Meaningful Rice Dumplings Served for Breakfast at Grand Hotel Taipei

Where: 1 Chung Shan N Road Sec 4, Taipei, Taiwan, 104

6/15/2007 at 9:30 AM
Tags: Hotel Breakfasts, Taiwan Hotels, Flickr Photos

Thanks to an obsessive labeler on Flickr, we can give you a rundown on the breakfast at the Grand Hotel Taipei in some detail.

This version vaguely resembles a Western breakfast--in so far as there's tea, juice and some food--but then the similarities end, and the interesting cultural influences we go on holidays for begin. Some of the less-easily-identified components include the cucumber gelatin concoction (bottom left of the plate) and in the second cup from the left, the Thousand-Year-Old Egg (which we hope is not too accurately named).

Then there's a few versions of rice, starting with the congee in the far left cup (a kind of porridge), the fairly standard riceball and the Zong-zi (rice dumpling), which comes complete with a nice story:

Qu Yuan, a well-loved poet, drowned himself in the river and to prevent the fish from eating his body, people made rice dumplings (zong-zi) and threw them into the river.

All this learning, and you haven't even left the hotel yet, or even finished breakfast. Just for the record, recent visitors to Taipei's Grand Hotel have left incredibly mixed reviews, from those who loved it and considered it fantastic value, through those who appreciate the architecture but not the service, right down to some who think it's faded and past it (perhaps like the thousand-year-old-egg). All we know for certain is the breakfast looks pretty cool.

[Photo: seamusiv]

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