Uncommon Cajun Cuisine in Taiwan

     

     My wife and I went to a new restaurant in Taichung called Nola Kitchen. They serve Cajun food! They are a chain with three restaurants in Taipei, two in Hsinchu, and one in Chungli. The dishes were reasonably priced.We had fried green tomatoes, blackened talapia fish, and gumbo. We also had chicory coffee. The nicest part was spending a lot of time talking about  Cajun and soul food we had in America with the waitress. Nola is missing a few dishes (like crayfish, corn fritters, collard greens, Polk salad, shrimp and grits) but, hey, this is Taiwan; we're lucky to get any good international foods at all! 

The lunch got off to a bad start because my wife felt I was taking too long to order. The bilingual menu had a-la-cart and set meals which, as I have come to know, is not always what it seems in Taiwan. For example, was the soup on the set meal the gumbo soup  or something else? It was something else.Was the dessert the key lime pie or walnut whisky on the menu or something else?  They were both not; neither pie was even available, anyway! As for the chicory coffee which I ordered, I withdrew the order because there was no pie. It turns out the chicory coffee was a free promotion, but I couldn't buy an imported can to make it at home because they were out of stock!. My wife originally wanted to order two rice dishes; jambalaya and gumbo and I balked. I wanted the fried onion tower and fried calamari and she balked. We agreed on one gumbo rice and one blackened fish; we agreed on the fried green onion and didn’t get the two other fried appetizers, and we agreed that the food was delicious and we will be going back for the Texas ribs and all.    

  Families would be happy to know there is a play area for children inside and plenty of parking on the street around the park next door and a garage nearby.

3 From Eslite's Eclectic Imported Used LP Collection

9-9-16

I went to the Eslite record album section to browse their eclectic collection of used LP imports. I found three records that I liked:

1.     Chante- Josephine Baker (199NT-$6.21)

2.     Earth – Jefferson Starship (199NT-$6.21)

3.     Top 30 USA CBS Radio Programming; Sept. 14,1987 – 3 discs (299NT-$9.34)

         Josephine Baker is someone who I had heard of but knew nothing about, until yesterday. The LP is a collection of fourteen recordings from 1931 to 1968. I watched a British documentary about her on YouTube last evening. She was quite an amazing person and entertainer, loved in France but shunned repeatedly by her racist, anti-communist (though she wasn’t a communist) American critics. 

The “CBS Radio Programming” is like Casey Kasem’s Top 40, complete with commercial jingles. It’s like listening to the “Cruisin’” series of radio programs; three-hours of really cool programming, including Michael Bolton’s first top thirty hit, and Felix Caveliere sitting in introducing Rascals’ songs! What a find! “Earth” is an album I have had a number of times, vinyl and cassette, but never on CD and not uploaded into my iPod for some reason. The packaging is beautiful but the album is not as good as its two predecessors, “Red Octopus” and “Spitfire,” but the bad is the same with the exception of Papa John Creach. 

Elvis Costello Without Abbott Presley

    

    I wanted to write a Taichung Journal piece about the Elvis Costello concert I saw but I didn't know what to write. “We went to see Elvis Costello one-man-show a few nights ago. That man is so full of himself, but it was fun to see him stretch his accomplishments to the breaking point, applauding himself, and at one point saying there was a special guest in the wings; himself,” is all I wrote about it to my friend in the entertainment mecca of New York City.

      There is not much else to say besides the facts: Elvis Costello entered the stage alone, and left alone. There were seven acoustic guitars and a baby grand piano on stage in front of a twenty-foot square flat screen made to look like a ‘60’s TV set. A few of his old MTV videos played when we entered the hall. During the show, photos of his life, his teddy boy grandfather who played on a White Line cruiser, flashed, and his father’s band playing a cheesy version of “If I had a Hammer” which he let run and came back during to start an aborted clap-along. It was all so contrived and well-practiced, including a segment of “home-with-the-family” songs (the 62-year old man has twin nine-year-old kids) by sitting in a chair, wearing a straw hat, swaying one crooked leg, and strumming innocently. 

     The biggest blow-up was “Watching the Detectives” when he looped a reggae beat from his acoustic which he played wickedly over. My wife loved all the paperback detective novel covers that flashed on the screen. 

     The piano rave-ups to other heartfelt songs that the audience didn’t understand (there should have been a LED loop with the lyrics translated, or at least English) sloppy and loud, were 75% attitude with flourishes. His hit “She” from movie Nodding Hill was the only famous thing he’s done in thirty years, got the most applause; his 'remember-me' aberration. The Elvis Costello show was the flashback we all will have in the face of death, though he gets to have one on stage between two typhoons in Taipei. 

      The venue, Taipei National Music Hall, was a foreboding. No tacky souvenir table had he. The glossy, thin program was for  season-ticket holding VIP’s only. Not for regular patrons, like me, paying $135 for the opportunity to see, out of desperation in Taiwan’s vast desert of western pop talent, a trickling oasis. They wouldn’t even give me a bloody program! Why? Because Elvis Costello thinks he belongs to a rarefied cabal of singer-songwriters and has read too many of his own Rolling Stone-Wikipedia biographies. He is not humble to play with a band of other musicians or a crowd of rowdy fans. Oh no, not him. Leave the riffraff for Madonna and The Scorpions. Costello is in the class of Richard Clayderman, who  can at least play a clear note on the keyboard. Linda Ronstadt had a Nelson Riddle Orchestra behind her comeback. Where is Bert Bacharach when you need him?