Caldo Cafe — Restaurant in Shilin District

Although I wasn’t happy when the receptionist told me there are no available seats (when there were lots of empty seats, but knowing I didn’t make reservations..), and then called me back within a min telling me there are seats available. Nevertheless, didn’t ruin my mood for a nice pancake (such a pancake lover)!!

Love the fact that they had one unique soufflé (flavor) for each day of the week, so I didn’t have to take the time to choose; you can choose the flavor of sorbet and the drizzle of your likings. Totally forgot to really taste the salted caramel (one of my fav). Soufflé is pretty much standard, my order was brown sugar soufflé, tasted pretty good without the drizzle (so I completely don’t remember how the salted caramel tasted like).

The hot cakes (or I like to call them soufflé pancakes or just pancakes) had few choices, but love that it came with honey (not syrup) and a scoop of sorbet. The lady who served me was super cute, offered me to choose apple sorbet for the hot cake (I asked if it tasted good, and she kept nodding, and she was completely right!), and grapefruit for the soufflé. Apple sorbet totally won my heart. The hot cakes were soft and moist in the center, not too eggy, I remember there were bits of white cubes in there that were soft, still not sure what it is, but the entire cake taste superb!

For the drinks, I ordered earl grey milk tea, which came with some lemon zest, really nice touch.

Definitely coming back for more of their hot cakes. Little choices, but hot cakes + bananas and apple sorbet, great...

So here's how it works: You order a dessert w them when you reserve a place. Then, you go there and either add on food and drinks or just have the dessert. After that, you pay the amount you think the food is worth. They have a menu as a guide on how much the food are so you can just pay how ever much you want in a box near the entrance.

Ambiance: 5/5 - it's a nice cafe, tastefully decorated like all cafe. The upside is the river at the back. If you choose to sit outside where the river is, they have a fan beside the table so it's very comfortable!

Food: 3/5 - tbh the lava cake is just normal. I know ppl have the souffle pancake here but I don't really like souffle pancakes. The lava cake came w ice cream so I really wanted it. It's not bad, but it's not great either. Can order it if you just want the ambiance like I did.

Limited dining time: 2 hours. I know that most of Taiwan cafes have this limitation so just be ok with travelling to this cafe for just 2 hours (cause it's pretty outskirts of Taipei). I planned to go to the National Palace Museum (highly recommended) which is near this cafe so I was ok w the limited...

We didn’t even get to try the food or the drinks and the service we got from the moment we walked in was enough to turn us away. We walked into the shop and asked for the menu. We are not native so our Mandarin is nowhere near perfect but we still tried our best to speak it to the waitress at the reception and she gave us a nasty look when we asked for menu. One family member is pregnant so she could not have any tea or coffee and the fruit juice they had was made of the fruits which she was advised not to have as well. We were planning to order drinks and food but there is a minimum requirement of having one drink each regardless of how much food we prefer. So we asked that waitress what we can do since one of our family could not have any of the drinks on the menu and she said we had to choose anyway. But her attitude was so bad that we felt we were ridiculed. At that moment we decided to walk out. Good luck to anyone who tries...