Where to eat TAIWAN 🇹🇼 Zürich: Simon Says Taste Taiwan

Simon Says Taste Taiwan

Zwinglistrasse 39, Zürich

What we ordered: For two people, one cucumber salad as an appetizer and for main courses, one spicy beef and one shacha beef with water spinach served with two bowls of white steamed rice. To drink, we had six Taiwan beers. 

Cost: 132 CHF / €142 / $166 

There is something about hot, spicy food on hot summer days that reminds us why we are alive. All the more so when you can eat delicately prepared Asian dishes in a verdant patio in the middle of a city where even the screams and police tending to those incidents in a red light district a few blocks away are muffled by an implosion of flavors and chilis.

Simon Says Taste Taiwan is one such oasis in Zürich serving delicacies from the free and democratic island that authoritarian China claims as its own. As a reminder of the threats facing the island, the teenage help had on a Ukraine T-shirt, a reminder that more than what's for lunch is on the plate these days in Europe.

To begin, we ordered the cucumber salad and a couple of ice-cold Taiwan beers, perfect for the summer heat. I wanted to order the national dish, the much-lauded beef noodle soup, but as we came on a Saturday ahead of their holidays, they said they sold out the night before and had not made more, so as to not be left with more than they could possibly serve before breaking for their summer recess. Wholly respectable reasoning for certain but nonetheless disappointing, as I am with less of a basis of experience before preparing my own version.

Georg, aka "Mr. Swiss Global Dining," has visited Taiwan in his work as a journalist for Switzerland's German public television station SRF. He decided immediately on the spicy beef. I took longer, frustrated out of my first choice before he counseled the shacha beef with water spinach, suggesting it looked most interesting as my first choice was out. I concurred and so we rolled with it, ordering another round of Taiwan beers as the first of the light beers went down very fast.

The cucumber salad was a nice mix of long cucumber wedges, a hint of spice and a bit of sesame. Light and chilled, a perfect summer appetizer. While not necessarily needed, it was a good prelude to what was to come and the opposite of hot, beefy and spicy.

First the shacha beef with water spinach came out along with a bowl of rice which we split as we waited for a few minutes for the spicy beef to follow. It was by far the more delicate of the two dishes, served in a hot cast-iron pan, not dry but also not overly sauced. It was nice but perhaps nothing to write home about, though no complaint either. Still though, there was a bit of dissatisfaction that there was no beef noodle soup the day we went. 

While we vowed to come back some day for it as all was pleasant enough and so far so good, the master dish arrived, the majestic spicy beef. Served in an absolutely enormous bowl, swimming in red chili sauce and smelling like the spiciest hot pot, the spicy beef was every bit the spicy soup I wanted with the beef noodle soup. Served with Chinese cabbage as well, the beef was a dream. Taiwanese-style spicy beef may be a new happy place.

The spicy beef, besides being enormous, delivered on impact, color, flavor and spice without being overly so. It was the kind of spice to make you sweat on a hot day and equalize the body temperature with the elements. It was not the kind that made you uncomfortable, requiring milk or dairy and looking and feeling white as hell (if you are as I am) while suffering at the hands of the creature comforts of another's culture. It also absolutely required a third Taiwan beer to temper the spice and also satiate the thirst that came with it. 

In the end, we left satisfied and content to return some day. There is more to try and given the authenticity, Simon Says Taste Taiwan is a place to come back to, not least of all for the beef noodle soup (though I will try my hand at it beforehand). We even had at the next table on the patio, tech bros flirting with libertarian fascism on one of their podcasts, discussing and being discouraged from dipping further into those waters by a Taiwanese friend and colleague. Freedom you could taste, in other words.

Let's hope we can continue to taste freedom with our tongues and words, keep things spicy and batten the hatches before the gates of hell break loose.

How to get to Taiwan from Switzerland: 

Taipei is half a world away and as such, you are looking at a minimum 14.5-hour odyssey with one layover. The fastest routes from Zürich are with Cathay Pacific via Hong Kong and Turkish Airlines through Istanbul, both with an approximately one-hour layover which might be cutting it close and extend travel times. Other routing options include Swiss Air or British Airways through London's Heathrow Airport with a connection on China Airlines, Austrian Airlines through Vienna with a connection on China Airlines as well, Emirates via Dubai, Etihad via Abu Dhabi and Thai Airways with a connection in Bangkok. 

From Geneva, similar options are available with the addition of routes on Air China and China Eastern via Shanghai or Beijing.

How many Taiwanese are in Switzerland: Around 1,250

Distance between Bern and Taipei: 9,678 km

Distance from Zürich to Taipei: 9,522 km

Come Friday: learn how to make Taiwan's national dish, beef noodle soup, and about its origins.

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