The Stone House Restaurant in Taipei...

If you like Chinese food you will definitely eat very well in Taipei. Taiwanese cuisine is known for its seafood dishes and flavorful, slightly heavier sauces. If you like variety, why not go for Peking one night, Hunan the next, Shanghai on Saturday, and on Sunday why not spice it up with Szechuan cuisine? Whatever your favorite style of Chinese, you are sure to find it. At upscale Chinese restaurants, you can expect to enjoy pleasant surroundings and excellent service. Between the top-end restaurants and the night market food stands, there are PLENTY of inexpensive to moderately priced eateries.

If you are in an unknown area, a good way to tell a restaurant's reputation is by how crowded it is around 7pm. It is still true that most Chinese restaurants pay more attention to the food than to the decor.

However, in recent years restaurant owners have tried to put more effort into creating an attractive dining room, though often at the expense of quality of food.

Therefore stick to the rule of thumb: do not worry about the plastic flowers and faded vinyl floor, sit down and get ready to eat some of the best Chinese food you've ever had!

I am very fortunate to have a " TAIPEI connection " who is also a food lover. So I together with some of his friends took a ride up the Yangmingshan Mountains to a small unassuming restaurant that had the finest Taiwanese cuisine i have tasted. The name of the restaurant was " THE STONE HOUSE ". Since he has been there a couple of times already with other friends he knew exactly what to order. It is famous to locals and the expat community of Tienmou. This unassuming restaurant nestled on at the top of the Yangmingshan Mountain serves authentic Taiwanese cooking. Dining al fresco is the norm amid the lush greenery, just a stone's throw away from the flower fields. It is being managed by an English-speaking Taiwanese, Sam, a Taipei American School graduate, who can facilitate orders among the foreigners as most of his staff only speak Chinese Mandarin or Taiwanese. The food is reasonably-priced and very delicious. A perfect venue for lunch or dinner - weather permitting.

What to order:

Deep fried shrimps with pineapples -The shrimps were not soggy like other places i have dined in but tastes like butter and very fresh.

Sauteed Eggplant with Basil leaves- this is a must try for Eggplant lovers!

THE FIRE BEEF -the dish came out all wrapped in aluminum foil and was covered with flames ( maybe that was why they called it so ). When the flames disappears you open it and VOILA! ... another yummy treat! this is another MUST-TRY !

National Palace Museum, Taipei

Taipei's National Palace Museum, located in the Waishuanghsi neighborhood of the Shihlin District, is the pride of Taiwan. It ranks as one of the four best museums in the world, in a class with the Louvre, the British Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The museum holds the world's largest collection of Chinese artifacts, around 700,000 items in all. Since the museum only has space to display around 15,000 pieces at any given time, the majority of the treasures are kept  protected in air-conditioned vaults buried deep in the mountainside. The displays are rotated once every three months, which means 60,000 pieces can be viewed in a year and it would take nearly 12 years to see them all. 

Some of the oldest artifacts in the collection of the museum are pieces of prehistoric pottery over 5,000 years old. The vast majority of these art objects are from the private collection of China's emperors.

Included in the collection are artifacts made from jade, bronze, porcelain, lacquerware and enamel. There are also tapestry and embroidery, and many priceless documents and books containing excellent examples of ancient Chinese calligraphy.

There are tours in different languages and for the handicapped. A multimedia slide show is presented daily in both Chinese and English languages. October is the best time to visit.

The museum provides a handheld audio tour system called INFORM. This system enables visitors to create a personalized guided tour of the museum. You can simply walk through the galleries, choose the highlighted exhibits which interest you and learn about them in your own pace.