One of the hardest questions to answer is always "what to eat for lunch/dinner today?" I think this is an even harder questions for us foreigners who have an unsophisticated taiwanese food palate. I know a Taiwanese person might see a street of restaurants and marvel at the variety, while I may see that same street and be unable to tell what is different from any of those restaurants.
So to get around that difficult question, you have to come up with tricks. One such trick is to find the best ____ restaurant in the city. Doesn't matter what that is, pizza, hamburger, milkshake, etc. You go to every restaurant in the city to try that dish out, and after a few months you can decide which is the best. On the one hand it's useful to know for whenever you are craving that one dish, but on the other hand it's just busywork to solve the problem of what to eat that day.
The winner of the best pizza restaurant is still Mary Jane Pizza. I've told the story before of how a foreigner friend of mine after one month of being here proclaimed this restaurant as the best. but as she hadn't been here long and had made good friends with the owner, i couldn't see her as being impartial. Only to go do my own research and after maybe two years i was able to agree with her.
I think one thing they do well is blend their ingredients. the bread, cheese, toppings all go together. In taiwan usually you have two choices for foreign food. Low quality ingredients and/or substituting ingredients for cheaper local foods, or high quality ingredients but with no idea or thought about if they blend together. I've been to pizza places with amazing high quality ingredients, but with they are not actually "cooking" they are just putting those ingredients together and calling it "pizza." I think Mary Jane is one of the few foreign restaurants in taiwan that actually crafts dishes. they think long and hard about the quality of their ingredients and how they go together.
The picture above is of their new location in the shida night market area. For reasons I don't fully understand yet, many of the restaurants in this popular night market are being closed down. something about noise complaints by the people who live there. So what a few of the smarter restaurants have done was months before this decision was made, they got a new space across the street and moved over there.
And this is why Mary Jane is the best, not only does it have good pizza but they are clever business people as well. You may feel like this choice would be common sense, but honestly that's not how things are normally done in Taiwan. Which makes this move all the more clever.
Final note. Yes the restaurant is named after marijuana. With their idea being that their pizza is as addictive as weed. they even have one pizza called the "mary jane" which is cleverly prepared to make it seem like weed is on it. Actually the menu at this place is pretty cool as well. First it's in the shape of their pizza so people can know what their pizza size actually looks like. Also their english descriptions of their pizzas are all jokes. There is actually a lot to like about this place.
Alas it's not all fun and games though. recently they have started to charge a service charge. made all the worse by the fact that the "service" there is pretty bad. It was a much better place when it was self serve. Will this new found pretentiousness drive me to find a new best pizza restaurant? Hmmm, I guess I'll have to spend months eating at pizza restaurants to find out. It will be hard work, but hey, at least i'll know what's for dinner!
