OJT EATS | Take Five
We've often walked past this little deli restaurant Take Five near the Mandarin Training Centre in Taipei and have been meaning to try the place for a while now. When we were looking for a place for a catch up dinner with a friend, it gave us the perfect opportunity to go give it a go.
We started off with the grilled prawns which came in a kale salad. You don't see kale too often in Taipei so this was a bit of a surprise. The dressing was a vinaigrette that was a little on the sour side but the prawns were super fresh and tasty.
Then it was onto the chicken breast salad. Now we're not normally fans of chicken breast but this was surprisingly good. It was really tender and pretty flavourful. The salad that it was on the side of was fresh with lettuce, tomatoes and a good dusting of parmesan. You don't get many good salads in Taipei but this is up there.
They also had a BBQ plate which ended up being a couple of different types of sausage and a grilled boneless pork chop. This was a great plate of well cooked meat. One of the sausages had a really strong lemongrass flavour to it which was different but really good while the other had a hint of spice which also worked really well. The pork was really well cooked; super tender and juicy. It all came on the side of some salad leaves and some grilled peppers which all made for a great lettuce wrap.
The last dish we had was this char siu rice bowl. It was definitely not the most photogenic of dishes but it was a classic case of not judging a book by its cover. The char siu was tender with intense flavour and was sat on top of a bed of scrambled egg and rice. It's a pretty classic cantonese combination and done very well at that.
All the food we ate tasted great and you could tell was all very freshly made using good quality ingredients. It felt healthy while not tasting like health food which is always a good thing. We'd definitely recommend this place!
Take Five, No. 15, Lane 6, Qingtian St, Da’an District, Taipei City
Cheers, JL