Taipei Chef, Artarmon

Work has been pretty hectic lately, which means there's limited time to spend eating food in far away places - not that I go to many far away places anyway :/ We've been spending our lazy Saturdays stuffing our faces in Artarmon, and one of these eateries is Taipei Chef, which is absolutely packed at night but not so busy in the day.

We decided to order a banquet-style lunch and selected 3 meat dishes to share. Out of curiosity, I also requested a beef noodle soup, which turned out to be a clear broth with rice noodles and strips of beef. Something like the Taiwanese version of pho. The soup grew on me, so I drank most of that and gave the majority of the carbs to the Boy to slurp up. Despite what it looks like in the photo, it was actually a decent size. It's a good thing we didn't order rice as well, because then we would have had to take away the other three dishes.

Beef Noodle Soup ($11.00)

Next up was the Boy's favourite seafood - pippies! He wasn't too impressed with the taste - a little bit too fishy for his liking. I didn't notice though - pippies generally taste heavily of brine, don't they?

Pippies (approx. $25)

The scallops were cooked in a sauce similar to that which came with the pippies. Standard Chinese scallop dish, so I was quite happy.

Scallops (approx. $25)

Lastly, the Mongolian chicken - not that this is a Taiwanese dish (I'm not even sure if this is Mongolian). It came sizzling on a hot plate with onions and carrot. Tender chicken, tasty, lots of sauce. Clearly Mongolian meat dishes come in a wide variety of styles, as I remember other such dishes being drier/ having more spices.

Mongolian chicken ($15-20)

I'd imagine this place is great to come to if you're in the area and craving something non-Japanese, or if you're just keen to pick up some takeaway on your way home.