A LETTER FROM TAIWAN

21 March 2014

Innovations in Ice Cream

“You mean that I have to queue an hour for an ice cream? You have to be kidding?” And it wasn’t as if I was in some fancy establishment in Taipei; this was in laid-back Taichung. Still, the ice creams being eaten around me looked very good, and I had nowhere else I needed to be, so I shrugged and took my turn in the queue.

A ruin reborn: the building formerly known as Miyahara Eye Clinic

The building itself is interesting. Dawncake, a specialist in cheese and pineapple cakes, acquired this abandoned building in 2010. Inscribed on the stone portal are the characters “Miyahara Eye Clinic”. This was founded by Takekuma Miyahara in 1927, when Taiwan was a Japanese colony (1895–1945). After the war things went downhill and the building’s subsequent uses included hair salon, eatery, taxi bureau, bus station and newspaper office. It was finally ruined by the big 921 earthquake in 1999 and further damaged by Typhoon Kalmaegi in 2008, becoming a dangerous building requiring demolition. Dawn rescued the building, keeping the old ruins but enhancing them with an interesting new structure and decoration. From 2012, Miyahara has been reborn as a new ice-cream store; it no longer cures your eyes but satisfies your senses and stomach.

Miyahara Eye Clinic: an unusual name for an ice cream brand

Let me show you how long the queue was outside Miyahara. By the time you get the front, of course, you order the biggest ice cream on the menu (see below).

And it was worth every minute of the wait ...

I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about my leisure activities, but I also visited another interesting new ice creamery in Nantou.* Nantou is a county in the mountainous centre of Taiwan with a population of about 500,000, famous about its beautiful Sun Moon Lake. This is where President Chiang Kai-shek liked to spend his down time (his house is now the five-star Lalu Hotel and the site of a Taiwan conference we organized in 2009). From these bucolic surroundings has emerged the e-commerce chocolate-maker 18 Degree Chocolate (http://www.feeling18c.com/en/). Before you ask, 18°C is the best temperature at which to taste chocolate (it’s a bit like the coffee chain we used to invest in, 85°C, which, as you can doubtless guess, is the best temperature at which to make coffee.) The physical store allows passers-by to enjoy their delicious chocolate and take-away ice cream, with a rest area (to recover from the calorie intake) and free all-you-can-drink coffee and tea.

Just right: 18 degrees of ice cream

All the products are hand-made. The chocolate is wonderful, but now I think I prefer their ice cream, which comes in many novel flavours such as Lichee Rose, Black Sesame, Vegetables and Fruits, Honey Mustard and even one with salt. I wanted to try them all but they wouldn’t fit in one cup.

*Note to worried readers: I am rake thin and can eat as much ice cream as I like with no discernable effect.

Warren Linwww.odfund.com