Monday, February 7, 2011

Grandmother Old Store 阿嬤ㄟ老店

The Grandmother Old Store Hakka restaurant is old style and serves a tempting array of classic Hakka dishes at reasonable prices. The restaurant itself is small but clean too, the furniture and wooden bench, tables are old, which is more than I can say for most Hakka Taiwanese restaurants. Every dish we had here has been absolutely spot on in terms of authenticity and honestly makes you feel at home.
On the table, we started out with delicious free range steamed chicken is a well-known Hakka cuisine. After being poached, steamed in salt and water, the chicken meat itself has an incredibly tender texture and succulently flavourful. I was mostly impressed with how yellow the skin was on the chicken was so scrumptious with every dip into a thick-brown sauce and tangerine dipping sauce is very satisfying meal.
Stir-fried pig’s intestines with julienne ginger. Among that, savory and one of the most popular dishes in Hakka Taiwanese cuisine.The sauce was delicious, I probably ate whole of this dish all by myself. It is because is one of my favorites for Hakka dishes and pleasantly sour from the use of pickled vegetables, shredded ginger and white vinegar.
The super delicious stir fry noodles loaded with vegetables was soo good too with a bit sauce or natural water from the veggies. This flat noodles was similar to Vietnamese noodles. The only thing missing was the meat or shrimp and bean sprouts. Otherwise this dish is quite flavorful.
We also ordered a stir fry wild-grown veggie and unique to Taiwan, a vegetables it was grown in the high mountain that had a look of plastic like leaf may strike you as a little strange. I never try this veg before I'm quite a bit curious. This stir fry vegetable is one of the best dish on our table. The dish was quite fresh-healthy it is rich, earthy especially sweet and crisp it cooks with red chili, a kind of beans, and tiny dried fish was super flavorful and very tasty. Highly recommended..
We also had on the specials menu is the roast pork belly was super freshly cooked roast pork reminds me the Filipino lechon kawali. But the Hakka Taiwanese roast pork belly are much better than Pinoy style lechon kawali. The top skin was super crunchy it blend with black pepper and saltiness flavourful taste infused with a touch of brown vinegar garlic sauce and beyond anything I have tried. It's fatty-earthy tasted good as you imagine and absolutely not a healthy food because all that pork fat goodness just melts in your mouth and you just want to reach for more bowl of rice. Much better than ones we have in Neiwan.
We also try their pan fried egg omelet with scallions and radish that was so good it didn't need soy sauce.
We tried the day lily soup with slightly fatty pork for the finale, are tender to bite and the daylilies with your soup for that added fiber. The soup still boiling when it came it was good and healthy with aromatic-natural smell from scallion and dried  flower.
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Overall the food was generally pretty good it was a decent meal but for someone who used to eating strong and salty food. Good place to come, but be prepared to wait. Prices are reasonable, though the service is okay in my experience.
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Grandmother Old Store 阿嬤ㄟ老店
苗栗縣三義鄉勝興村水美路247號
Sanyi Township, Miaoli County
Contact No: 037-877108

1 comment:

Kelly said...

Omgosh Arlene!! I miss hakka food so much, especially homecooked foods!
I hope your doing well!!

<3 Kelly