...."Dinner at ‘Golden Mountain fine Arts & Life style’
Golden Mountain fine Arts & Life style is without a doubt the strangest named restaurant I’ve been to in Taiwan.
Located in central Taiwan, Hsinchu county the restaurant serves Chinese food but in an authentically inspired Japanese setting.
As you walk in the front arch the atmosphere instantly takes you away and it’s easy to forget you’re in the middle of a city.
Instead of your traditional ‘everyone sits under one roof’ model, the folks at Golden Mountain (no I’m not typing out their ridiculously long name every time), have employed a booth style setting.
Each table is housed in it’s own booth and you have the privacy of Japanese looking sliding doors to eat your meal. Great in a big group but definitely not somewhere you’d want to go on your own.
Food wise Golden Mountain is pretty decent and the servings are quite large.
From top to bottom, we had some type of chicken, some tofu type stuff with duck, random vegetables and a platter of jellyfish and some other weird stuff.
The platter scared me and apart from the jellyfish nobody could really tell me what the other stuff was… either way I didn’t go near it.
Brought out after I took the photo was also some more chicken dishes and a massive pot of beef curry. By the end of the night the table was covered in pots of food.
Dessert was a little on the strange side;
Sprinkles I can understand but I can’t say I’ve ever had cornflakes with my ice cream before. It wasn’t bad… just different. Maybe it’s just my boring pallete but I’d rather have had some chocolate sauce…
In the centre of Golden Mountain is a massive koi pond. This pond goes under the actual sitting areas to give the illusion that you’re dining out on a lake.
Architecturally it was quite impressive for the middle of a city.
The pond had a good selection of koi and once again made me homesick for my goldfish tank.
I’m not exactly sure what the price was for our feast but I’m assuming it wasn’t cheap. Golden Mountain makes for a nice change from your standard beef noodle cafes and is definitely a place to go eat for special occasions.
There’s no English at Golden Mountain though so make sure you bring someone who speaks Chinese.
July 19th, 2010 at 8:33 pm Yi(Quote)
why were you there? date? obviously not for the Koi.
July 20th, 2010 at 1:51 pm ozsoapbox(Quote)
Don’t think I’d be taking a girl to Golden Mountain on a date, the place was just too big. Maybe they had couples tables set up somewhere but I didn’t see any.
I was there on a work dinner. Apparently it’s tradition near Chinese New Year to take your employees out for dinner. Golden Mountain is apparently quite well known so my boss thought it’d be somewhere special for us to eat at.
July 22nd, 2010 at 9:43 pm James(Quote)
i’d love to know what jelly fish is like
July 23rd, 2010 at 1:40 pm ozsoapbox(Quote)
I’ve been told it’s pretty bland and always needs something to go with it.
Personally I’d love to meet the guy that saw a jellyfish and felt hungry enough to eat it in the first place. When I look at one eating it is like the last thing on my mind…
First instinct is to RUN!