French food on the west side of Taichung

1-22-13 7:05am Tues. (1)

      With all the different restaurants Leona and I have eaten at in Taichung, I could start a food blog. I’ve only written about a few of them choosing to write about other aspects of life in Taichung, but I’ve save almost every business card I’ve taken from these restaurants. Yesterday was no exception. We celebrated Leona’s birthday at a French restaurant on the west side called L’affection. They have no website so I can’t refer to their menu or prices on-line. We had a wonderful time and Leona was in her best form, looking great with joyful conversation on one of the millions of topics we could talk on. She thoroughly enjoyed the meal. So did I. Leona found the restaurant listed on Google, one of three French restaurants in Taichung. L’affection had escargot, according to someone else’s blog, a signal to us that it had more traditional French cuisine unlike the other two that served French fusion for uppity Taiwanese who were too stylish for traditional fare. Leona and I know what we like. Food is like a history for us, a personal history. We can compare the dishes here with similar French restaurants we have eaten at in Brooklyn, Manhattan, Syracuse, Quebec, and Paris.

      After dinner, we took a walk in the west side of Taichung, so unlike Taichung with straight wide streets, sidewalks (!) and more style than stores. The tall expensively cold –looking condominiums, with not one person outside them on the streets, was not the place we’d want to live. This was not a neighborhood for humans. We walked through the modern garden of the art museum. I swear I thought I saw some modern art exhibit of silhouettes of people of varying sizes frozen on the front lawn. I was surprised when they moved. Turns out they were practicing t’ai chi.  Leona laughed at me. After being moved aside by a plump young American woman jogging in the dark on the broken narrow path in the park, we were drawn to the nearby culture center by the sound of what we thought was an er-hu ensemble. It turned out to be two dozen random saxophone players practicing the same traditional Chinese songs outside the entrance to the culture center’s 7-11!