After our trek from Taipei to Hualien and down the coast with our no doubt terrifying scooter gang, we headed for a restaurant recommended by my host’s cousin (the awesome tour guide).

None of us knew what to expect or what type of restaurant this was but with the first course we knew this would be an extraordinary meal.  I’m trying to find out the name of this place since I highly recommend it – I’ll add it in a later post.

This restaurant was a fusion of traditional aboriginal fare and french cuisine and it was phenomenally good.  We did a prix fixe menu and the chef even prepared special dishes for me since I do eat fish but not red or white meat.  Our second course is below.

Everyone else had the same thing except the bitter melon on the left was vegetarian for me while others had a pork version.  This is basically going to be a food porn post, just so you know. 😉

Here’s another course of breaded and deep fried sweet potato.

The first fish course was phenomenally good.  The fish design on the right was made with spices and adding that to the fish was great – the flavors really blended well.

I was told that the chef had no formal training and if that’s really the case then the fact that the flavors blended so well for every dish is even more phenomenal.

The rice balls were seasoned well, too.

Here’s the main event:

The seaweed was picked and the fish was caught that morning so everything was very fresh, including the shrimp.

We had other courses including soup but I’ll leave off with our dessert which was a refreshing fruit gelatin with fresh fruit.

In short, the dinner was awesome and totally unexpected for us since we were far from any major city.  It was a wonderful surprise to end our trek to the east coast.