Walking by this pasta restaurant and looking at their sign, i thought "no wonder there are no customers in there." this is because of they say "we make it different." As you now know, being different is the curse of death in Taiwan. It does sound crazy, but if you want to break into the market and stay in business, you have to do everything just like everybody else.
Even the name of the restaurant is just going to put people off as Taiwanese are not adventurous eaters. In Chinese it says "discover italian noodles" which people just won't do. they love italian noodles here (or what passes for pasta here), but they are definitely not going to try a new thing.
This doesn't just pertain to in Taiwan, it extends to other countries as well. In Taiwan there are a ton of travel shows where the only thing they do is go to other countries and eat the food there. There are also travel books that do the same thing. So when Taiwanese travel abroad, they will only eat at those places. A trip to italy isn't about roaming the streets and trying out some place you come across, it's about going specifically to the restaurants you saw on the tv.
In one way I guess it's safe, as if you ever want to find another Taiwanese person when you are abroad, you can go to one of those restaurants and are guaranteed to find a fellow Taiwanese there. But on the other hand I do know that these shows in Taiwan take money from those restaurants, so i'm curious if foreign restaurants do that as well. It might sound crazy, but having been abroad and seen the long lines of Taiwanese at various places that were mention on the TV, it wouldn't be shocking if some restaurants saw a good thing and decided to pay for that privilege.
