Le Muguet Patisserie

Hiding in residential areas in the heart of Hsinchu downtown, to find a little thought into entrance vestibule on the flora of the layout of store to see Le Muguet Patisseri. The best thing this coffee-tea and bakery shop has going for it, obviously, are its sweets; cakes, assortment of cookies, some baked sweet bread, macaroons and canelle. The tea menu is good and has an excellent choice of tea in different blends, plenty choices of coffee.

The atmosphere in the Le Muguet is charming, its decor and furniture give it that European vibe that attracts many visitors. However, you should have to make a reservations before coming here. It can be difficult to find a place to sit as there are limited in seating options. 

At the shop is a showroom with some of tea items for sale, french coffee shop photos hanging on the walls, cozy little garden, an amazing wooden dining room table with chairs they have it all.

We have been to this coffee shop a few times because it is a great place to have high tea. Since its my last post before our 2 weeks vacation in Europe, we spoiled ourselves into a lots of yummy calories. The high tea it has a macaroons, canelle, cookies, madeleine, cakes of your choice and beverage its good to share for 2 people.

On tray 1; I pick pink the raspberry mousse cake was pretty good with a tiny amount of sponge at the bottom of the cake.

Fortran a golden butter cake

Canelle is thankfully more moist than I was expecting.

"Moscato" this was strikingly different with lush flavors of wine, chocolate and fruits on top.

Tray 2; A plate of gorgeous mini desserts, of which we could only enjoy a few small bites at this point of the 3 tiers.

This moist and zesty cake is very forgiving! so we could taste the nuts used to flavour it. Inside it was more very rich cake yet surprisingly light tasting.

Soleit in green tea flavored

Chocolate raspberry mouse cake, all of this was followed by a layer of creamy white chocolate-raspberry mousse, and finally, all covered in a thick, rich, viscous dark chocolate creme.

Banana chocolate mousse cake, the combination of nutty flavor, chocolate and banana is always a winner!

Of course not complete without drinking tea and we had a free selections of assortment of tea's. My daughter had her choice the Fils De France hot tea served in tea pot.

"Cherry Blossoms" or iced cherry blossoms tea, one thing to note though the flavor of sakura is quite different from the cherry fruit flavor. Very refreshing and what a unique experience!

 And for the boys they had ice milk tea! The service is very good and the atmosphere is more relaxed. This was definitely a reason to make a detour for sweet addicted people.

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Le Muguet Patisserie
新竹市仁愛街87巷1號 (Hsinchu Downtown)
Contact NO: 03-5350398

Sen He Yuan

Sen He Yuan Restaurant is located on 13th floor of Sogo Hsinchu. Here you'll find Japanese restaurant but as far as Chinese food goes this place is popular. The interior design of the restaurant, it feels ultra-spacious and understated simple with a contemporary twist on traditional Chinese decor. The restaurant wasn't crowded when we arrived but by the time we left it was packed. Since dim sum is one of my favorites dish. Our most recent dim sum experience a few days ago was absolutely delicious! We decided to try Sen He Yuan, we ordered of plenty dishes. Here are some highlights of the meals!

Chicken marinated in shaoxing wine, the chicken was firm and well infused with strong taste of shaoxing wine. But I didn't like it, only thing that bothers me about this dish is the taste of wine. I prefer just steamed with salt and other ingredients!

Baked BBQ pork pastry, sweet and salty paired so well with the pork and BBQ sauce and light and flaky pastry . It was a great dish.

 

Stir fry noodle "chow mien" with seafood and meat, consisting of noodles, crab meat, and green bean spouts and chive and is cook in a thick sauce. It wasn't bad!

Steamed rice noodle rolls with shrimp was okay.

 

Steamed rice noodle rolls with BBQ pork it's a bit bland to me but this one was also acceptable. 

 

Seafood fried rice with X.O sauce, it served all the ingredients on top of the rice. It wasn’t greasy, but just had a savory flavor.

Steamed shrimp dumplings, while the shrimp and minced pork filling added the right amount of saltiness to season the otherwise bland ingredients.

We also got deep fried spring rolls chicken not as good as those at the other place.

Deep fried almond and shrimp with mayonnaise, another good combination with fried prawn. The deep fried shrimp roll was crispy outside, crunchy with the almond, with a rather sweet and fruity taste of mayonnaise sauce.

Steamed bun with egg cream custard, these treasures of molten, buttery, yolky sweetness, encased in fluffy white steamed buns and utterly delicious.

Cream of sago with coconut milk mango flavor. This is such a refreshing dessert to have on a hot summer day. The service was great but the food was not all that great. Maybe we had the best dim sum at Shin Fu En thats why everything we eaten at Sen He Yuan, just average for us. The big winner at the table was the BBQ pork in pastry, deep fried almond and shrimp with mayonnaise, sweet steamed buns and fried calamari pancake (no pictures) had made a good effort.

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Sen He Yuan Restaurant
13th Floor Sogo Department Store Hsinchu City
新竹市民族路2號13樓(SOGO百貨新竹館)
Contact No: 03-5285577
Website:
http://www.senheyuan.com/

Chinglin

The Chinglin Farm and Restaurant is another tourist spot, where guests can find a variety of blooming flowers. The garden is planted with all sorts of flower and plant species. A very vibrant colored flowers during cold seasons specially on spring time. I don't even know that there were many kinds of flowers here. I will be back on autumn or spring time.

Also consider going out and having a meal. Then, if you have the fun of doing something different. They provide a D.I.Y dried flower, you can design your own flower arrangements.

As I walked in at the counter it caught my eyes this nest filled with tiny dried corns hanging on the bar and think about the tamales next time.

And barely noticeable is the Chinglin restaurant with palms and lush subtropical foliage.

Of course our day is not complete without having afternoon break, as we enjoy the surroundings. We order of iced coffee's and desserts. This waffle with fruits and chocolate sauce was a light, zesty and not to dry thanks to the fruits involved at the sides.

Tiramisu

Chocolate cake

Iced coffee with coconut milk was mild in sugar and thirst quenching. After a whole day searching for a good lotus flower and sunflower in other area of Taoyuan County. Because of the weather sometimes is windy with heavy rain and it last for 2 weeks, we couldn't find one just like last year.

Iced cafe latte and cappuccino

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Chinglin
桃園縣觀音鄉大堀村大湖路二段131-1號
Taoyuan County
Contact No: 03-4987747
http://www.chinglin.com/

Shin Pu En Chinese Restaurant

Shin Pu En Chinese Restaurant is located on the eight level of Sogo Tienmu Taipei, the high ceiling of the restaurant makes the interior looks very spacious and comfy. The decor is typical-modern and quite a comforting sight for most Chinese restaurants in the hotels. This Chinese Restaurant is currently having selections of both traditional Hong Kong Dim Sum. Tempts you with a delightful dim sum and other Chinese delicacies which is both impressive in quality and for simplicity presentation. We also tried some of the often-ordered dim sum dishes, then we got a steamed or fried items. To see how Shin Pu En  lived up to the standards that we have for dim sum.

 

Hot tangerine tea, be prepared to order your drinks. This restaurant they don't offer a free tea or water on your table.

Assorted meat grill platter a combination of roasted chicken, duck and pork belly. It was perfectly done. The texture of this lovely piece of meat carved out of perfection, with the crispy skin and tasteful meat marination.

Steamed dumplings with shrimp and vegetables, which each thin skins, fresh shrimps unbelievably good!

Steamed shrimp meat and bamboo rolls in Chinese flat rice noodle. The outer wrapping is made of tapioca flour, consist of a shrimp filling wrapped in large, flat rice noodles and served in a mild sweet soy sauce. It was delicious and much lighter and less greasy.

Pan fried seafood rolls. They are made fresh, the rice noodle wrap with abalone meat filling. The outside layer was very crispy, and the filling was not bad too and served in fresh-clean lettuce with mayonnaise sauce. It's a real pleasure to eat.

Pan fried calamari pancake. I thought it looked quite oily but it was still tasty and not greasy as I thought.

Pan fried leeks pancake. Again; Steamed and then browned on both sides. Then pan-frying was done well and the filling really had a good complementary flavor.

Pan fried pork flavored turnip cake, these usually come to our table after they are freshly pan fried and nicely seasoned.

Fried rice with abalone, scallop and shrimp meat in fuscous style, it came out quickly but the dish had obviously been cooking for quite some time, it's very savory and we loved this dish very flavorful!

Fried dumplings with dried shrimp and pork. This puffer is more of a sticky dough, fried crispy on the outside and stuffing with mix of minced pork and shrimps and lots of taste of good filling.

To end the meal we sampled different desserts, starting with the thousand layer cake. A dim sum dessert made up of many layers of sweet egg dough with lotus paste and salted duck yolk and the crunch of candied fruit melon. It was graciously strange but tasty quite good indeed.

Green tea Malay cake it was good for being not too sweet.

"Three delight" This desserts are served in mini glass, a combination of three kinds of cold desserts. The yellow glass is the mango pudding, white is the almond jelly, and red is the water melon jelly. For me the jellies are light in sugar! Very refreshing too. Even before we finished everything on our table, we were already planning our next dim sum adventure. The breath of items was good and full of flavors. The food was of decent quality and reasonably priced, and definitely we will be back.

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Shin Pu En Chinese Restaurant
Sogo Tianmu, 8F, 77, Zhongxiao N Rd Sec 6, Taipei City
台北市中山北路六段77號8樓
Contact No: 02-28366628
Website:
http://www.new-puen.tw/