Le Pont （樂 朋）

Here is a most interesting restaurant in Taipei: "Bistro Le Pont", near Yungkang Street, the hot spot for little cafes. As you can see from the photos, it's a French bistro. The menu is in Chinese and French (with prices given in Taiwan dollars and Euros). The wait staff greet you with "bonjour" and bid you farewell with "au revoir." The specialty is goose.

But the food is not French. It's all, or nearly all, Chinese food. Breast of goose is served two ways, smoked and roasted, both absolutely delicious, tender and not a trace of fat. You can order rice or noodles (for example, fried rice with goose meat). We had some vegetables--an order of squash and an order of bean sprouts, both very good but also similar in that they both seemed to have been sauteed in goose fat. Soup with bamboo and some goose meat. etc. etc. etc.

The table is adorned with place mats with a recipe (in French) on how to make duck confit. But you can't order it. The menu did have an item served with sauce "Saint Jacques" but I'm not sure what this is (my only reference is the scallop). Alas, there is no foie gras.

The original restaurant is in the city of Kaohsiung, in southern Taiwan, next to a bridge, hence the name. The translation into Chinese is clever: "le peng" sounds like Le Pont, it means "happy friends."

I'm told that "theme" restaurants in Taiwan are very popular. ( There is a restaurant where the theme is a hospital. Diners sit in wheelchairs.) At Le Pont, the French bistro is a theme, not a cuisine.