In Taipei summer means one thing for sure, many of the restaurants I like will close. Apparently Taiwanese people are like reverse bears, they go whole summers without eating. As ridiculous as that my sound, I know more than a few people who go from three meals a day, to just one in the summer time. With the excuse being it's too hot, so they don't get so hungry. It could also be since many smaller places close for extended period of times in the summer.
Granted there are logical reasons for this, universities are closed so there aren't many students for the lunch and dinner rush. There are a good many restaurants that seem to live and die by having student customers. Also since kids are out of school, it's a good time for family vacations.
Another reason is the summer remodel. The picture above is of a Vietnamese restaurant I frequent that was closed for a week or two because it was remodeling. Granted part of it's charm is that it was a hole in the wall type of place, but I'm not going to object to it being remodeled. If for no other reason than that it's bathroom was the stuff nightmares are made out of. I took many pictures of it trying to find the right angle to display the horror, but I could never get it quite right.
This is typical of many restaurants though, since the restaurants themselves are more or less a found space, they have to build a bathroom into a place that was never intended to be one. This usually causes them to be things you'd see in horror movies, with floors covered in urine and ceilings covered in insects.
