What’s it like to eat at a Michelin awarded restaurant? Yilan City’s Link

Ever since Michelin started its restaurant guide books in 1900 as a courtesy to its tire customers, there’s been a public desire to go to the creme de la creme of dining establishments. Michelin started giving awards to Asian restaurants in 2007. In Taiwan, Yilan City’s Link restaurant is owned by Chen Zhao-lin, the fifth generation of his family to be in the food business: his predecessors own and have owned famous seafood restaurants and seafood purveyors. Link has won the Michelin Taiwan Golden Cauldron award. I was very excited to be hosted to experience it!

Every detail is well-planned at Link: the owner is also an artist and designed all of the plates to go with each specific creation. The restaurant is attentive with fine dining rituals. Even the teas served are specially chosen to go with the food of each course.

Also, a meal at Link is more than just food. It’s more than just a meal served artistically, though it’s that: molecular gastronomy makes an appearance in the dishes. Rather, the chef pushes the meal into philosophy, which actually was the position maintained by the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus. This meal was designed to reflect some key components in life.

First, ginseng tea was served. It had a hot, sweet cereal taste.

The first course was “Cause and Effect”: it was planned to be spicy, bitter, sour and sweet. Bitter melon and tofu was laced with spicy spice oil. There was a high contrast in flavors. Also part of the course were pork “threads”, sometimes known in Taiwan as meat threads. They’re finely minced and dried pork that you add to other things as flavoring. Another item was seaweed gelee’, which was lemony — tangy but sweet — but actually flavored with grapefruit. Also on the plate was peeled tomato served in a new way, on a tomato leaf. It felt in the mouth very much like tuna sashimi. This course was very challenging to the palate and I learned that’s exactly how it was supposed to be!

The next course was “Refinement”. It was soup that took hours and hours to make its rich stock. It was cleverly served in a bowl nested in hot stones, to keep its heat. The soup had pork, potato starch, shrimp, mushrooms, and the sweet scallion that Taiwan is known for wrapping bamboo fungus stuffed with clear algae noodles. Clear is clearly refined! The flavors were sweet but meaty. This course was matched perfectly with barley tea.

The next course was “Zen”, untying your problem. It was fresh, local, whole Ayu fish stuffed with mustard cabbage. The fish looked like it would be strong flavored, like a mackerel, but it was actually sweet and mild. I’ve always been told told that fish cheeks are a delicacy: they’ve got a pungent flavor of their own! The pickled, sweet greens made me think of Maryland’s stuffed ham with greens.

The next dish, “Sublimation”, was in-season fresh bamboo shoot stuffed with shrimp. I had never had fresh bamboo shoot before: it’s too perishable to export to the US. Its flavor reminds me of steamed artichoke. It was poached in soy sauce. Yilan is not industrial, so its local produce is especially prized. There was also almond tofu that was part of this course.

The next course was “Stylishness”. I think in the West, we think of life philosophy as being this heavy, serious thing. However, stylishness is a concept that is important to the chef. It’s all about personal expression. This course was lamb that was sliced, stacked, braised and seared into a tender square, almost like pork belly. It was served with taro root, which has a starchy quality, shrimp, leek and chili pepper. That’s a completely different way of presenting lamb than anyone else is doing, yet it’s luscious. That’s personal expression at work for you.

The next course was “Satisfy”: it was congee (cream of rice porridge) with crab and shrimp. Congee — prounounced “con- jee” — is the comfort food of Taiwan. They love it for breakfast there, even (especially) savory. There were pieces of salted mackerel to add on top. It might be a cultural thing, but the mackerel made the dish more challenging to me.

A cold towel was offered, it being summer in the tropics. A special 8 hour cold drip coffee was offered, with a deep flavor. I was encouraged to not use sweetener or cream with it. I also took a little back to the hotel, which made for a great wake-up in the morning. I normally do like cream and lots of it, but I’m not supposed to have cream in the am. This coffee worked perfectly for that! It helped push the jet-lag out.

Dessert was almond tofu and golden watermelon. Taiwanese like fruit for every dessert.