Really good Chinese food in an elegant setting. Red Castle is an old Victorian building built in 1899, and opened as a restaurant in the year 2000, the interior completely renovated.

Entrance:

The first two floors of the building serve traditional Taiwanese food, the 2nd floor providing more private rooms/spaces for parties. The third floor, the top area with all the christmas lights, is a European style coffee/bar area with outdoor seating along the veranda. I went up there to take a look after dinner, and the modern, dark gray decor with jagged glass chandeliers and Jazz music playing in the background, really made me feel like I wasn’t in Taipei anymore! People up there were eating big ice cream sundaes, cakes, drinking coffee, and enjoying the pretty mountain and river view of Danshui. Looked like a good place to sit and relax, I definitely want to come back some time.

Left: the sign to go into an alley leading up to Red Castle.
Right: the 106 steps up to the restaurant. A tiring climb for unfit hungry chickens like me!


Interior:

Bright lighting and stone walls with windows, with dark wooden tables and comfy upholstered chairs. Kind of decorated like a home.

Stir-fried Bitter Squash with Salty Egg NT$180

This is one of my favorite Chinese dishes! Red Castle makes it good: soft and crispy strips of yummy bitter bitter melon stir-fried with slices of yummy salty salty preserved eggs into a thick gooey and creamy mix. Definitely an acquired taste, but I love it! Perfectly bitter and salty and creamy, great with a steaming bowl of plain rice.

Vegetarian Diet Soup with Hair Vegetable NT$280

Thick cornstarchy clear soup seasoned with lots of black pepper. Crispy golden mushrooms, crispy strips of Chinese radish, and very thin “hairs”. The hairs were some kind of seaweed like vegetable that you can barely taste or feel.

Red Castle Sweet and Sour Fish NT$300 (house recommended)

Crispy battered and fried soft white fish in a thick gooey sweet and sour sauce tasting strongly of sweet red peppers and pineapples.

Seasonal Green Bamboo Salad NT$260

Another one of my favorites. Fresh chilled crispy bamboo shoots topped with Asian sweet mayonnaise.

A bowl of rice with sesame seeds, and a bowl of the Hair soup.


Steamed Tofu with Lotus Leaves NT$360 (house recommended)

Tofu in lots of sauce, steamed in a giant pretty leaf.

Close up of the tofu:

Super soft tofu, like a steamed egg, in mildly spicy sauce flavored with black fermented soy beans, soft little mushrooms, tiny bits of pork, peas, and little shrimp.

All the dishes we ordered at Red Castle were very good. Real light, but really tasty, and no oily feeling in the mouth afterwards. The only problem was the newbie waiters, who ran around back and forth to tables, not knowing which dishes weren’t available, who stuttered, and who cluttered the tables 2 or 3 at a time, probably for moral support. Other than that, the food was great! I’ve rarely gone to a fancyish Chinese restaurant where the food was down-to-earth and full of flavor.

total+tax= NT$1463 (dinner for 3)

This entry was posted by chicken on Sunday, August 6th, 2006 at 8:57 pm and is filed under Taipei, Taipei County, Chinese/Taiwanese. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.