Frank's Texas BBQ

Nestled on Taoyuan County, as everyone knows Frank's Texas BBQ holds a charming cowboy atmosphere. As you're driving along the road of Dasi Township, you could easily pass it by. The rustic wood structure with triangle roof-top on one end is where the indoor dining area is located, and serves a set meal authentic American Tex Mex cuisine.

After we went to Taoyuan Hsien Kou for tulip flower festival. My family and I happened to arrive in past 1:00 PM it was crowd and we waited for a few minutes to be seated. As you enter Frank's Texas Grill you'll notice right away that this place is too crowded and tight with young people. Right after the entrance, is the counter with American flag and wagon wheel chandeliers on display that has transformed into a peice of ranch style Texas. They also have a sound system and play American or classic country music which adds to the atmosphere.

We ordered their set meal combo serve with bread, salad with drinks of your choice: Claire had the 8.oz fillet mignon loaded with baked chili bean in tangy sauce, fries, mashed potato, coleslaw, corn and compliments with cheese cake for the dessert. The fillet mignon was a perfect medium rare. It tasted great and a nice texture to it.

My husband choose the 10.oz red wine pepper steak consisting beef with red wine cream sauce, serve with baked chili beans, coleslaw, mashed potato and corn. The beef had an awesome and impressive flavor, and proved to be incredibly tender and juicy. The creamy sauce, blended from meat juices was exquisite and was a fantastic tender meat. He also loved the fresh of their slaw! Since his not a big fun and not that impressive of American dinning. I was suprised when he told me that we will be back next time and we will try their other dishes.

Charles choose the wrangler rib eye 10.oz special with baked chili bean, coleslaw, mashed potato and corn. Like the other steak it was delicious!

And I had the grilled lake trout with Mexican rice. I really loved my fish, it was very fresh and cooked to perfection.

The Mexican rice, baked chili bean, and hot salsa sauce a great side dish for my grilled fish was a pretty health sized plate.

We ordered fish and chips loaded with fries for all of us to share. It was huge when it came, we expect it just a little. Below on the menu is on the level of snack age. This fish and chips can be consider as a main course also.

The fish and chips plate featured 3 fresh fillets I guess it was a cod that were flakey and perfectly fried. The battered not too heavy it was light and crispy and delightfully golden. And I loved the tartar sauce, based on mayo and chopped pickle relish. I'm just thinking there's a lot of oil or cholesterol to kick in.

And we were serve with this very simple fresh salad before our main course.

The meal came with complementary fresh bread. They were warm soft middle with butter filling, crispy crusty outside.

For my dessert, I choose the A&W root beer float in a nice big frosty mug with creamy vanilla ice cream on the side of root beer.

We also shared the hot apple pie with vanilla ice cream. It featured huge chunks of apple was good but comparing to the apple strudel it wasn't impressive to our linking.

The plain cheese cake is fluffy when you stick your fork. It just melts in a sweet cloud of goodness not too sweet, just right!

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All in all, just the right environment for great barbeque and definitely worth stopping for. The service was fast, the meal was very good, the dessert probably wasn’t needed.

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Frank's Texas BBQ-邊界驛站 (Taoyuan Branch)
桃園縣大溪鎮瑞安路二段249-1號
249-1, Ruian Road, Section 2, Dasi Township, Taoyuan County
Contact No: 03-3881559
Website:
Frank's Texas BBQ

Old Street Noodle Store + Chiayi Turkey Rice

The inside of Old Street Noodle Store is pretty small and the outside looks like a nostalgic old shop. While it doesn’t looks clean, it’s clean enough and the food was of course delicious, like always. This popular restaurant is tucked along the Emei Old town. Coming here, you have to be early, as the crowd starts to pack during lunch or dinner. We ordered two of my favourite Taiwanese Hakka dishes, which are also the restaurant’s signature dishes are stir fried pig’s intestines with julienne ginger and roast pork belly. The other popular items featured in the restaurant include fried thick rice noodles and free-range steamed chicken with kumquat sauce, and fried egg and more.

I always had this sauteed or stir fry pig intestines with ginger and vinegar it tastes slightly different from what we often get in the Hakka restaurant. This dish also smelled pleasantly of shredded ginger and vinegar and has a chewy, gelatinous texture. This dish it was tasteful and remarkable good enough to say. It certainly is one of the better stir fried pig’s intestines with julienne ginger I ever had it was perfectly done.

This is a classic dish that combines flavors well. I personally like it with hot plain rice. The eggs are well blended well with chopped spring onion and dried radish. So far this is one of the best fried egg omelette we ever had in any Hakka Taiwanese restaurant.

The roasted pork meat was tender and somewhat fatty but not overwhelmingly compare to the one we had in Miaoli.

We order a 2 plates of stir fry flat noodle with bean sprouts, chopped chives and pork lean meat. The rice noodles in this dish are not that soft let say it cooked perfectly and extremely chewy. And a perfect level of carmelized soy sauce, salt and pepper that enhances the starchy taste of the noodle but at the same time was a bit sweetish too.

We had the smaller portioned half steamed chicken with thick brown sauce and kumquat sauce. It was simply but not fresh and it was dry.

Stir fried wild vegetable with chili and topped with fresh egg yolk. This dish is quite unusual for me. I've never try like this before. The combination of the crunchy wild veggie and egg to mash them together it had a smooth texture. The  garlic, chopped pieces of chili provided contrast and taste of pungent aroma.

Lastly, we had savory glutinous rice balls soup. Inside the soup, you’ll find a generous serve of pork, chopped mushroom, scallions, chopped leeks and rice balls. I only can eat this rice ball on sweet dessert, I never liked this stuff on this salty flavor savory soup.

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Overall, I must say that Old Street Noodle Shop is pretty good food too. Despite for being famous in this area its one of the most crowded places on that road.

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Old Street Noodle Store-老街板條
新竹縣北埔鄉廟前街31號
No.31 Miao Cheng Street, Beipu Township, Hsinchu County

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 Hsinchu Chiayi Turkey Rice 新竹蕭家莊嘉義火雞肉飯

Every weekend we went to our favorite Chiayi Turkey Rice store in Nanda Road Hsinchu City. Serving a turkey over rice and originated from Chaiyi. A very simple comfort food and a very typical Taiwanese style rice, loaded with freshly hand-sliced turkey meat with savory sauce. It looked very simple and yet very appetizing its a kind of comfort food. The sauce was great with a hint of mild salty flavour.

We also like their side dishes, This dish is consisted of steamed flavor turkey  meat served with slices ginger and thick soy sauce. The turkey meat was so tender!

Standard of stir-fry water spinach, is one of the great vegetable staples of Taiwan. Its very simple and easy to cook at home. This dish is consisting of pungent garlicky, stir-fried with water spinach and can be added with red chili.

We always have their pork bone day lily soup was savory and not too fatty.  Overall: The food is good and cheap the portions are ample, the place is clean and small. But this once again a highly recommend for someone or anyone looking for authentic Chaiyi cuisine in Hsinchu town.

Foody Goody PizzaTrattoria

Foody Goody Pizza Trattoria is located on the busy road of Guangming Road nearer to the freeway no 1, they opened just a few months. The theme is pizza's and other western style in the menu are all in ala carte style. They also offer salad, soup, dessert bread and free refill drinks. I don’t think that’s a focus. Foody Goody has quite a decent decor, it’s new, clean, modern ambiance complements it well. But in the end you might feel you're dining in a fast food restaurant.

We started with the fresh ceasar salads, although not that special but it turned out to be a delicious dish, the crispy bacon, romaine lettuce and tomato. Serve in a small bottle of tangy dressing and crouton.

After our salads the homemade minestrone soup came out. This soup does not have as much tomato flavor as you are probably used to in many minestrone. But on my fairly opinion, it was well season enough and full of flavors and made of chunky vegetables.

When the entrees came out, we expect we’d picked some good entrees. The tomato pizza or shall we called this margarita pizza. The price was right but the filling of tomato and cheese was pretty tasteless. But the pizza dough is more fluffy and soft

The Italian meatballs with a pile of fries. The meatball which was pretty hard, rubbery and tasteless although it coated in tomato sauce.

Broiled beef steak served with fries and seasonal vegetables. A combination of filling up with the fries and vegetables it was a bit dry, without lacked of sauce and any sort of flavour were a turn-off. But the steak itself was done to perfection!

I also got to try the bratwurst was topped with sauerkraut it served with mashed potato and seasonal vegetables and mustard sauce. The sausage itself wasn't too salty despite the juicy lean meat oozing out of it, it was good!

We also had the Hungarian beef goulash. The beef is very soft, falling off the meat. While the sauce is cooked such that you can totally taste the flavour of the beef in it. Goes really well together with rice.

After finishing our main course, the waiter came and cleared our plates quickly! We were presented with the dessert served in a ceramic soufflé container. The crème brulee we got for dessert was a complete basically a dish of warm smooth, creamy crème brulee topped with a crunchy sheet of caramelized sugar. The blueberry pana cotta, If you've never had pana cotta, it is like a pudding or flan. The dessert isn’t as rich and silky as one would expect it wasn't special.

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So the food was good and the service is okay, but there were definitely some misses too. It didn't stand out as being particularly special. A big disappointment for those Cafe Grazie goers.

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Foody Goody-手工窯烤
新竹縣竹北市光明六路45號
No.45, Guangming Road, Chupei City, Hsinchu County
Contact No: 03-5589058