MUME — Restaurant in Da'an District

Perhaps I was overly excited, but I was greatly disappointed.

My main concerns were with the food itself. We ordered the Country bread with beef fat butter, an oyster, a MUME salad with 20 local ingredients, the beef steak, and (regrettably) the barley porridge.

Of the five dishes, the only one we both actively enjoyed was the Country bread. I think the crust was very suitable, and it was a great temperature. I found the butter somewhat superfluous, particularly the beef fat component which did little for the flavor.

The oyster was rather disappointing. The flavors were okay, but overzealous. In the end, I honestly wasn't able to tell if I had actually eaten an oyster or simply the various veggie-fruit combination with dried seaweed. For the price, a single oyster was also unexpected. Though perhaps there were actually two on the single shell and I would not have known. I didn't feel any sort of food philosophy from the oyster, which made the price harder to stomach than the overall mild composition.

The MUME salad was acceptable. Personally I was fond of the use of local ingredients as well as the sauce on the bottom, but my wife was accurate in her assessment that the 20 ingredients don't particularly mesh well together. Similar to the oyster, it was a shame that the combination seemed less than the sum of it's parts. I enjoyed the variety of the cooking methods employed on the ingredients, which does show effort and skill, but almost would have preferred the components served separately than as one jumbled mess.

The beef steak was well seasoned, but not particularly innovative in flavor. Thus, I mostly consider the technical execution of the cooking, which was somewhat below par. One particular piece was red on one side and a sort of ugly blend of grey and red on the other. Another had a particularly fatty end that I would have almost been embarrassed to serve as it was. Maybe we got the "bad end" of the entire steak for the evening, but when paying $1180 for the portion, one should demand quality in execution. As an aside, there was a vegetable served along the beef. I thought it might be fennel, but my wife thought it was a plant called jiao bai (a fungus of the rice plant). When cooking jiao bai at home, I've noticed it's great at absorbing flavors. However, whatever vegetable it was, it was poorly handled -- it absorbed nothing but a wet smokey aftertaste. I actually like intentionally smoked ingredients; but this tasted more like the smell of cigarettes, or as if they were just accidentally left too close to the stove.

Lastly, the final dish -- the barley porridge. Perhaps this was a mistranslation, or perhaps it is my own ignorance, but when I hear barley, I tend to think of the whitish grain, reasonably chewy and plump. I was somewhat surprised to see a dish mostly composed of green peas. Perhaps these are actually fresh barley seeds or a local delicacy. In any case, the dish was a dull one note and seems entirely like an after thought -- as if the restaurant realized it needed a vegetarian-friendly option and just threw some ingredients together at the last minute. The poached egg does little to elevate the dish, which is in desperate need of some flavor or signature element. Worst of all, after eating it, my stomach felt queasy, and I got to see all the green peas a second time in the form of diarrhea the next day. Perhaps I got a bad egg or perhaps my digestion does not like the green peas, but it almost doesn't matter why it happened.

Overall, I would not recommend MUME to friends, though it's not so offensively bad to recommend it to enemies either. I recognize the efforts of the staff and chefs in executing what I otherwise perceive to be poor direction or leadership in the kitchen or menu. If cooking is partly a form of communication, I didn't receive...

One of the best restaurants I had the pleasure of dinning in during my visit to Taiwan. The service and food here is above par with any restaurant in it's price range. It is an English friendly restaurant so there is no need to worry about not understanding the menu. Something to note was that I was running late and my busy itinerary had me come straight here from a long busy day. This meant I couldn't freshen up or change out of my clothes. I was dressed in a t-shirt and shorts, hot and sweaty from rushing out of the train station, and was worried I wouldn't be able to dine in because of the clothes I was wearing. There was no way I was canceling as this is a reservations only establishment, no other time slots were available and there was a down payment. But the staff didn't bat an eye at my attire and I never felt I was treated any differently from all the other patrons that were dressed, should I say, more appropriately for such a type of dining experience.

The dining area itself is intimately lit and sized. You will be able to hear the conversations of your neighbors as well as the servers interacting with other guests.

My server, who I did not get the name of (and I feel terrible about it), was exceptional. She explained the menu, asked if there was any allergies the kitchen staff should be aware of, and if there was any items on the menu that I wouldn't be able to consume. I informed her there wasn't any issues and we could proceed with the menu. The drink menu felt a bit lacking though. There is a selection of choice wines but I would have liked to see some whisky on the menu. I ended up just having sparkling water.

Each dish came out in a timely manner. The first dish was Prawns with Jicama in a type of froth. Second was Crudo with Plum and Kombu. Third was a Wagyu Tartare with Daikon and Egg Yolk. There is a Country Sourdough that was served in between dishes as well. The fourth dish was Milkfish with Kohlrabi. Main course was Ox Tongue and the meal finished off with a Tropical based dessert of coconut cream crumble.

Overall, each dish was very balanced, seasoned and executed well. Portion sizes are what you would expect from an "omakase" style menu. My only real criticism would be that it didn't feel there was much of a theme or central idea throughout the courses. The Prawns, Crudo and Wagyu went really well together and had a fresh, summer feel behind the inspiration of those dishes. Once we got to the Milkfish, it felt as if it belonged to a whole other menu. Same with the Ox Tongue, cooked and seasoned well but didn't feel like it carried or complemented the flavors of the previous dishes. The coconut crumble dessert did round everything back together in the end.

Even with the odd sub and main course choices, the service alone is worth a 5 star experience. During dinner service, the Milkfish was actually served to me by someone else and the ingredients of the dish was explained to me in Mandarin, but when my original server came around, I explained to her I didn't understand and she gladly went over the dish again in English. I was also surprised that the menu didn't have much Taiwanese influence to it. Not really a negative as I didn't know what to expect dining here, but regardless, the food was more than satisfactory.

On a side note, the restrooms here are also clean and brightly lit. And if you have ever wondered what it would be like if you could make your mouth feel as if it was a luxury boutique store? Well they have mouth wash that can do just that. One rinse with that and you'll swear your teeth were making Louis Vuitton handbags up in there.

My experience in Mume was a memorable one and if I ever find myself in Taiwan again, I'll be sure to make another...

Seriously, with all the hype that you heard about this restaurant, the experience tonight was underwhelming, if not upsetting!

The restaurant does look cute and has a good ambiance although the basement room smelled a bit musty. The minute we sat down, the food started to come, no wait staff asked us if we wanted to order drinks, and we didn't even have utensils. Finally someone found out that we had silverware inside each drawer in front of us! While it was a cute idea, the fact that no one bothered to mention anything to us seemed... I don't know, a bit snotty?

The dishes came very fast, which told me that the tasting menu was all pre-made! And now that I'm writing this review and got the tasting menu they sent to us in my hand, I realized that they changed the appetizer from crab to oyster! (I don't like oysters!) No wonder I felt sort of odd that I didn't seem to remember anyone ever mentioning any oysters!!

Most dishes were very nice looking but not very impressive in terms of flavors. My favorite was probably the Mume Salad. The most disappointing was the main course, the Pork Neck! That dish was extremely salty! So much so that 3 out of the 8 in our party just couldn't eat it. We asked the wait staff to show those to the chef and the result was some alternatives which were yet again, underwhelming. For me personally, I just scraped off the sauce, which was the salty part, and ate the pork without the sauce, then of course it was sort of bland! But I just didn't think I could stomach another dish that's underwhelming!

The funniest thing was that their manager didn't seem to care at all. 3 guests returning the same dish to the kitchen and no one bothered to show any concerns!! Then the worst happen to me. After a coconut sorbet which was just, meh. They brought the "seasonal" dessert which was completely made with CUCUMBER!!! I hate cucumber with a passion!! I mean, if there was a little bit of cucumber in a salad or something, I could understand. You'd expect cucumber in a salad! How many people would expect cucumber in a dessert?!?! Not to mention, when we reviewed the tasting menu just the day before, they confirmed that the "seasonal dessert" was a chocolate pepper something! But when we confronted the staff, and asked for the lady who confirmed the menu with us on the phone, no one showed up. The waitress even had to repeatedly deny that they ever told us that it was a chocolate dessert. She kept insisting that the person communicating only said it MIGHT be chocolate stuff, and not promising! But who would want Cucumber dessert in the middle of winter in January?!?! Is cucumber an appropriate winter ingredient?! I would really argue! Later, the waitress came back and offered us some chocolate in an attitude that they were doing us a favor!! Sooo sad. Again, the manager didn't care enough to show his/her face. And even we were told that the lady on the phone was working upstairs, no one bothered to come and ask how we enjoyed out dinner!!

We didn't!! While the cocktails and drinks were good, the whole place spells pretentious! I agree with one of the yelpers' statement: they tried too hard! The chefs at Mume want to be sooo different that they forsook some of the basics. And it seemed like because they enjoyed a lot of attention, everyone is no longer "humble" as described in some of the earlier reviews. Very sad, really, because they could have lived up to deserve the Top 50 Restaurants in Asia. But they missed it... by a lot!! And they lost 8 customers and all their friends and families, something they could have prevented easily! I guess they just don't...