The Alleyways Go Retro

It is precisely when a shop is small that an owner can create something unique by giving their full atten­tion to the smallest of details. And because the customers and proprietor must interact at close quarters, there is a true human touch. These tiny spaces provide a beautiful window to understanding life in Taiwan.

The details make the memory

Zoc Kao has opened many famous coffee shops in Taipei over the years and has come to be known as a “cool dude” in the city’s barista circles. In September he closed his coffee shop in the Songshan Cultural and Creative Park and moved his business to an alley in the Da­dao­cheng neighborhood. He named the new shop Tobacco Flowers Op. 118.2.

With more than 20 years of experience, Kao has a deep understanding of the food and drink business. At one point he became mostly an invisible man pulling strings behind the curtain, but he has come full circle and begun to man the bar once again. “I still love the feeling of interacting with people,” he says.

In recent years, the establishments he has been opening have been getting smaller and smaller. At the extreme end was Alone Together, an experimental space of only five square meters that acquired a reputa­tion as “Taiwan’s smallest coffee shop.” A pilgrimage to it became de rigueur for tourists from overcrowded Hong Kong, who admired the shop’s creative take on over­coming its spatial ­limitations.

His current shop Tobacco Flowers Op. 118.2, though larger at 26 square meters, is hardly spacious, and it likewise demonstrates Kao’s attentiveness to the smallest of details. Apart from a short and carefully curated drinks menu, he has also taken great care with the seating, decor, and general atmosphere. “People usually have very short sensory memories when it comes to tastes,” says Kao. “But through the accumula­tion of details you can create beauti­ful memor­ies for customers that will last a long time.”

Bearing witness to his discerning eye, the objects in the shop impart a sense of warmth and light. With music flowing from 1960s speakers and cups of dark-roasted black coffee to sip, the spontaneously retro aesthetic echoes the ambiance of surrounding Dadaocheng.

Amid this relaxed and easygoing atmosphere, the customers, who sit next to each other on long benches, naturally strike up conversations with strangers. This warmth is a special quality of Tobacco Flowers that keeps ­people coming back.

At Tobacco Flowers even the smallest of details have been carefully thought out and have a story behind them. Zoc Kao once represented Taiwan in a coffee industry exchange in Okinawa, and still cultivates a spirit of friendship between Taiwan and Japan. He specially chose cups made by Okinawan potters for his shop, and has Okinawan craft products on display or for sale.

Putting the retro in everyday life

Yeh Shih-tao, the late elder statesman of Taiwanese liter­ature, described Tainan as “suited to dreaming, earning a living, falling in love, marrying, and living a leisurely life.” The city is famous for its deep cultural heritage and the relaxed attitude of its people.

That attitude about the right and wrong way of doing things is a defining characteristic of the city’s ­people and applies to both its century-old establishments and the shops recently opened by young entrepreneurs. Beef soup joints are open for business early in the morning, but coffee shops only open at 8 or 9 a.m. and then close punctually at 6 p.m. It’s not that the proprietors couldn’t make a little more money with longer hours, but they know how to be content with what they’ve got and put a premium on their own quality of life. It is an approach not often taken in other Taiwanese cities, but it represents the mainstream model for doing business here. If you want to find a simple idiom to best capture the unique spirit of Tainan, it is undoubtedly, “When the flowers bloom, the butterflies come.”

“Tainanese have taught me to shun the rat race and real­ize that ‘having what one needs is enough,’” says Rafal Chien, standing in the doorway of his shop Zyuu Tsubo.

Chien has long hair and a tattoo on his shoulder. It’s hard to imagine that this former real-estate agent, born and bred in Taipei, hadn’t even visited Tainan until he was 38. He immediately forged an unbreakable bond with the city. “In one year, I visited 20 times.”

Chien courageously rented an abandoned old building that was diagonally across from a hostel he was staying at and hatched a plan to move to the city. Two years later he formally opened Zyuu Tsubo, a Japanese rice bowl shop, in Lane 158 of Zhongyi Road Section 2.

Because the shop is ten ping (33 square meters) in area, he picked “Ten Ping” for its Chinese name. It has high ceilings, which were suited to its incarnation as a family-operated rubber factory before standing empty for nearly 40 years.

Although it is tiny, it lacks for nothing. A mezzanine gives it two levels. There is a sink, cooking area and refriger­ator upstairs, and a food prep area with chopping blocks and counter space for just ten customers downstairs. Here people are bound to “rub elbows.” It once caused an applicant for a job as a cook to exclaim: “I never thought it would be possible to prepare a complete meal in such a small space.”

In just four years, its unique atmosphere and exquis­ite food have earned the restaurant renown among tourists, but Chien has continued to insist on cultivating a local clientele. Neighbors young and old, engineers from the Tainan Science Park, and even the owners of the famous local cookie shop Ling Tih Tong and the bag maker Her Cherng Canvas are counted among Zyuu Tsubo’s loyal customers.

Chien loves to interact with those he serves. Proprietors of long-established Tainan shops have infected him with their perseverance and generosity. No longer focused on the bottom line and maximizing profits, he happily shares his thoughts with customers, and he also makes time to spend with his family.

“I’m particularly happy that I’ve been able to make images from the past part of my daily life,” says the animated and high-spirited Chien with a self-evident sense of satisfaction.

Reproducing a retro flavor

Tainan is famous for its snack foods, and it has many venerable old shops that have been making sweet tofu pudding, savory rice cakes, and danzai noodles, among other treats, for over a century. These businesses invari­ably started with one person walking the streets, carrying their wares on a shoulder pole. Nuo Fu Rice Pudding had similar beginnings. Its founder Chiao Liu started on the streets with two large pots of rice pudding that he transported on his grandfather’s old bi­cycle. After three or four years, his reputation had grown to the point where he resembled the Pied Piper, with long lines of customers forming wherever he went.

Liu went into business after graduating from college, proudly using his family’s recipe for his signature product and thus establishing a small-scale snack brand.

Nuo Fu Rice Pudding has a simple line of products, mostly selling rice pudding and sticky rice. The ingredi­ents and production processes for both products are much the same. Both are made with long-grain glutin­ous rice from Tainan’s Houbi that is left to sit for eight months. The rice has a mouthfeel where every grain is distinct. Liu then adds black sesame oil from Xigang, which gives a pure, clean fragrance. Both dishes come matched with dried shrimp, dried mushrooms, pork, and, as a highlight, a sprinkling of rock sugar. “When we cook rice pudding at home, we always add rock sugar because glutinous rice tends to make one feel bloated and sesame oil easily leads to an imbalance caused by elev­ated ‘fire,’” he explains, referring to one of the “five ele­ments” of Chinese medicine. “Adding some rock sugar puts things back into balance and eases bloating. This is wisdom passed down from older generations.”

It seems that even the gods look kindly on Nuo Fu Rice Pudding, for last year the business moved from a vendor’s mobile cart to a small permanent shop in an old building owned by the Taoist temple next door. Liu oversaw a complete renovation of the 33-­square-­meter, two-story space, which features brick-red terrazzo walls and wooden kitchen cabinets with green screens. Various features, including a giant vat of rice hanging from the ceiling on the first floor and some old Tatung-brand snack bowls, impart a distinctly retro feel.

But the four-seat bar facing the food prep counter is the feature that most causes people to linger. When customers sit shoulder to shoulder, enjoying an old-­fashioned snack at that counter as they exchange a few lines of conversation with the proprietor, it engenders a mellow and gentle atmosphere that is hard to fully explain in words. It turns out that the simple and elegant style of Taiwan’s people, which attracts many foreign visitors, is fully on display in even so small a space.

The Chinese name for Zyuu Tsubo is “Ten Ping” because it is only ten ping (33 square meters) in area. This small building is where Rafal Chien’s dream to move south started.

Japanese rice bowls, Zyuu Tsubo’s main product, may be quite popular in Taiwan these days, but they require much attention to detail. The chef needs to adjust how he prepares the rice and other ingredients in accordance with that day’s weather and temperature.

A small shop with a chic style offers tourists a reason to travel from afar.

Chiao Liu found entrepreneurial motivation in his own life experience, creating a snack-food brand from his family history.