American Style – TheLostSwede's Hideout

Good pizza isn’t easy to find in Taiwan, but a little while back Famous Larry’s New York Pizza opened up in Taipei, although I intended to check the place out some time ago, I only got around to it recently.

The pizza they serve is slightly different from the usual stuff you find in Taiwan, as it’s very much American style, although due to lack of personal experience of what real New York pizza is like, I can’t say it’s the real deal here.

You can buy the pizza by the slice which is also unusual in Taiwan and it’s the only place apart from Costco that I know of that sells it by the slice on the island. You can of course order a whole pizza, but as they are rather large at 19-inches, this is more for a group of people rather than a meal for one…

Also on offer is a sallad, if the ones on the menu isn’t to your liking, then you can “design” your own. Then there’s meatballs and spagetti and the meatball here which is a rather large meatball sub.

I went for a slice of the downtown which has peperoni, italian sausage (although the PDF menu on the website says meatballs), onion and Jalapeno on it. Brenda went with the New Yorker which is a super cheese slice of pizza. Both where good, the crust is nice and it’s the kind of pizza you can eat by holding it in one hand, unlike the soggy stuff in Costco. At NT$75-115 a slice the pizza isn’t cheap, but not stupidly priced either.

The only downside when we went there was that they were out of carbonation for the soda machine, so there were no soft drinks on offer. For those so inklined they also got a selection of beer and wine.

Larry’s have two locations in Taipei and rather than adding maps to both, I suggest you head over to the website which is in both English and Chinese. You can find it here

Update: This place was closed a couple of years ago

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.