Miau Ban Garden Restaurant — Restaurant in Beitou

This place offers two in one experience - nice photos with Calla Lilies and excellent meal based on wild produce or free range chicken.

We arrived at 11.15am and already both carparks were almost full. We did manage to snag one of the last four tables and immediately placed our orders. If you do not know what to order, the staff will be able to help you, if you give them a minute to sort out their very busy routines.

Specially recommend their chicken soup with mushrooms, sweet potato soup, 3 cups squid.

We quickly finished lunch and went out to take photos. Miau Ban has one of the flattest plains used for Calla lilies planting and they don’t allow plucking of lilies (you can buy separately) so you can still take in an entire stretch of calla lilies with the sky and mountain as background even at this late stage. Unlike other farms which have theirs planted on terraced fields and most are quite bald from the incessant plucking. They also have props set up for taking photos, although imo, some are a little quirky. So the tickets cost NT$150 but NT$100 can be redeemed for the meal.

Pro tip: Try not to go on weekends. I did it once and didn’t get even get to park. This time around, it was a weekday and I went in an hour before 12 so I got to feast on their good tasting food and then took photos in the almost empty fields when other were...

Was going around Yangmingshan when my driver recommended we stop here for lunch. Service can be a little hit and miss. For beverages, you will need to head to the fridge to make your choice. The menus are entirely in Traditional Chinese characters, which Google Translate can help to some extent. There's some interesting dishes here like the betel nut flower. I was very amazed by the herbal chicken soup which is one of their recommended dishes. It comes in a claypot and simmers on a gas stove next to your table. You must wait for it to be cooked. The soup is very warming and has such a clean taste. The steamed fish was also very fresh, with the flesh firm. I highly recommend the salted egg yolk bamboo shoots, the flavour profile works very well with rice. Overall I had these three dishes with the betel nut flower, and the total bill came up to NT2300,...

Good wholesome food here!

Food: 5/5 - Their free range chicken dish well known among the locals. 8 of us had the 11 course set menu that included chicken herbal soup. The herbal soup and steam chicken were my favorites. The soup tasted just like my mom’s. The meats ranged from beef to pork and one dish was fish and tofu. The veggies were freshly grown.

It was worth the extra money for healthier food. The restaurant is located in the mountains outside Taipei.

Service: 3/5 - slow service as we had to get utensils and plates ourselves including the water

Atmosphere: 4/5 - winter is a good time as the weather is perfect for dining in a greenhouse environment. After your meal there’s a large cala Lily garden you can walk to enjoy the...