CLOSED: Wild Veg Village

Not a pay-by-weight buffet, not a noodle or hotpot shop, no menu. Walked into a health food store - the restaurant is on the second floor, but you first pay at the store register on the first floor. It's a buffet, all you care to eat for NT170. Normally I ask to have a look at the buffet before paying, but this time I was too hungry to be choosy. That was fortunate because I would not have eaten here had I seen the rather unappealing spread, yet the food turned out to be more appetizing than it looked.

Although it was not late when I arrived (7PM), the selection of cooked dishes was small: just 4 vegetable dishes, a taro dish, and a mushroom dish, along with rice, noodles, bread, and two soups. The salad bar was also limited to cabbage, carrots, corn-on-the-cob, tomatoes, peppers, and dressings. The taste - how can I describe it? Imagine that you want to open a restaurant in Taiwan that appeals to those who are nostalgic for old-school West Coast hippy vegetarian food: uninviting, tasteless and incongruous mishmash. But your local chef, despite best efforts, just can't capture that blandness, and constantly lapses into tasty cooking (just can't get good help these days). Result: apparently striving for blandness, yet tasty despite itself. My favorite was a multi-grain concoction that tasted like rice, barley, and corn. Nothing here rocked my tastebuds hard, but it was an interesting digression from the norm.

Also, there's a soothing ambiance, with cool lighting, ceiling fans, and piped pop music that's not intrusive. It's like groovy - like totally mellow, man.