialty of Fushimi in Kyoto. In Taiwan it is commonly known as the sticky-rice pepper, having the fragrance of a chili without a chili's pungent bite, and it suits rich meat dishes. Pork belly is sautéed with green dragon peppers and seasoned with Yong-Xing fermented black beans and Ruei Chun original soy sauce, making a dish that is exceedingly good with rice. A pure-brewed, century-old Xiluo brand, Ruei Chun original soy sauce is outstandingly fragrant and fine. Carrying on six generations of Tainan flavor, the Yong-Xing soy brewery brews in the traditional way: from Pingtung native black soybeans, the bottom-of-the-vat fermented black beans, once removed from the sauce urn, are neither pressed nor further processed but simmered on in soy sauce until deep black and glistening, sweet and richly aromatic.
Stir-fried Pig's Fallopian Tubes with Sour Bamboo Shoots
NT$190
The sour bamboo shoots are the finishing touch: clear and bracing, fresh and crisp, their fermented sourness whetting the appetite. A pickle kept always at hand in Yunnan kitchens, here paired with pig's fallopian tubes, so that amid the soft-yet-crisp pleasure of the chew the fresh flavor emerges all the more clearly. Shoal pickles its own sour bamboo shoots, choosing Golden Jade cold bamboo shoots from Dakeng in Taichung, finely cultivated under a covering of soil and cloth. A top-grade soil-buried shoot that never emerges into the light, it is placed in 2°C cold water the moment it is harvested to keep it fresh, an organic ma bamboo shoot with the delicate texture of an ice pear, clean and sweet, crisp and brisk; the husk is removed and the shoot shaved into shreds, and with no salt added and no water added, it ferments entirely on its own, packed firmly into a container and sealed until the sour aroma comes through. A technique particular to the Dai people, it was learned from my good friend A-cai, a Myanmar national of Yunnanese descent.
Steamed Stinky Tofu
NT$155
A Jiangsu and Zhejiang style beloved by aficionados, fresh and savory with a richly distinctive aroma. The tofu is painstakingly pounded and sieved, then mixed with minced pork, dried shrimp, and shiitake, bound and seasoned with beaten eggs, and steamed over high heat until set. It re-forms into another sumptuous square of stinky tofu, finished with a generous topping of aged xuecai and stir-fried edamame.
We select Ming-Feng handcrafted stinky tofu for safety and for its singular character. Ming-Feng, a storied brand in the soybean craft, imports contract-grown, naturally bred, food-grade non-GMO soybeans from the United States. Beans are soaked in water that has passed ten stages of filtration and is cooled at low temperature, then pressed once for soymilk, coagulated into tofu, and wrapped in cloth by hand to shape. The result is original flavor and color with no additives. Fermentation relies on natural yeasts. Amaranth, mustard greens, bamboo shoots, ginger, and chili are steeped so that the natural yeasts and lactic acid bacteria of vegetables and botanicals create a purely plant-based herbal brine matured for one year, in which the tofu is cultured to develop its noble aroma.
Scallop-Sauce Chicken Hearts with Malabar Spinach
NT$180
Malabar spinach, also called "palace vegetable," was originally named "zhong-kui." The Erya says: "Zhong-kui is 'Abundant Dew.' It is also called 'Dew-Bearer.' Its leaves are the best at holding dew, and its seeds, drooping, are like strung dewdrops as well; thus it acquired the name 'dew.'" The dew-bearing leaves are thick, soft, and smooth, and the jade-green tender shoots are fresh and full of vigor; stir-fried with braised chicken hearts and Penghu scallop sauce, the dish attains a plump richness that is at once vegetable and meat. The Book of Songs, in "Odes of Bin: The Seventh Month," reads: "In the seventh month we boil the mallows and the beans." Malabar spinach is hardy, with little disease and few pests; needing no pesticides, it is well suited to organic cultivation, and its nutritional value is high besides. Abundantly grown across central and southern Taiwan, it is a healthy summer vegetable.
Dried Fish, Clam, and Chicken Soup
NT$170
Any fish, when wind-dried, becomes xiang. By sun and wind, fresh fish naturally shed their moisture and are made into a dried good; in an age without refrigeration, this was a natural way to preserve seafood. From the winter solstice to the Lunar New Year, when the north wind is cold and dry, is the best season for drying xiang. Xiang is both an ingredient and a means of heightening savor, used much as ham is; originally relished in eastern Zhejiang, it forms wonderful pairings with both meat and vegetarian dishes. The conger eel is split open at the belly and gutted, its body propped open with strips of bamboo and air-dried in a shaded, well-ventilated place; the eel xiang hung like banners in the dry, cold north wind was once the taste of the New Year and the taste of home, holding within it the joys and sorrows, the partings and reunions of a momentous era, the comfort food through which a generation savors its nostalgia. Eel xiang simmered into chicken soup has a particularly savory, fragrant taste, so that the sweet freshness of the clams gains a further depth of fish-borne savor.
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$150
"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.
Fruit Ice | Preserved Plum
NT$160
Shaved ice topped with preserved plums, drizzled with cinnamon-scented caramelized sugar, is a beautiful and unparalleled dessert. The plums are harvested from wild trees at an elevation of 1,000 meters in the Yushan mountain range during early summer. These wild plums, cherished for their bright, sweet flavors, provide a refreshing escape from the sweltering summer heat. Shoal’s signature preserved plums are handpicked from wild old trees in Yushan National Park, meticulously deseeded by hand, and sealed with sugar syrup to preserve their natural, vibrant taste. The result is a naturally sweet, ruby-like plum, with a floral fragrance reminiscent of cherries.
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.
