A host of new vegan restaurants have been springing up across the city. When I touched down, several were still in their infancy and in the eight months since I arrived in Taipei, two or three more have opened. Here’s the first in a rundown of what Taipei offers for Western style vegan eating.
Naked Food
This is the baby on the block. They opened for retail at the new year, and for business at the start of February. As the name might suggest, everything they offer is raw vegan.
Raw veganism is something I’m open to dabbling in, but when I hear ‘raw’ I also hear high price tag and small portions. Naked Food’s menu is a fraction of the price tag that it would have been in London (where I once spent $40 USD on a soup, a small raw burger and a side of six sweet potato fries and left still peckish) but it still isn’t cheap compared to most of the vegan dining in Taipei.
The food and the decor are both beautifully presented. The kitchen is all stainless steel and stretches to the back of the room, covering as much floor as the dining area. I didn’t see them actually using the kitchen though – the food appeared through a hatch in the floor – so I’m assuming that the kitchen is for teaching culinary classes.
The coffee/tea portions are generous, although they use soy milk to make their lattes – I was expecting coconut or nut milks, which I would have preferred. They had the nice touch of coconut sugar, instead of normal sugar, which made the soy milk particularly surprising. We all ordered pizzas so we could split them between us. Here are some highlights:
Left to right top to bottom: Naked Food from the front; Chocolate and oat berry squares; Strawberry vanilla bean cake; ChimChurri pizza, cauliflower, tomato, marinated onion, tree nut cheese; Avocado pizza with beet root carpaccio, preserved lemon and tree nut cheese.
The owners were lovely and welcoming and definitely added a lot to the dining experience. They’re extremely passionate about their food, and I believe the menu will develop a lot over the next few months. The pizzas were delicious: the unanimous favourite being the ChimChurri cauliflower pizza which was divine. The food was fresh, delicious and full of flavour. It’s some of the best and healthiest vegan food I’ve tasted here.
My price tag for a decent amount of pizza, the raw strawberry vanilla bean pie and a latte came to 760ntd. This is the most I’ve spent on a meal here so far, and while it was enjoyable, my friend sent me a message afterwards which I echo: ‘did we really just pay 320ntd for a piece of pie??’
A lot of us left hungry, too, but they assure us they’ll be creating a more filling lunch menu soon with larger portions. It will include pasta, lasagne, wraps and flatbreads and I have no doubt it will be delicious. They are keen to develop their menu, and I will watch is eagerly. I’m not sure I’d pay that much for lunch again, or at least I’d save up first, but I’d go back for a coffee and I would like to try the lunch menu… when my bank balance has recovered a little. For me, at least, it’s somewhere I’ll save as a treat.
Rating:
Taste – 5/5
Value – 3/5
Atmosphere – 5/5
Details
Address:台北市中正區新生南路1段160巷22-1號, Taipei, Taiwan,
Phone number: 02 2396 2202
Facebook: NAKEDFOOD by Delicious Taipei
Check the Facebook page for opening hours and updated menus.
Hi there 🙂
Someone sent your blog post to me and I read it over and thought I could share some thoughts with you and your readers that would be beneficial. First of all, I remember meeting you and enjoying some small chatty time with you. Thanks for coming that day and sampling our food.
The first thing I would like to share is that the cost of your cake was NT 320 (raw strawberry) and NT 250 Banana Lime Choc Pie.
I can understand how you would perceive paying NT 320 for a piece of cake as expensive, but that brings me to what I would like to share next: perceived value. What value do customers pay for when they eat or shop at NAKEDFOOD? They pay for the level of quality ingredients we put in our food and they pay for the efforts we make in finding that food, going to it, interacting with it and testing it before it finds itself on a plate in front of them.
Two examples of this would be us taking our staff on a field trip to Nantou, Puli to find a farmer who makes raw honey (we don’t feature honey on our menu as we decided to support the vegan diner 100% – this is to show you how we work and how we qualify value). We went to the farm and learned the artistry of how honey is made, we met the bees, we stood far away from the aggressive ones who did the harder worker and stood closer to the smaller ones who did less. We saw behaviours, we drove into protected organic forests to see where they freely fly. We made raw honey ourselves that day, bottled it and brought it back home. We brought this information back to our customers and gave them peace of mind. This is value.
We did the same thing with vegetables. We drove to Ilan and found a young farmer who works in harmony with the earth to create food using the permaculture method. We pulled cucumbers off his cucumber bushes and ate them, without fear of pesticides and in complete appreciation of the effort and value he was putting into his work. This is value.
This is what our customers pay for. That cake has been getting sold out every week we made it. We had to double production, refuse customers who wanted to buy the whole thing and also reserve some from customers who came from out of town just to pick it up. So this tells me that actually, people do appreciate and pay for value – much much more than I imagined.
Also, we have a wide price range on the menu for all wallet sizes because we never want raw food to be out of reach or too nichey. We want everyone to enjoy it. That living room menu which left you feeling hungry? That was exactly what we explained – a smaller, sharing menu on which we cut our teeth and our customers get to know us. Maybe you should have tried more things?
Next time you come, I will make sure you leave full of belly and heart 🙂
Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts on your blog. I love getting to know what people think and feel. Ultimately, it’s going to help us grow.
Warmest,
Prish
Hi Prish,
Thanks for your response and thoughts, it’s wonderful to meet restaurant owners so actively engaged with their customers, especially when it’s such an important market as the healthy vegan one.
First, I completely understand the cost and why the price is why it is, and I’m also thrilled to hear there’s a market for it here and you’re doing well. I ran my own completely organic vegetable garden for 4 years and lived semi-self sufficiently. It’s so important to engage with those seeking to farm organically and on smallholdings, and it’s a sad feature of our times that this raises the cost of production and supply rather than lowering it. I’m in no way debating the value of your methods, and I hope that others see and adopt them.
My point in the review I hope I conveyed was that at least for our group, we did gasp a little at the cost and it could never be more than an occasional treat. I will be back soon, I hope, to try the lunch menu keep you to your words of a full belly and heart 🙂
I apologize for the slip on the price. Our group between us ordered something like 6 pizzas, a Quinoa bowl, and 4 different desserts (all of which I tried and loved), the receipt got a little confusing and I didn’t have the forethought to carry it off. I’ve made a few amendments to the piece accordingly.
As I commented in the article, I’m very excited about seeing your progress over the next few months. It’s very encouraging that there’s such a market for vegan and raw food restaurants in Taipei, and thank you also for catering to the 100% vegan market!
Warm wishes, and looking forwards to discussing more with you next time I come in,
Amelia
Hi there 🙂
Someone sent your blog post to me and I read it over and thought I could share some thoughts with you and your readers that would be beneficial. First of all, I remember meeting you and enjoying some small chatty time with you. Thanks for coming that day and sampling our food.
The first thing I would like to share is that the cost of your cake was NT 320 (raw strawberry) and NT 250 Banana Lime Choc Pie.
I can understand how you would perceive paying NT 320 for a piece of cake as expensive, but that brings me to what I would like to share next: perceived value. What value do customers pay for when they eat or shop at NAKEDFOOD? They pay for the level of quality ingredients we put in our food and they pay for the efforts we make in finding that food, going to it, interacting with it and testing it before it finds itself on a plate in front of them.
Two examples of this would be us taking our staff on a field trip to Nantou, Puli to find a farmer who makes raw honey (we don’t feature honey on our menu as we decided to support the vegan diner 100% – this is to show you how we work and how we qualify value). We went to the farm and learned the artistry of how honey is made, we met the bees, we stood far away from the aggressive ones who did the harder worker and stood closer to the smaller ones who did less. We saw behaviours, we drove into protected organic forests to see where they freely fly. We made raw honey ourselves that day, bottled it and brought it back home. We brought this information back to our customers and gave them peace of mind. This is value.
We did the same thing with vegetables. We drove to Ilan and found a young farmer who works in harmony with the earth to create food using the permaculture method. We pulled cucumbers off his cucumber bushes and ate them, without fear of pesticides and in complete appreciation of the effort and value he was putting into his work. This is value.
This is what our customers pay for. That cake has been getting sold out every week we made it. We had to double production, refuse customers who wanted to buy the whole thing and also reserve some from customers who came from out of town just to pick it up. So this tells me that actually, people do appreciate and pay for value – much much more than I imagined.
Also, we have a wide price range on the menu for all wallet sizes because we never want raw food to be out of reach or too nichey. We want everyone to enjoy it. That living room menu which left you feeling hungry? That was exactly what we explained – a smaller, sharing menu on which we cut our teeth and our customers get to know us. Maybe you should have tried more things?
Next time you come, I will make sure you leave full of belly and heart 🙂
Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts on your blog. I love getting to know what people think and feel. Ultimately, it’s going to help us grow.
Warmest,
Prish
Hi Prish,
Thanks for your response and thoughts, it’s wonderful to meet restaurant owners so actively engaged with their customers, especially when it’s such an important market as the healthy vegan one.
First, I completely understand the cost and why the price is why it is, and I’m also thrilled to hear there’s a market for it here and you’re doing well. I ran my own completely organic vegetable garden for 4 years and lived semi-self sufficiently. It’s so important to engage with those seeking to farm organically and on smallholdings, and it’s a sad feature of our times that this raises the cost of production and supply rather than lowering it. I’m in no way debating the value of your methods, and I hope that others see and adopt them.
My point in the review I hope I conveyed was that at least for our group, we did gasp a little at the cost and it could never be more than an occasional treat. I will be back soon, I hope, to try the lunch menu keep you to your words of a full belly and heart 🙂
I apologize for the slip on the price. Our group between us ordered something like 6 pizzas, a Quinoa bowl, and 4 different desserts (all of which I tried and loved), the receipt got a little confusing and I didn’t have the forethought to carry it off. I’ve made a few amendments to the piece accordingly.
As I commented in the article, I’m very excited about seeing your progress over the next few months. It’s very encouraging that there’s such a market for vegan and raw food restaurants in Taipei, and thank you also for catering to the 100% vegan market!
Warm wishes, and looking forwards to discussing more with you next time I come in,
Amelia
Thank you Amelia 🙂
Thank you Amelia 🙂