[Taipei, TW] - RAW - Best of 2018

The first thing you see after stepping inside RAW (most likely after standing outside and thinking, this is it, it's finally happening - because those reservations are not easy to come by), is this - a big wall that has the definition of "kitchen." The second thing is most likely all of the wood. The wood is Hinoki, a prized wood that is super fragrant. The smell evokes childhood memories of summers in Taiwan in our old house in 岡山, the last stop on the new-ish KMRT.

From there, your exceptionally friendly waiter will seat you and your party. Then, you think, hm, I don't have any utensils. When am I going to get them? Have no fear friend, check the table. There's a drawer that should just be to the right of you that has all of that. Now, can I get one of those at home? 

Next comes the menu. It changes seasonally, and doesn't have very much information listed. In fact, it looks like a game of BINGO:

We were seated fairly close to the kitchen so we could peek over and watch them work. You could see clearly the concentration on all of their faces. There is a ton of detail that goes into each dish, and it shows. Case in point, the first of RAW's Best Dishes of 2018 - the tea egg, reimagined. Instead of a chicken egg, a quail egg is used. And instead of a more traditional Chinese origin tea, Earl Grey was used, along with bonito for extra umami flavor. 

For reference, this quail egg is being held by my Lilliputian friend

Fried shrimp head (still slightly raw inside) served with a veggie purse with mioga, aka Japanese ginger, and toasted quinoa

This next course was congee reimagined, aka deconstructed. The soup was a sea escargot broth. On the left was puffed rice with uni and a fermented tofu sauce. If you pick up the puffed rice, you'll see below that there is pickled kohlrabi, which is a play on the pickles that people will normally add to their congee (among other things). I will admit that when I heard "deconstructed," I feel a tinge of revulsion. But, for this dish, I particularly liked the presentation, and how it looked like a neat rock garden. I was also a little surprised at how much flavor the sea escargot soup packed for being about two sips worth. But, it did have that feeling of using a faucet where only one side is hot, and the other cold, and what's someone gotta do to get warm water cohesion?

Pickled kohlrabi

My friends raved about this bread

We ordered the wine pairing to go with our dinner. This was the first course that included some wine. I have had hit or miss experiences with wine pairings. The best so far, has been Aubergine the restaurant at L'Auberge Carmel, and nothing has come close since. At RAW, it was ok. It didn't make or break my experience. That said, not having the wine pairing would not have impacted my visit. Ok, if I'm being really honest, it didn't always pair well with the food. The reason why Aubergine was so fantastic was that the wine enhanced the food's flavors. 

The next course was a crudo (not to be confused with sashimi!). We were instructed to take the entire piece and eat it at once instead of separating the layers. The layers consisted of scallops, enoki mushrooms, and smoked basil. This was a very delicate tasting dish, and two each person was the perfect amount for a tasting. 

This next course was listed as: bamboo, asparagus, and broken egg (although on the Chinese menu it said 土雞蛋, which doesn't mean "broken egg" - it's "native chicken egg"). There are four kinds of bamboo in this dish, and I believe the asparagus was counted as one of them. Our server mentioned that one is winter bamboo, flower of bamboo (fried and looks like a skinny piece of cauliflower), sea bamboo, and asparagus. We were told that there are three suggested ways to eat this dish. 

1. Use a spoon and scoop from the bottom to the top

2. Pick up a bamboo or asparagus stick and dip into the cream, or

3. Mix it all up and eat it like a salad.

This next dish was the most impressive, and the best tasting one. The sliced sheet is "fruit corn" (水果玉米) and it's shaved like how moms in Taiwan shave apple skins before slicing the fruit to feed their kids. The knife skills involved are tremendous. It's already hard to slice the skin of fruits and veggies for the average person, but with corn, it's harder as you have to keep the kernels together to form the entire corn sheet. 

For this dish, after marveling at the knife skills, we were to destroy it by mixing it all together and eating it together with the sauce and gnocchi. Another flavor that many non Chinese/Taiwanese people might find new to their palate is sorghum, which was used in the sauce. 

This next dish I had also heard about from friends who had gone to RAW already. This is a homemade truffle tofu with whey. The truffle is blended inside the tofu so it's very fragrant. I could actually smell it when others were being served and we didn't have it yet! On the left side of the plate is maitake with fresh truffle shavings on top. This was such a simple dish that I have never seen served so fancy before. This truly was a great dish. Notice in the menu it says "RAW TOFU" - this didn't mean the tofu was raw (which also tastes good when done right), they meant RAW's signature tofu dish.

The plating was completed at the table. The tofu was taken out of the tofu block and sliced at the table. Each thin slice is placed on the plate next to the maitake, before having the "soup" poured over it.

The next dish was cobia with furikake (on the Chinese menu it was "沙茶" which really confused me since 沙茶 and furikake are not the same at all), and aubergine. The best part of this dish was the thinly sliced sweet potato. The "flower" on the plate if you will. Sliced thin and dried, it was the best "potato chip" I've ever had. Not that the cobia wasn't great. I discovered a love of cobia at CitySuper on another visit. Sometimes they have special catch of the day fish in their sashimi section and that particular time, they had cobia belly sashimi. This cobia was served with a side of caviar. You can see that the crumble resembles furikake, which leaves me still puzzled about the "沙茶."

This next dish was "dirty chicken." Not everyone understands my love of silkie chickens because the skin and the meat is black/grey, but I was raised on this as a healing soup. Whenever I'm sick, I make myself a pot of herbal silkie chicken soup. This was different for me, the way it was served with black radish and "umami ketchup." I can't say I was a huge fan of this though as it felt very heavy after all of those other lighter dishes. But, this is what seems to happen at restaurants where the chef has a French culinary background.  

This was our amuse bouche. Our server had us taking turns and guessing what it was. I surmise for Taiwanese locals, it's harder to guess what they were going for, but the Americans got it - it's a celery stick made to look like rhubarb.

After dinner, we were given some nice, refreshing tea before they brought out dessert. It was chrysanthemum tea, which was nice on its own, but was a bit too naturally sweet for the red bean ice cream. I was also a little surprised at how much ice cream we were given. The plate had a very generous portion of red bean ice cream and cut outs to look like fall leaves. You have to really like red bean to finish this dessert. Even though I like red bean, it wasn't enough to finish it! It was just a lot after everything else we ate. I think if I had some Oolong tea, I would have been able to do more damage though.

This was our final game to play to round out our meal - guess the walnut. We had three guesses to find the ones that were already opened with a candied walnut inside. I am terrible at games, so I figured I would guess wrong repeatedly. Turns out, I'm not a complete loser and was able to guess correctly!

RAW Taipei
No. 301號, Lequn 3rd Road, 
Zhongshan District, Taipei City, Taiwan 10491

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