We had the pleasure of visiting the little restaurant in ChiaYi. https://www.facebook.com/miseenplacebyrealfood/
The first floor is decorated in a French kitchen style with ingredients sourced locally. The second floor is a tea room run by an Alishan tea master.
Served by a husband and wife team the menu changes everyday depending of the fresh ingredients purchased in the morning. Our starter included a fresh salad, radish pickle and liquid egg yolk cooked with five spice sauce. The companion soup was delicious Taiwan style miso compared with Japanese style it was much less sweeter.
The main dish was a duck leg pan fried French style with crispy skin. This was really exceptional. The dusting of herbs especially parsley tickled the different tastes from the meat. Very juicy indeed and the flavours simply melted out from the dish.
Later on, we were invited to the second floor tea room to taste four types of fermented tea. This tea master mentioned his personal goal of avoiding confining himself to the traditional tea making process and has pursued a number of recent experimental techniques. He started with tea leaves mixed with black tea and oolong.
Next he brewed with different varieties of flowers and then shared with us a ball of black tea from Alishan. The tea is stored for 3 years to allow it to absorb honey fragrances. When he poured hot water into this tea, the flower and honey fragrance were released immediately. The tea shows an amber colour and tasted slightly sweet. I think this tea is excellent as an appetiser. It has very different taste from SunLinkSea black tea we recently tasted. If you are visiting ChiaYi soon we recommend you visit this restaurant for a great eating and tea experience.
*It's a shame, this couple decide to explore their life in the other restaurant, so they shut down this little gem. But the teahouse still operate by father in Alishan mountain.