Here is a close up of the food introduced yesterday "hot pot." This restaurant is a bit different from yesterday's, in that you choose from a set of ingredients and they prepare it for you. So a place like this is less of a "let's get together and spend a few hours chatting with friends" place, and more of a "it's cold outside, get some hot food in me as quickly as possible!" place.
This particular restaurant is a perplexing one. It's a very tiny hole in the wall place near my house. It was owned by a middle aged woman, and hardly anybody ever ate there. Because of her lack of business, she was forced to sell her restaurant, and surprisingly somebody bought it. They appear to be a group of kids in their mid to late 20's.
Since the change in ownership, they have raised the prices significantly, but sell the same food, the same quality as before. Yet they seem to always have customers. This is very perplexing, and every time I pass by, i try to get some clue as to why this is.
Perhaps, the previous owner was not a nice lady? But most taiwanese don't really give any consideration to customer service being either good or bad. Perhaps the inflated price has led people to think that the quality has improved? This one I fear is the reason, and i worry because as consumers it sends a wrong message to the restaurants. Or it could be any number of other things. Perhaps they have been putting coupons in the mailboxes of apartment in the neighborhood. My mailbox is always full of handwritten coupons that immediately go into the recycle box.
Of course I could always ask, but i'm always worried about my intonation when speaking chinese. I worry that my "excuse me, but i'm really curious how you guys are able to be so successful when the previous owner failed." would come out of my mouth as "hey! i demand to know how the f**k you guys are doing so well." This is because in chinese the polite way and the rude way are pretty much the same thing. For example "what would you like?" and "what the hell do you want?" are the same sentence. And since we Americans are naturally so crass, I always worry that while thinking the polite way, things will come out of my mouth the rude way.
