The Taiwanese district stakes cultural claim, to the beat of her own rhythm
Taipei’s Da’an District is too rich and too old to care about being a hipster bolthole. She’s too self-assured for that. Meaning Great Peace, Da’an is like the middle-aged, award-winning actress – indifferent to younger, prettier starlets surrounding her.
But that doesn’t mean this central suburb bordered by Zhongzheng District to the west, glitzy Xinyi District to the east, and Wenshan District to the south isn’t reinventing itself.
Home to some of Asia’s most expensive real estate, it hosts tech billionaires, political dynasties, museums, parks, night markets, teashops, prestigious universities, and high-end galleries flogging priceless antiquities and skyrocketing contemporary Chinese art.
On party nights, its main thoroughfares overflow with luxury sports cars pulling up to some of the planet’s best Chinese restaurants. It is a veritable melting pot of sublime regional cuisines from across the Taiwan Strait, wedged between Japanese stable mates and a growing battalion of Michelin chef-backed Western eateries.
During the day, the pretty clique, the super-rich and the everyday people skip down those same streets, passing luxury car dealerships, discreet galleries hiding gazillion-dollar pieces behind key-code doors, and flagship designer stores screaming wealth and exclusion.
And behind those, in a maze of crisscross alleys, lies its beating heart, where the pretense gives way to the soul of the city. It is where young designers, boutique owners, tattoo shops, craft beer bars and fine-dining restaurants rub shoulders with Japanese BBQ joints, flower markets, French bakeries, organic tea salons and 24-hour bookstores.
“It's all about substance. There is a depth to this suburb that you won’t find anywhere else. It's the heart of the city and always will be,” Ruby Lu, a radio DJ and TV host, says over plates of ravioli and roasted ham at Mandarin Oriental’s swanky Italian restaurant Bencotto (mandarinoriental.com/taipei/fine-dining/bencotto). The Mo, as the locals call it, straddles the district after opening its ultra-plush doors to Taiwan’s first five-star-plus hotel last year.
A few blocks east of Mandarin Oriental’s opulent property sits Chuoyinshi (facebook.com/chuoyinshi). Taipei’s first real craft beer bar serves up frosties with names as eclectic as they are delicious: Brewdog Cocoa Psycho and Anderson Valley Horse Tongue Wheat, to name a few.
A five-minute walk east finds Home Hotel Da-An (homehotel.com.tw/daan), a new, minimalist business hotel, and Fancalay, a first-floor eatery and bar that fuses Western dining, Taiwanese tea culture and bespoke cocktails.
Heading east again, and a stone’s throw from Eslite, a 24-hour bookstore that’s a late night hotspot, and the stately tree-lined Ren Ai Road, sits Mume (facebook.com/mume.taiwan). This new speakeasy-feel eatery, led by chefs whose resumes feature stops at rock star Copenhagen joint Noma and Thomas Keller’s Big Apple’s Per Se, serves up locally inspired contemporary fare.
Taipei has been named World Design City by the International Council of the Societies of Industrial Design. As such, there has been an uptick in Da’an’s renovated public arts spaces, hotel builds and expansions, and eatery openings.
The capital of this leaf-shaped island is also home to the National Palace Museum and one of the world's great art collections, sharing its bounty through reciprocal loan agreements with other heavyweights, The British Museum, The Met, and the Louvre.
The art fallout in Da’an has been dramatic. Besides a legion of wealthy collectors, more designers, artists, directors, writers and musicians call place home than any other on this island of 23 million people.
“Da’an is a creative oasis in the Taipei desert,” says Tzuhan Yeh, who works with the local government to bring overseas designers to the city on residency programmes aligned with World Design City programmes. “Taiwanese designers are finding their identity (here) and it’s one of great energy and spirit.”
On Anhe Road, and its laid-back smattering of Japanese grills, cocktail bars and playground for thirty-something professionals, is Ounce (ouncetaipei.com). A café front gives way to a hidden door on its left flank, and a secret button offering entry to a crooked room in burnt orange reveals a bespoke American-style cocktail joint that probably takes its drinks very seriously.
A short walk down Anhe Road, diners scarf down delicate parcels of xiao long bao at Shangri-La’s Far Eastern Plaza Hotel’s Shanghai Pavilion (shangri-la.com/taipei/fareasternplazashangrila). The award-winning hotel chain just finished betting on Da’an’s resurgence with a facelift emphasising custom artwork and installation pieces.
A five-minute taxi ride from the 420-room hotel and a stone’s throw from Da’an Forest Park, (the capital’s nod to New York’s Central), lies Wistaria Teahouse (wistariateahouse.com). A former Japanese colonial dormitory and one-time sanctum of political activists and literati, Wistaria offers a range of boutique tea lines from the mid-priced oolongs to the wallet-crunching rare pu'er (dark fermented tea).
“Da ‘an is modern and urban, but its narrow alleyways are old Taipei,” says Arvin Chen, the Taiwanese American director of Au Revoir Taipei and Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? “It’s what I love about it. The intersection of east and west, old and new, all of it experienced on the street.”
