Biff’s Pita

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Some stuff is hard to find in Taiwan, at least if you want something a little bit different and stuff inside a pita bread or a wrap is usually not that easy to find here. Thankfully one lad decided to start up his own eatery here and although he started out very low key, business grew and these days there’s a pretty good selection of tasty food at Biffs. His recipes might not be traditional stuff that you normally find inside a pita, not that I’m going to say that I’m very unhappy about that, as he’s come up with some rather fitting stuff.

Biffs is located along Shida Road which is famous for its affordable eateries and Biffs holds true to that. You can get two pitas for a mere NT$120 (or NT$65 each) and the burritos which are bigger, come in at NT$79 or NT$89. Originally he only had a selection of three fillings and although I tried one back then, I wasn’t really taken by the food. However, I went back to the new place recently and boy was it tasty, juicy, tender meat, loads of jalapeno and really good sauces and marinades. I had the Tex-Mex pita and a Refried Beans & Mexican Cheese burrito, while Brenda went for the Xinjiang Cumin pita. Everything was prepared there and then and tasted just fabulous, it couldn’t compare to the early days of the business.

The selection of Pita’s include Marsala Curry, Xinjiang Cumin, Tex-Mex, Thai Tom Yum, Thai Yellow Curry and Yunnan Fermented Tofu (although I won’t be trying the last one) and the cheaper burrito is the Salsa & Chicken, although I’d suggest to add the extra NT$10 for the Refried Beans & Mexican Cheese, as I have a feeling it’s the same burrito, just with more tasty stuff in it. They also serve potato wedges starting at NT$39 although the fancier toppings you want, the more expensive it gets, all the way up to NT$65. Fried rice sets you back NT$79 and a fried rice pita goes for NT$49. Oh, and if you don’t like Pita’s, then you can have the same tasty fillings in a sub.

They’ve also got a deal with the Malaysian tea stand next to them where you can get a discount on a bag of tea (yes, you drink it out of a bag). The only downer is that there are only four seats available and two inconsiderate people had sat them selves in the two middle seats, so we couldn’t have a seat when we went there. Either which way, this is a place I will be going back to more often as the new menu has made it the best and cheapest place to get a pita or a burrito in Taipei.

You can find Biffs at Shida Road Alley 49, No. 9 and they’re open from 11.30 to 23.00 most days of the week. They also have a website here on which you can find the menu.

Update: Sadly Biffs closed its door on the 21st of February 2009 due to slow business among other things. They might be back with a restaurant sometime in the future, fingers crossed.

Back in Taipei…

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Well, the move went… about as wrong as it could. The day before Brenda’s car broke, well, we were on our way to B&Q to get some stuff and the car started to run strange, but as lucky as it was we were right next to a garage that could fix it, although it ended up being an unexpected expense. The day of the move, we’d also arranged to have the AC installed and the cable and internet guy was coming. Yes, I know, we were trying a bit too hard to get everything done in one day.

Well, first off the guy who gave us the estimate for the move was off, way off, instead of the two vans he told us we needed, we needed four. Great, that bumped the cost up to twice what we’d estimated. The cable guy turned up and wasted loads of time mucking about and it turns out there was some kind of blockage in the holes from the basement up to the place and then he disappeared for about 2h, no idea what he was doing. Meanwhile it started to rain, for about 10 minutes, so the AC install guys calls up and say they can’t come, as it’s raining, so they’ll come the next day…

The cable guy finally comes back, manages to somehow bodge the wires in place and tells us that the place is wired “funny”. So he refuses to put in the internet properly, so now we have a cable modem sitting in a cabinet built into the wall, with a power and Ethernet cable coming out of it. All this because he claimed it wasn’t his job to put cables inside the house and we had to hire someone else to do that. What????

So the following day the AC install guys turn up, dump a load of stuff off and then goes missing for an hour, then one of them and another guy turns up and starts installing it and by now it’s already afternoon. So what happens, well, after they’ve wasted loads of time talking crap and mucking about, they manage to install the unit in the front room, but they’ve only got the wall unit up in the bedroom, but there’s a 15 minute downpour, so they tell us they’ll be back tomorrow to finish off the job… What?!?!?!

That night we ended up sleeping on the blow-up bed in the front room as it was so hot. By now it’s Sunday and the AC guys turn up, spends 20 minutes doing whatever they’re doing and they’re gone. All done, of sorts. Of course they left a huge mess for us to clean up and they forgot to put on some kind of protective thingie on one of the outside units, so lets hope it doesn’t break because of that. I really, really hate sloppy people like that.

So due to various stupid things, we had to wait two days before we could get the place in order after the move, which really is annoying. Most other things have gone smoothly and we had someone from IKEA turn up to put together some furniture we bought there as he was twice as fast as I would’ve been as he had all these fancy power tools. We also had someone come and put up some blinds in the front room, as I’m not really good with drilling straight holes…

This weekend we had a small moving in party, not everyone we expected turned up, but part of the reason was that about an hour before we expected people to start turning up, there was a massive downpour. I had made some tunnbröd with salmon and gravlax sauce, meatballs with mashed potatoes and sauce and for dessert semlor and apple pie. All in all it was a success and even Brenda’s friends seemed to quite like the food.

Sunday night I bought myself a second hand bike, a rather large Giant Yukon, as for some reason it’s not that easy to find larger bikes here. It’s the most advanced bike I’ve ever owned, it’s got more gears than I think I’ll ever use and it got front suspension and a suspension in the seat post. It rides quite nicely, although I had to take it on the MRT (which by the way is NT$80 no matter how far you go, but only allowed on weekends and holidays and then only to certain stations) and then ride it home, which was interesting. I haven’t really ridden a bike for a long time and I didn’t know the exact route, so I went too far, twice…

At least it should be nice to ride it along the river here, although we need to figure out how to get down to the bike paths along the river, but it’s not a long ride to get there at least. We figured it’s best to start on flat ground and there isn’t too much of that if you want to ride a bike away from traffic here in Taipei, but luckily there are some nice long bike paths along the river. You can ride all the way from Xindian in the south to Danshuei in the north, which is a very long ride, but we might manage to do it some day 😀

N.Y. Bagles Cafe

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If you get a craving for bagles in Taipei, then N.Y. Bagles Cafe is one of the places where you can get some decent bagles. However, they serve a lot more than bagles and the good news is that they’re open 24h.

They have a fairly decent selection of bagles and you can get a helping of cream cheese with them. They also do a wide range of other types of filled bagles and sandwhiches, as well as burgers, all day breakfast, burgers, sallads and pasta. Some of the restaurants also serve steak, like the one near the 101 area.

They also have a good selection of drinks to chose from, including hot and cold stuff as well as some more exotic imported things and rather decent milkshakes. You can find a map here and their website is located here. It’s not a gourmet place, but it’s a good place to go to on a weekend after a late night (early morning?) out in Taipei, as they’re guaranteed to be open.

A week until the move

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So, we’re finally about to move, a few things still need to be sorted out like AC, Internet and so on, but at least the moving company and most other things are set. I’ve been quite busy over the past couple of weeks, hence the lack of updates, but I’m going to try to add some more posts and some pictures of the new place as soon as we’ve moved in.

Poor little Rainbow was neutered this week, but she’s been a good girl and not licked the stitches so she just had to wear the collar for a day or so. She really hated wearing it and when we took her home she was a bit drugged as well and kept bumping into things. The only problem was that I left the collar on the front room table and it had a rolled up bandage which was used to tie it around her neck attached to it. For some reason she decided it was a good thing to eat this bandage when we were out, something that can’t have been too healthy for her.

We only realised what had happen later that night when she was sitting on the bed and I noticed a poop in her ass. Brenda got some tissue to try to wipe it off, but it turned out it wasn’t just poop as it was the bandage that was coming out, so she had to pull the whole thing out was was about 15-20cm long… Poor Rainbow, but it’s hard to control what she chews on and eats. She’s eaten a few bits of string before and seems to like to pull bits of string out of towels. From what the vet said it can be lethal for a cat to eat strings, but I don’t know how to stop her from eating them when we’re not around.

At least she seems to be just fine, although she left little bits of poo all over the place, yuck…

Debbie's

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Debbie’s is a smallish American style diner that opened up in Taoyuan in June 2008. The atmosphere is nice and relaxed and it’s tastefully decorated, in as much as you can decorate a diner. The owner speaks English and they seem to cater both to the locals and the foreigners in Taoyuan. The place is small, but it doesn’t feel cramped and there’s around 10 tables, all of which seat four.

Debbie’s serves brunch until 14.00 although we missed that today, but the rest of the menu has a decent selection of burgers, sandwiches, burritos and some other stuff as well. The whole menu isn’t available on the website and in addition to the brunch items listed they also have pancakes. The drinks are large and they serve Root Beer which isn’t very common in Taiwan.

I ordered the beef burritos and Brenda got the bacon sandwich and a side of buffalo wings. The bacon sandwich came with a side of freshly made fries and they were really good and the sandwich was quite tasty as well. The buffalo wings were a bit dry, but came with a side of ranch dressing. The burritos were big, but not very authentic, although they had refried beans a bit of mince, sour cream and a side of salsa, so no major complaints for the price.

The total came up to NT$590 which has to be considered reasonable for what we ordered, as most western style places in Taiwan are expensive for no good reason. We’ll definitely go back and try the brunch next time. You can find Debbie’s website here. Debbies is located about 5 minutes walk from Mitsukoshi in Taoyuan.

Update: Well, we went back for brunch this weekend and both of us ordered pancakes, although they normally come with a side of some kind of meat byproduct such as sausage, ham or bacon, but neither of us wanted that so Debbie kindly offered to give us a couple of extra pancakes. The only downside this time was that it took forever to get the food, the place was quite busy, but a couple that came after us got their burritos before we got our food. The pancakes were good, although you’ll most likely have to ask for extra maple syrup as we didn’t get enough, but that was most likely cause of the extra helping we got. Brenda also ordered a side of mash, which we had to remind them about, as it didn’t turn up. The pancakes comes with a drink and are quite affordable at NT$110. We might yet be back one more time before we move from Taoyuan, as I think we’ll need a hearty breakfast on Friday morning.