Quite a few years back I read an article in The Economist that was about a Japanese lady who opened a bagel shop in Tokyo. The gist of the article was that instead of catering to Japanese tastes by changing bagels and the flavors they offer, she kept it authentic. Essentially saying that you have to trust that people are smart enough to enjoy the real thing and you don't need to pander to them by offering something like a seaweed bagel.
Not a day goes by that I don't think about this article, especially as western food in taiwan is slowly becoming more authentic and less being changed to fit Taiwanese palates. I'm also very curious if her bagel shop is still around, but the little investigating I've done, seems like it's not around anymore.
This hasn't stopped people in Taiwan from trying to introduce bagels, and recently a few new places have popped up. Previously the only real option was a breakfast diner in the city that is worst diner food I've ever had, the food is missing ingredients and the food preparers don't seem to know the right temperature or ways to cook things. However they do stand out as they import bagels from the US. However they don't really keep well on the trip overseas so they are not so great. They also used to import great cheesecake from the states, but they stopped that.
A few cafes around town will have bagels and they are horrible. With a big problem being that no place has cream cheese. In Chinese there isn't even a word for cream cheese, because it's just not a thing. Recently I went to a new cafe which makes their own bagels and it was pretty good, although it might have been because they had cream cheese. But it was good enough for me to have more faith in Taiwanese bagels. Enough to try the place above.
The place in the picture is of a bagel shop which a friend for a few years has been telling me is very good, but I'd been burned so often, that I just couldn't trust her. Well I ended up going and the bagel quality was good. The problem however is that they had flavors for Taiwanese, rather than authentic bagel flavors. So it might not be a place I go again, but it was nice to try it once.
