生活在他方 夜貓店

【Foodholic Naizai @ Taipei】

"The Elsewhere Night Owl Shop" is located on Maokong Mountain, hidden in a somewhat secluded spot. After seeing the sign, you walk downwards to spot the café nestled in the mountains. It offers both outdoor and indoor dining areas. As you enter, the staff will ask where you prefer to sit.

I chose a day with a gentle drizzle to go up to Maokong and stayed inside this café to enjoy some simple dry noodles. Accompanied by a hot drink and a good book, I spent the afternoon here, or just zoning out was also nice.

The café plays old Western songs and has small exhibitions and a mini bookstore selling books, magazines, comic postcards, badges, etc.

Additionally, the café provides books and picture books that guests can freely take to their seats to read. I browsed through some picture books and the "Midnight Diner" manga; when there weren't many customers around, the atmosphere was indeed quite comfortable.

The café starts operating at 12:00. We arrived at 12:30 on a Sunday noon, being the first group of customers, enjoying a period of having the whole place to ourselves. Around 2 PM, the number of customers began to increase slowly, but everyone was quite considerate and didn't speak loudly.

Elsewhere Dry Noodles (Slightly Spicy) $200, Chongqing Spicy Dry Noodles (Moderately Spicy) $210
We only ordered à la carte; you can also add $60 to upgrade to a set, which includes three side dishes. Both bowls of noodles contain three slices of pork char siu, half a soft-boiled egg, green onions, wood ear mushrooms, and cucumber strips. I preferred the Chongqing Spicy Dry Noodles, with its Sichuan pepper aroma. Although it was quite oily by the end, it was irresistibly tasty! Elsewhere Dry Noodles is mainly seasoned with pork sauce, similar in flavor to fried sauce noodles, which I found quite ordinary. The noodles were okay; as café savory food, they're quite decent, but regarding a single bowl of noodles, the price is a bit steep, so the overall cost performance isn't high.

Flavored Au Lait (Brown Sugar) $140
This is basically brown sugar milk, one of my most frequently ordered drinks at cafés besides lattes. Upon serving, it was quite impressive, topped with plenty of brown sugar powder, and it seemed to be slightly torched. The whole drink was very sweet but very comforting, perfectly suiting today's drizzle!

Authentic Tieguanyin Pearl Milk Tea $190
It came with syrup on the side, but we opted for no sugar. Unexpectedly, the pearl milk tea was already quite sweet. It's uncertain if it's the sweetness of the pearls, but personally, I found it overshadowed the tea flavor, making the Tieguanyin taste not very prominent.