Going south along Hsin Sheng South Road past Hsin Yi Road, you pass the Chin Hua Girls' Senior High and Taipei Mosque on the right, and on the left stretches the zone designated for the No.7 municipal park. Here stands a row of car repair garages which, once they close down after dark, turn into a deserted oasis of darkness long familiar to Taipei residents.

With last year's stock market crash most restaurants suffered a 40-50percent fall-off in custom, but Hsin Sheng South Road has done well out of it. The two months from last April saw ten charcoal grill eateries open up along there.

Scenting a new line of business, one repair shop after another has cleaned up its act until this stretch of the road has been transformed. Now, as you pass by at night, a sudden burst of neon signs announces the row of charcoal grill eateries.

Once winter arrives, Taipei's night markets and street corners are awash with signs beckoning customers in for a meal of goat's meat stew, duck in ginger, or sesame-oil chili hotpot. Along with charcoal grills, all are Taipei's hottest eating-out favorites this year.

The reason business is booming, of course, is the knock-on effect of the economic downturn.

Export trader Mr Hsu, a regular at the charcoal grill eateries, when asked why he likes going there, explains without hesitation: "Easy parking! Here the road's wide enough to double park, not like Linsen North Roador Hwahsi Street where you can't find a space for love or money."

Pressed for another reason, he gives a somewhat embarrassed smile: "It's so cheap too!"

On further enquiry Mr. Hsu turns out to be yet another stock speculator with capital tied up in the market. Two years ago he left his job to play the market full-time, but when the market crashed last year he was left with a pile of overpriced shares. As his wallet shrank, so did his level of spending.

It used to be nothing to spend NT$5,000 on supper with a few friends; it's too late to kick the habit now, so finding value for money has become the main consideration. Grilled steak at NT$200 or NT$300 per person is just the thing for these consumers.

Charcoal grill eateries are winning the price war thanks to their low-cost advantage. As Ma Te-hsin, manager of T'ai Wei Restaurant & Hotel Management Consultants, points out: "The average 50 or 60 ping restaurant requires an initial investment of some NT$3 million, whereas converting an illegal repair shop into a charcoal grill eatery only costs about NT$500,000 all told."

The decor may be cheap, but skillful use of bamboo, paper lampshades, low tables and wooden benches gives rise to rustic charm a cut above any roadside stall. Thanks to all the media hype, customers forget their financial blues and while away the evening under strings of flashing lights, happily enjoying some trendy eating out.

Similarly cheap meals like goat's meat stew and duck in ginger have spread to Taipei from southern Taiwan in the last two years, and now you can see flashing signs advertising them every few yards.

The odor of goat's meat turns a lot of people off, so however did it get to be so popular?

"These days our meat supplies come from butchers who've perfected a way of removing the odor; all we need do is cook it, not prepare it ourselves," explains a proprietor of the Lucky Six, a seafood restaurant that also serves goat's meat stew.

His seafood restaurant abruptly lost half its trade last year, and to give his customers more choice he let the suppliers pressure him into advertising goat's meat stew as well. "It's no trouble really, they deliver the goat's meat ready cooked and frozen, we just heat it up for each order."

These suppliers well appreciate the importance of advertising and provide plenty of signs for their retail outlets which have gradually spread all the way up Taiwan. With last year's slump and the fall-off in Taipei's restaurant trade they hit the city in a big way, tempting customers away from NT$600 self service hotpots by offering meals costing as little as NT$200 or NT$300.

Still, goat's meat stew and duck in ginger are winter tonic foods with medicinal ingredients, for which demand naturally peaks in cold weather.

"It's chilly driving at night, so you keep an eye out for somewhere serving stew so you can warm up again." Taxi driver Wang Nien-chun adds with a knowing air, "And with this sort of food you have to be choosy!"

In the goat's meat stew line alone there's a whole range of brands on the market, and brand image in the duck in ginger line is additionally reinforced by the use of different colorings. Goat's meat stew is now available in a Cantonese style recipe that claims to contain 18 types of herbal medicine and trumpets its authenticity.

Clever marketing apart, the decline of dog meat has opened up a bigger market for goat's meat stew and duck in ginger. Supplies of dog's meat have fallen off amid rising animal protection sentiment and customers have been put off by rumors of mangy old dogs ending up in the cooking pot, preferring to turn to other types of winter tonic food.

Hsieh Po-ming, once a regular diner on dog's meat, has turned to goat's meat stew for the past two winters. "It's just as good and you don't feel guilty either," he says.

Slightly less popular than goat's meat stew or duck in ginger, sesame-oil chili hotpot is now served at 40 eateries throughout Taipei, according to restaurant proprietor Cheng Wen-ch'iang. He confidently expects it to take over as the next popular fad.

Cheng argues, "Our customers have got a lot younger over the past two years and hot chili sales are soaring in the wholesale market. People are turning to spicier food, and with the revival of authentic Szechwanese cuisine I expect sesame-oil chili hotpot to catch on too."

Eating out in Taipei has seen a welter of rapid changes over the past20 years as new food fads take over in line with the pulse of Taiwan's economic growth.

Back in the Sixties when per capita incomes were only around US$200or US$300 the restaurant business was far less complex. Western dining was dominated by steak houses popularized by American military advisers, while Chinese cuisine was either Pekinese, Shanghainese or Hunanese, with many of the restaurants coming directly from the mainland.

Most of their regular clientele were straight out of the top drawer, as ordinary consumers could only afford such extravagance on occasions such as weddings or banquets in honor of a new-born baby or some major anniversary.

But in the Seventies as the Taiwan economy went from trade deficits to hefty trade surpluses, per capita incomes started doubling every five years. The rich got even richer, and the poor became able to afford a bit more. For natural gourmets like the Chinese, eating out was the best out let for their new personal wealth.

Restaurants aiming for the top started providing gourmet dining for the moneyed classes. World-famous French cuisine became the next high-class vogue in Western food after steak houses, with the Ritz hotel opening a French restaurant as its flagship diner.

But tackling French cuisine isn't as wonderful as you might imagine, since choosing from the menu and wine list is fraught with pitfalls for the unwary and takes a good deal of know how.

"I recall the first--and last--time I ever ate French cuisine, I went into this fine restaurant with a friend where I was really made to feel like a lady. I was looking forward to an excellent meal, but I just couldn't cope with the menu at all. I asked the waiter and he explained patiently but I'd never heard of the ingredients even, and I couldn't imagine what it would taste like. Finally I ordered a few dishes at random and quietly finished my meal before slipping out as quick as I could," recounts foreign bank employee Miss Wang and many customers have had similar experiences.

"Consumers find it so difficult to surmount the cultural barriers that high-class restaurants have gone back to Chinese cuisine," explains MaTe-hsin. "And international hotels gave an important lead to the restaurant business."

The Taipei Hilton offers highly select dining in its Chinese restaurant division and soon other luxury Chinese restaurants opened up, such as the Jung An Szechwanese restaurant and the Lotus Garden. Then the Lai Lai Sheraton introduced Chinese cuisine with a Western touch, each dish individually served and the table still looking spick and span by the end of the meal, and this quickly caught on in luxury restaurants. Ambiencetook on even greater importance with last year's opening of the Grand Hyatt, where bouquets of flowers adorned each table and the lights were dimmed as the main course was "piped in" to the dining room, although sadly enough the recession has turned it all into a bit of a damp squib.

Meanwhile Taiwanese cuisine, long consigned to sidewalk ignominy, has also been repackaged and spruced up to provide consumers fond of the local cooking with some classier dining out.

The Green Leaf restaurant, opened in 1976 by Taiwanese Opera star Yang Li-hua, typifies the new acceptability of simple vegetarian rice gruel and side snacks and is hugely popular with big-spending Taiwanese businessmen. At last there's a restaurant befitting their status where they can go to eat oysters with black beans, dried vegetable omelette, and rice gruel with yams. Its success has quickly spawned imitators like the Plum Stone and Golden Leaf restaurants, to name but two. . . .

Not that such homely fare is to be sniffed at; a simple meal for two or three persons can come to well over NT$1,000. All the same, people today are sick of large dinners of meat and fish and tend to be more concerned with watching their waistlines and keeping trim, which means Taiwan's answer to nouvelle cuisine is catching on in a big way with the health kick crowd.

A lot of these types of restaurants have sprung up along Fuhsing South Road, where it's easier to park, although since construction work began on the MRT system their custom has dropped off somewhat.

Up to ten years or so ago, perennial local favorites such as oyster omelette, meat broth and fried noodles were always available at night market stalls or eateries clustered around big department stores, catering in unpretentious fashion to a clientele that would materialize wherever people spent four hours or so on the trot. When planning Wannien Plaza inTaipei's Hsimenting district, Yi Hui catering group deputy manager Ho Tsung-sheng did his best to draw these peripheral food stalls into the plaza's basement where they could be placed under central management, thus producing a forerunner of the food malls so popular today.

As department stores have expanded and diversified into entertainment centers, cinemas and cultural activities, so food malls have become virtually an essential part of their provision for customers' leisure and dining facilities. Visiting all ten sales floors of Taipei's Sogo department store, for example, is a day-long undertaking. A lot of people head on down to the lower basement floor where a host of inexpensive eateries offer a cornucopia of fine food. When the luxury Sunrise department store opened in Hsinchu, consumers quickly discovered the delights of its in-store eateries and a visit to the store for some window-shopping and a bite to eat are now a favorite local leisure activity on weekends and holidays.

Due to soaring rents and economic recession food malls are no longer confined to department stores, as the upstairs food mall in Taipei's new railway station illustrates. "Joint operation by numerous small shops helps to spread the rent burden, and it means customers can suit themselves rather than having to go along with their friends' tastes, as people can choose their own food and yet still eat together. This is the trend of the future," Ho Tsung-sheng maintains.

As for Taiwanese cuisine, of course the vegetable rice gruel and sidedishes mentioned earlier cannot cater for a big occasion such as a banquet.

The seafood restaurant Hai Pa Wang has prospered by filling precisely this gap in the market, accommodating in fine style the sort of banquets customarily ordered from sidewalk caterers. Its seafood-based cuisine, the pride of Taiwanese culinary art, is served in grandly spacious and elegant surroundings. The original restaurant's success has led to a string of 15 branches being opened all over Taiwan.

A whole range of other seafood restaurants offering Cantonese as well as Taiwanese fare have also cornered a fair slice of the market.

Taiwan's economic boom and its transition to a modern industrial and commercial society have introduced a quicker and more pressurized pace of life, in which eating out is regarded as a major leisure opportunity. "Some restaurants have fastened upon modern man's distaste for the cold, pitiless urban concrete jungle and his longing to return to the wild and recapture his childhood freedom, to come up with the concept of 'themed space eating,'" explains Associate Professor Teng Ching-heng of Chinese Culture University's geography department.

This trend has found expression in garden style coffee houses and olde-world restaurants carefully furnished in authentic period style, where for example soft drinks are still sold in bottles with glass stoppers like back in the Fifties and Sixties.

Out in the suburbs rustic chicken restaurants have sprung up in association with hot springs, together with a rash of beer parlor eateries.

In Taipei in the late Seventies and early Eighties it was all the rage to go out for a meal of free-range chicken on Mt. Shamao, although to make the most of it you had to take along a spare set of clothes to change into.

"Out at the rustic chicken restaurant you take a hot spring bath first to work up a good appetite, then a meal of coq-au-vin in the fresh mountain air leaves you feeling wonderfully relaxed," says free-range chicken aficionado Mr. Ch'en.

Mt. Shamao has long been famous in northern Taiwan for its hot springs, frequently visited by elderly keep-fit fans. Its wider appeal has resulted from the middle-class love affair with the sauna, for which hot springs offer the hoi polloi a more affordable substitute.

Originating as country farmhouses alongside tire hot springs, rustic chicken restaurants may look spartan but they offer spiritual re lease for the permanent city dweller, added to which their "free-range chicken" signs seem to offer the tempting opportunity to enjoy a rare pleasure at little cost.

Yang Chih-hung, head of the department of mass communications at MingChuan College, reminisces how, before such restaurants were popular, he would take a taxi up the mountainside of an evening with the likes of Wu Ching-chi and Lin Huai-min to enjoy the cool breeze and watch the sunset while the coq-au-vin bubbled on the stove. By the time they headed back down again there were few trippers about and not a taxi to be had. "It felt just great, despite the walk back downhill," he says. He often took friends to this rural hideaway to enjoy a meal of farmhouse cooking.

"Once it gained popularity it lost all its original charm, though!" regrets Yang. Rival establishments have sprung up all around, and Mt. Shamao, once practically deserted after dark, is now thronged with cars and all the restaurants decked out with strings of tiny colored lights, turning this quiet wilderness into a nightmare of vulgarity. Yang Chih-hung sometimes takes foreign friends there for supper, pointing out the lights with a joke. "Taipei's answer to Las Vegas," which his friends solemnly believe.

As these rustic chicken restaurants became more sumptuous their menus branched out beyond free-range chicken and live Shihmen fish to seafood of all kinds, and as their prices rose, so their rustic atmosphere evaporated.

As their attraction waned, the little beer parlors of Tienmu began to take center stage. "These used to cater to the American forces, and once they left they switched to the local clientele. They sold snacks to go along with beer, hiring an old lady to fry oysters at the door to draw custom." Thus Yang Chih-hung, himself a resident of Tienmu, describes the old beer parlors.

"In those days a big dish of fried oysters only cost NT$120. I was struck by the low prices the first time I went, it was as cheap as a roadside stall," says Mr. Ch'en, who used to dine at beer parlors several times a week. "It only cost NT$1,000 for a party of five or six, with more than enough to eat and drink for everyone."

Once beer parlors caught on they spread from Tienmu into the Jen Ai Road and An Ho Road area of eastern Taipei, then to every city in Taiwan. Regrettably, beer parlors went the same way as the rustic chicken restaurants, first changing their menus and then going all out for original decor, like the country farmhouse-style Franco, the mock Han dynasty style T'ang Chu and the Bus Station bar made from an assemblage of disused buses. . . .

Decoration costs and rising rents were soon reflected in menu prices, and "sometimes their meals were more pricey than any ordinary restaurant." Mr. Yang maintains that once beer parlors started charging stiff prices and had lost the advantage of novelty all the charm went out of them, their unique atmosphere evaporated and their business started tailing off.

In fact the beer parlors started feeling the pinch around 1988 when the local stock market soared.

"Consumers with bulging wallets were demanding something better, somewhere where they could eat, drink and play all at once," Ho Tzu-sheng says.

Two or three years ago the Water City in eastern Taipei, even with a cover charge of NT$1,200 per head, would have a full crowd every night. "Leisure" activities were all the rage, and any KTV, bar or pub was guaranteed to make a bomb.

In addition to the main theme consisting of these more traditional ways of dining, two variations have appeared on the scene in the past six or seven years in the form of fast food and vegetarian food. Both have proved highly influential and do much to shed light on modern consumer demand.

American fast food came to Taiwan in 1984 in the shape of McDonald's, whose first Taipei outlet achieved a record turnover for the worldwide chain in the first week of opening. They not only encouraged other Western fast food businesses to set up shop here, but also set the pace for local fast food outlets such as Chicken House, Ting Kua Kua and Han Hua, whose common features are based on McDonald's example of clean, bright surroundings, hygienic food and speedy service with a smile.

Perhaps McDonald's biggest lesson for the traditional local restaurant industry, apart from how to market food products, has been a whole new concept of eating surroundings. "Restaurateurs can no longer rely on a long established reputation, they need to have an integrated approach to everything from the fare, decor, menu design and piped muzak down to the quality of their staff." Ho Tsung-sheng cites the example of Ching Chao Yin, a northern cuisine diner where the staff must even be fluent in standard Mandarin.

With Taiwan's seemingly inexhaustible appetite for minced beef hamburgers, the long neglected steak house business has made a big comeback in the past three years. In contrast to their earlier practice of maintaining only a single restaurant, both the upmarket Hua Hsin and Hsing Chenand the downmarket Bullfighter steak houses have relaunched themselves as restaurant chains and opened up new branches elsewhere.

Amid the welter of eateries serving seafood and meat-based dishes, vegetarian restaurants specializing in the sort of food normally eaten by Buddhist monks come as a breath of fresh air, and over the past six years nearly 200 of them have opened up in Taipei alone.

"I sometimes fancy a change of diet, or if I've got the blues I pop into a vegetarian restaurant, listen to sutra chanting and enjoy a vegetarian meal, and I soon feel better," explains insurance worker Miss Ho.

In recent years vegetarian restaurants have gone all out for variety of fare, and by offering vegetarian "meatballs" and "squid with chili pepper" have succeeded in boosting their popularity considerably.

Wen Hsing-tsu, who has gone over from running a vegetarian self-service diner to opening Taiwan's first vegetarian hamburger bar, says: "Such variety is only possible in vegetarian food because vegetarianism is a growing trend worldwide and many supplies are imported from abroad." He points out that there is now an importer in Tienmu dealing exclusively in ingredients for vegetarian food.

Incidentally, the hamburger "meat" used in his vegetarian hamburger bar comes from the United States and the vegetarian hot dogs from Canada.

Supply, of course, springs from demand. And the power of religion, to get her with the modern liking for natural foods, have been major factors in creating this demand. Vegetarian food is promoted by Buddhism and the I Kuan Tao sect, both of which have recently been drawing in more and more adherents in search of the spiritual comfort of religion. "The I Kuan Tao sect emphasize worldly perfection, whereby helping people eat vegetarian food can be a means of preaching the faith," says Wen Hsing-tsu, himself an I Kuan Tao believer.

For those in the non-vegetarian catering industry who become I Kuan Taobelievers and must face the problem of making a changeover, starting up a vegetarian self-service restaurant offers the best solution as it can be done on an investment of between NT$400,000 and NT$600,000. This is why nine out of ten vegetarian cafeterias are run by I Kuan Tao members.

Viewed overall, the reason why eating out in Taiwan has seen so many ephemeral fads is due to several social factors, such as the growing number of single people and working mothers which has resulted in a rising number of people eating out and growing disposable income. According to figures provided by the cabinet-level Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, in 1983 the average Taiwan household spent NT$6,000 on eating out, and by 1989 this had risen to NT$14,500. An expanding market has led to a buoyant restaurant industry with a natural bias towards innovation and rapid change.

Also, Taiwan's burgeoning service sector has led to a big jump in the number of people working until late in the evening, including staff in hairdressing salons, department stores and supermarkets--and these together with people like futures traders, media staff and performers all need somewhere to relax over supper at the end of their night's work.

Of course behind the successive eating out fads there's always a certain element of curiosity, of wanting to be a part of the action, to show how streetwise you are, or simply to be able to share in the conversation at the office.

What will be the next trendy way of eating out in Taiwan? Like changes in women's fashion, it's an interesting social phenomenon. Whatever it may turn out to be, given Taiwan businessmen's sensitive nose and quick reactions, you can be sure of one thing: Taiwan isn't about to lose its worldwide reputation for superb dining in a hurry.

[Picture]

Chronology of Changing Fashions in Eating Out

(Compiled by Theresa Sung/Photos by Pu Hua-Chin)

[Picture Caption]

This winter charcoal grills are serving hotpots of all kinds to satisfy varied customer demand.

Goat's meat stew is the hottest night market favorite.

Nostalgic braziers of glowing charcoal are a popular hit with this year's eating out crowd.

(Above) Widely popular goat's meat stew is being served in sophisticated and innovative ways.

(Below) Self-service hotpot offers a winning combination of varied ingredients.

(Right) Is sesame-oil and chili hotpot with its spicy layer of red sauce going to be the next popular eating fad?

Gathering around a fiery chili hotpot with friends has become a popular pastime.

Rice congee with side dishes has held its popularity.

No need to go to a big restaurant for lobster, it's available now at cheaper seafood eateries too.

(Right) Hai Pa Wang provides an ideal venue for local-style banquets.

Elegant, refined, peaceful restaurants attract diners who've had enough sensual stimulation for one day.

Restaurants with a garden style layout cater to the desire to escape fro m the city for a while.

People today like to do their own thing, so food malls provide common dining areas where groups of friends can eat quite different types of food together.

(Right) The Indian deer parlor's dinosaurs show the importance of novel decor as a selling point.

The slopes of Mt. Shamao are studded with the lights of farmhouse chicken restaurants.

Beer waiters must be able to serve customers quickly enough to keep them merry or the beer parlor's takings will go down.

At their height, beer parlors were even popular with couples wanting a novel atmosphere for their date.

Targeted at youngsters and children, McDonald's has started a craze for Western fast food and inspired new ideas about eating surroundings.

(Right) This cornucopia of self-service dishes is entirely local cuisine.

It may look like scallop with coarse greens, but it's really celery with shredded ginger.

Goat's meat stew is the hottest night market favorite.

Nostalgic braziers of glowing charcoal are a popular hit with this year's eating out crowd.

（Above） Widely popular goat's meat stew is being served in sophisticated and innovative ways.

（Below） Self-service hotpot offers a winning combination of varied ingredients.

（Right） Is sesame-oil and chili hotpot with its spicy layer of red sauce going to be the next popular eating fad?

Gathering around a fiery chili hotpot with friends has become a popular pastime.

Rice congee with side dishes has held its popularity.

No need to go to a big restaurant for lobster, it's available now at cheaper seafood eateries too.

（Right） Hai Pa Wang provides an ideal venue for local-style banquets.

Elegant, refined, peaceful restaurants attract diners who've had enough sensual stimulation for one day.

People today like to do their own thing, so food malls provide common dining areas where groups of friends can eat quite different types of food together.

Restaurants with a garden style layout cater to the desire to escape fro m the city for a while.

The slopes of Mt. Shamao are studded with the lights of farmhouse chicken restaurants.

（Right） The Indian deer parlor's dinosaurs show the importance of novel decor as a selling point.

Beer waiters must be able to serve customers quickly enough to keep them merry or the beer parlor's takings will go down.

At their height, beer parlors were even popular with couples wanting a novel atmosphere for their date.

Targeted at youngsters and children, McDonald's has started a craze for Western fast food and inspired new ideas about eating surroundings.

It may look like scallop with coarse greens, but it's really celery with shredded ginger.

（Right） This cornucopia of self-service dishes is entirely local cuisine.

Chronology of Changing Fashions in Eating Out.