DianShuiLou Restaurant 點水樓

This is a fantastic restaurant in Taipei serving Shanghai style food. The decor is also very classy. Most westerns are familiar with Cantonese style Chinese food, some are with Shichuan style, but you have to be around Chinese food to know the other styles, unless you lived in Shanghai.

The most famous dish they have is called 小籠包 (small round dumplings steamed in a bamboo steamer). These dumplings have very thin, almost transparent dough as skins, and when sitting in the steamer, the folds of the dumplings make the dumplings resemble a Chrysanthemum flower. The dumplings are also juicy, so you need to watch out when you bite into them. It's best to take the whole thing in one bite, and they are small enough it's not a problem. The thinner the skin and the juicer the better.

Another similar dish is the crab meat version of the dumpling they were just incredibly tasty.

蔥烤鯽魚 (Braised Curican with spring onion) was another favorite of ours. The fish was first fried, then slow cooked. The flavors were deep and rich and so good.

Ham with lotus seeds and honey was one of the more expensive dishes (about 620NT) but comes with a lot of good ham, and sweet lotus seeds, almost like a dessert.

They have lots of other specialties and you should definitely give the restaurant a try when you visit Taipei.