The Villa Herbs and Mr. J (pt 2).

The weather has changed DRASTICALLY! It is seriously cold now. I'm talking seriously cold. I'm not sure if I've ever seen weather this cold in LA. During the day I'll be wearing a long sleeve shirt, a sweater, and a jacket, and I'll still be cold. And when the wind picks up and nips at your neck and face... oh man. I need more clothes and a scarf immediately. If you're reading this, mom and dad, your son is freezing. Send him more money :]

Yesterday Jenn and I went to The Villa Herbs. We found this restaurant way back when with Brian and Tiffany during our failed Ice Bar escapade. We passed by this restaurant and thought, wow this place is REALLY cool! So we picked up a card and forgot about it until a few days ago, when I suggested we check it out. It took us about an hour and a half of wandering around Taipei, asking locals, and getting pointed in every direction to find this place. It's located in a seriously random alley in seriously random district of Taipei, so yes it is somewhat hard to find. But it is worth it.

The Villa Herbs was as cool the second time as it was the first time. The design and layout of the place is out of this world! You walk in and there's smoke and a bridge going over water with fishies in them and... well just look for yourself:

The exterior. Very sweet from the outside. Even sweeter on the inside.

You walk in to this very cool bridge/water set up with smoke machines or something. I took these last two pictures from my seat!

I've never seen a restaurant set up the way this restaurant was. It was half restaurant half cigar club; in another half of the restaurant (separated by another bridge on the second floor) you can lounge and chat with homies in dark and moody rooms, sitting on thrones of chairs with a cigar. Very cool but I didn't get to take pictures in there... the people chillin' there sucking on their cigars looked really hard core and I didn't want to displease them.

The food at Villa Herbs was likewise out of this world! I had a huuge stomach ache that night, but Jenn was ok, so maybe it was something I had earlier in the day. Regardless, the food was still freakin' delicious and really something special.

Now, this garlic bread will haunt me forever. You have to buy each piece of garlic bread (2$ for two) but they are seriously the best garlic bread I've ever had in my life.

Marinated baby pike with raspberry and onions. Jenn and I didn't know what the heck a pike was when we ordered this and quit e frankly, we still don't. But it was freakin' delicious. Pretty sour though, so watch out.

The only thing Jenn didn't try during the meal was this, my lamb chops, and I got huge stomach aches that night and she didn't. Thus one can conclude my stomach aches were probably due to this but you know what, if it was, totally worth it. These lamb chops were freaking awesome.

I only had a small bite of Jenn's pork but judging by the speed at which she ate it, I'd say it was pretty good.

Afterwards we found our way out and decided to check out the 24 hr Eslite mall on Dunhua. Eslite is like the Sogo I mentioned earlier; a big multistory mall with everything you can imagine, from food to books to stationary to music to clothes etc. Vicki, Peter, I found your present from Taiwan here, I think you guys will like it! However, only the bookstore of Eslite was open 24 hr, and books bore me and Jenn, so after some "that cone is so dan-gerous" ice cream, we left at 10:30 and headed back to Guo Qing.

Entrance to the 24 hr Eslite. The feathers are fake.

Today a large, large group of us went to Mr. J. Mr. J, if you recall, is Jay Chou's restaurant. There are two of them in Taipei, so we decided to go to the other one this time. It's pretty amazing how different this one was compared to the first one we went to. The first one, it was hard to tell you were in a Jay Chou restaurant, it was so unassuming and blank of Jay Chou references. This one is completely different. It's located in the Taipei medical school, and it is HUGE. It is its own building in itself, and when you walk in you're bombarded with pictures of Jay Chou on the walls, memorabilia from his "Secret" movie (including the piano he used in the movie), and Jay Chou music blasting from the speaker system.

The food was the same: surprisingly good and reasonably priced. It was weird sitting in a completely Jay Chou-themed restaurant... when's the last time you sat in a restaurant themed after a single living pop sensation? Remember how in the first Mr. J I talked about how I was surprised they hadn't named dishes after his songs? Sure enough, there was a meal in the "Bu Neng Shuo de Mi Mi" menu called the "Dao Xiang" meal. Oh Jay, you are too clever.

And that, in short, along with a lot of shivering and studying, was the past two days. It is supposed to warm up this weekend, and a lot of people are heading all the way down to southern Taiwan to Ken Ding beach. We'll see where I end up. Until next time, zai jian!

-Justin