Taiwan Day 7

On Thursday, my dad and I went to NTU early to walk around the campus and to meet up with my dad’s friend who’s a professor at the university. After touring the school, we met up with my brother to drive to A Cut Steakhouse:

A Cut Steakhouse is located on the lower level of a nice hotel in the city (as are most nice restaurants in Taiwan). Isabel, my dad’s wife, is a fan of the restaurant because they have good steak and they also have a great lunch special (pre-fixe). We started off with some warm bread:

They gave us brioche and multi-grain and both were really great! We definitely had more than one serving, especially since they came with lots of soft butter.

The lunch pre-fixe deal comes with an appetizer, an entree, and a dessert (the price is actually determined by the entree you choose). For the starter, I ordered the tuna tartare:

Too peppery, but the tuna was fresh. David ordered a better appetizer (grilled octopus) and my dad ordered the smoked salmon, which was also really good.

For my main entree, I ordered the Australian dry-aged steak:

The waitress brought out four different types of salts to add to the steak – Himalayan, sea, Hawaiian, and fleur de sel.

Isabel is friends with the chef’s mom (I think they used to work together) so he gave us lots of extra sides, including my favorite, the french fries:

They were meaty and crispy (but not too crispy) and David, my, Dad, and I ate almost the entire pile.

For dessert, we all got souffles with passion fruit sauce:

I think souffles are very popular in Taiwan right now because they’re on a lot of restaurant menus, but I don’t mind because this souffle was probably the best one I’ve had…EVER.

All of us after our lunch:

After lunch, we went back to the hotel for a bit, but then drove up to the Xindian area to Wulai – after driving for about 30 minutes, we arrived to the Wulai trolley:

The trolley takes you up to the mountain:

…where there’s a resort and amusement park. They were having a yoga retreat while we were there so we just walked around the amusement park area. It was kind of like a scary movie set; lots of closed down rides and statues, including this one:

And look at the aboriginal cut out:

To add to the creepiness factor, there was a slight fog settling onto the mountain as we were walking around and the visibility wasn’t that great.

After walking around Wulai and being completely scared of being up in the mountain so high, we took the trolley back down to Xindian and drove back to my dad’s house to have dinner with Isabel. We ate a HUGE watermelon and then my dad drove us back to the hotel to prepare for another day of eating!