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COMPASS MAGAZINE, June 2006

Tasty, filling Shandong-style noodles and cuisine Shandong Jazz Beef Noodles 98, GongYi Road (04) 2321-5955 Hours: 11 am-8:30 pm Credit cards not accepted. No service charge.

---By Niang Chen and Douglas Habecker Translated by Cara Steenstra and Jean Huang

This bright, clean restaurant is famous for two things--its food, particularly the beef noodles, and the classic jazz music that is always playing. Its popularity draws plenty of local, foreign and mainland Chinese visitors, and has even received note in Lonely Planet's Taiwan guidebook. Tall, friendly owner Hu Li-guo has been running this place for 10 years and learned his kitchen skills from his father, a retired mainland soldier from Confucius' hometown of Chufu in Shandong province. Since his childhood, Hu learned to make his restaurant's outstanding beef noodles (NT$90), as well as other popular items like the "tsung you bing" scallion cakes (NT$40), boiled dumplings, and "guo tieh" fried dumplings, "juan bing" beef rolls, and "men bing" (NT$100), a hard-to-find Shandong specialty. Hu stresses that the key to his food is hand-making everything--from his noodles to dumplings--with high-quality ingredients. His beef noodles feature a tasty broth that is not too oily and highlights the full fragrance of the very big, chewy chunks of high-grade, non-fatty beef. The owner's love of jazz also dates back to his childhood. "Jazz gives people a comfortable, free feeling and goes well with my traditional food," he says.