News Brief: ready-made meals big at CNY

Sales of pre-ordered dishes for Lunar New Year festivities are on the rise, with a growing number of families around the country opting to order in the main meal to celebrate the traditional holiday rather than prepare it themselves, the Taipei Times reports today (full article here)

Local convenience stores and supermarkets launched promotional campaigns for pre-ordered dishes at the end of last month, ahead of the Lunar New Year, which starts on Jan. 23 this year.

The nation’s leading convenience store chain 7-Eleven,expected the number of customers taking advantage of its New Year meals to be higher than the 500,000 last year.

Sean Yang, a senior public relations specialist at the FamilyMart convenience store chain, said its sales of pre-ordered holiday meals were up 50 percent from last year. “More and more people choose to buy meals [for the occasion] instead of cooking themselves,” he said, adding that some Lunar New Year dishes can take hours to prepare.

Retail giant RT-Mart said that it has sold more than 7,000 sets of “self-select dish combos” over the past two weeks, a 20 percent increase on last year, while supermarket chain Carrefour has seen its sales of pre-ordered dishes double.

Restaurant Review: When ONLY 7-Eleven is available

When needs must, such as when suck in a typhoon or in the mountains, there is something microwaveable and edible and vegetarian in 7-Eleven. When needs must. Look in the freezers for a square plastic box with a yellow-and-blue label, titled 素三杯炒飯 (su sanbei chaofan; “vegetarian three cups fried rice”), made by Guiguan (桂冠) and costing NT$56 (ca. US$2). It is cheaper in supermarkets, but if there are supermarkets open, you probably don’t need to eat processed food.

Sanbei (“three cups”) is a classic Chinese cooking method, in which ingredients are slow-cooked in a sauce composed of one cup of soy sauce, one cup of sesame oil, and one cup of rice wine (sherry is usually suggested for Westerners without access to an Asian victualer). Since  素, usually translated as “vegetarian” really means something like “accords to Buddhist dietary rules”, the wine is omitted from this product.

Otherwise, the roll-call of ingredients sounds impressive: rice, brown rice, purple sticky rice, wheat, oats, buckwheat, tofu "wheels" (豆輪丁), vegetarian ham, mushroom, soy sauce, canola oil, basil, sesame oil and chili.

It is probably the presence of the basil and sesame oil that make this product worthy of an NOMM review, or at least of eating when there is ONLY 7-Eleven available.

On the downside, while the words  無防腐劑 (“no preservatives”) offer some comfort, its 575 calories (slightly hidden in the 210 calories per 100g formula) and 8.2 percent fat are not encouraging.

But, when needs must ....

Text and photos © Jiyue Publications 2011

Review: Hot Pot resaturant, Taipei

With this week's topic in mind, NOMM went in search of a cup of soymilk-creamed coffee. A quick Internet search brought up two possibilities: Starbucks and Loving Hut.

Starbucks, which like 7-Eleven is owned by Taiwan's largest food manufacturer and retailer Uni-President Enterprises Corp (統一企業), deserves credit for offering a soymilk option at all branches. This is possibly the WORST CUP OF COFFEE IN THE WORLD, however, since the coffee's flavour is almost completely hidden by a nasty, sweet taste that is presumably the soymilk. Moreover, at NT$105 for a small cup is not cheap (though again, Starbucks deserves credit for its NT$10 discount to customers using their own cups).

Regular soymilk users say that Uni-President's brand is among the worst available, and since Starbucks uses the sweetened version, staff are incapable of complying with a request for a sugar-free drink.

Loving Hut, which has 28 restaurants in Taiwan out of 135 worldwide, offers a vegan cappuccino. Each branch has its own menu; NOMM visited the Guangfu store, which sells hot pots and stews, with sides of pancakes, skewers and kimchi, cakes for desserts and various beverages.


The soup of the hot pot (NT$199) was tasty enough--NOMM chose Southeast Asian pumpkin and coconut from the half-dozen available--and free top-ups were taken. The other ingredients included too many processed and fake-meat items, however, and more than half of the vegetables was simply cabbage.

The pancake (NT$50) flavoured with Chinese toon (Toona sinensis; 香椿), which is becoming increasingly popular both on and off the local vegetarian scene, was good. Another positive point for Western vegetarians is that Loving Hut offers garlic and onions, unlike most Buddhist and Yiguandao restaurants in Taiwan.
On the other hand, however, whereas most of the nation's vegetarian establishments play quiet music or chanting as the soundtrack to one's meal, LH restaurants have large flat-screen TVs continuously broadcasting programming from the Supreme Master Television station, which seems largely to be the ideology of the exotic bleach-blond Supreme Master Ching Hai. Her message of "save the planet - go vegan" is the ethos behind the brand.

The soymilk cappuccino (NT$70) was also more than adequate. A staff member explained that the more authentic flavour was due to the imported US creamer being a "bean milk" (豆奶) using mixed ingredients rather than a pure soybean milk. Although not officially for sale, she offered some to NOMM for NT$80 per 930ml bottle.
Many of the menu items are also available to take away for cooking at home, as are cups of coffee. This is good news for tired shoppers in Taipei's Zhongxiao E. Road district, since purchasing only a coffee for inside consumption is not possible due to LH's NT$120-minimum purchase for restaurant patrons.


Address: No.30, Lane 280, Guangfu S. Rd., Da-an District, Taipei City
Tel: (02) 2777 2711

                                                                                                                      Text and photos © Jiyue Publications 2011