TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — As the Michelin Guide predicts that tea will replace wine in fine dining by 2025, Taiwan's enPure showcases this evolution through exceptional tea-paired contemporary cuisine.
With global dining trends shifting, the Michelin Guide forecasts tea as a refined alternative to alcoholic beverages, particularly in Asia. Taiwan, renowned for its culinary excellence, is leading this movement with its innovative tea-pairing culture gaining international attention.
In Taichung, the Michelin-recommended restaurant enPure exemplifies this trend. Founded in 2024 by tea master Lan Ta-cheng (藍大誠) and Chef Wang Tsai-ching (王采晴), the restaurant blends contemporary cuisine with Taiwan’s deep-rooted tea culture.
Chef Wang, a former interior designer, integrates her aesthetic sensibilities with international techniques to create exquisite dishes enhanced by thoughtfully curated tea pairings. The name enPure reflects the restaurant’s philosophy of purity and serenity, beginning as guests enter a tranquil courtyard.
The restaurant prioritizes sustainability, sourcing ingredients from environmentally conscious farms and fisheries to allow natural flavors to shine. The winter 2024 menu highlights the chef’s ingenuity in using autumn-harvested ingredients that have been naturally dried and fermented.
Traditional Taiwanese dishes, such as preserved mustard greens with braised pork and dumplings, are reimagined through a contemporary lens. Each dish is paired with select teas, including honey solstice tea from 38-year-old Jin Xuan (金萱) tea trees in Nantou.
The culinary journey begins with a cauliflower and Chinese sausage radish cake, served with pumpkin and mullet roe, paired with honey solstice tea. This tea, cultivated using natural composting methods and processed similarly to Oriental Beauty tea, exemplifies Taiwan’s refined tea craftsmanship.
A standout seafood dish features grass shrimp, delicately seared in shrimp oil to retain its succulent texture. This is paired with bonito gelée and fennel marinated in elderflower syrup, finished with a blend of shrimp and fennel oils.
A highlight of the season is Penghu mackerel, pan-seared to perfection and served with fresh crown daisy greens and a preserved vegetable purée. The dish is enhanced by a kombu-infused fish bone sauce and complemented by charcoal-grilled bird’s nest fern for a subtle crispness. Oriental Beauty tea, served in champagne glasses, enhances the maritime flavors.
Another signature dish is the chef’s modern take on braised pork, transformed into an exquisite dumpling filled with white wine-braised preserved vegetables and marbled pork, grilled over charcoal and paired with red water oolong tea.
For the main course, Taoyuan black-bone chicken is aged for optimal texture. The dish features chicken meatballs seasoned with vegetables, goji berries, and Shaoxing wine, nestled within the chicken thigh. The breast is innovatively layered with dried scallop mousse before being steamed and crisped to golden perfection.
Accompanied by yam, chive blossoms, and crispy garlic, the dish is completed with a complex sauce made from dried seafood and mushrooms, paired with Guifei tea (貴妃茶), a Qingxin oolong slow-roasted for eight months to develop deep dried-fruit notes.
The meal concludes with organic aromatic rice from Changbin, cooked in a traditional Japanese Unknen kiln pot and dressed with house-made tea seed oil, topped with soy-cured black-bone chicken egg yolk and XO sauce.
For dessert, a charcoal-roasted longan soufflé features longans infused with Okinawan black sugar shochu, served with house-made Luye red oolong tea ice cream.
The experience is capped off with an exceptional Taitung red oolong tea, crafted through six roasting cycles and three months of aging, developing complex notes of black sugar and lychee honey—an ideal conclusion to a masterfully curated meal.
