Isshin Machi

Ok, so this sounds a little embarrassing, but I haven't been a big fan of Taiwanese cuisine (on our shores) for a very long time. 

It isn't because I'm Cantonese, and so am biased to the food of (mostly) Minnanese-speaking Taiwan. 

But it's that the places I've been to (in years past) dont' seem to have put much heart into their menu, nor the preparation of their food. 

I can appreciate Taiwanese street food. 

I, however, cannot appreciate a restaurant/diner/cafe that carelessly dunks poorly-chopped pieces of dry, hard, tasteless chicken meat into an oily, tasteless, almost watery soup and claim it to be a culturally-rich dish called sesame chicken or sesame oil chicken, something like that. 

Two tries, two separate occasions, two different outlets.

I held back on Taiwanese cuisine after that.

But then a friend suggested we try the Lu Rou Fan (braised meat rice) at Isshin Machi when we walked past their outlet at Selegie Road last year.

I was, as you can imagine, skeptical. 

But we went in, we ordered, we ate, and now- after several tries- I can happily say that their Lu Rou Fan has become one of the best dishes to come into my life for the 2021 year.

I won't say that their portions are fantastically generous, but they do make sure that every bowl is packed to the brim with a sufficient serving of gravy-bathed rice, little pieces of the braised meat, a single hard boiled egg, a small heap of salted vegetables, and a couple of pickled cucumbers. 

My friend the picky eater doesn't eat hard-boiled eggs or pickled vegetables. 

I do. 

So I get the lot. :)

I love it. 

It's like having a separate order of eggs and veggies altogether. 

One thing I've realized about their food is really just how fresh it is. 

It's also very clean tasting- none of the grease, none of the oil, none even, of the heaviness that sometimes comes with braised food. 

We've eaten at two of their outlets a couple of times since. 

The visits to their Selegie Road outlet are usually not planned. 

The visits to their East Coast Road outlet are just the opposite. 

It's a great place to close off weekend vibes. 

 

We don't' necessarily order the same thing every time. 

Except for the Lu Rou Fan, of course, which is like a staple for us here. 

There have been days where we've ordered the Lu Rou Fan and nothing else.

There have been days where we've added an extra order of soup with shrimp and pork wantons inside. 

And there have been days where we've gone all out and ordered a serving of Lu Rou Fan, a serving of crispy chicken cutlet, noodles with pork chop and pickled vegetables, and a glass of their signature brown sugar caramel milk tea.