Formosa’s wonderful gifts

Between the recession and the Chinese New Year of the Ox
(January 26), this is going to be a tough, hard-hat year. Yeah, yeah,
so what else is new? My astrological forecast: enjoy more Dartmouth
idylls at Liu’s Formosa Gift and Tea House while you put your shoulder
into the oh-nine grind.

Jeffrey Liu, the owner, brings out a tray with a little teapot, a
jug and six cups (for a table of three). He pours tea into three
steeping cups. Then, he covers them with three drinking cups. He flips
them. Now three cups of steeping tea sit upside down in three drinking
cups. “Wait two minutes,” Liu says, “then lift the cup.” Lift it up,
and your drinking cup fills with tea. Liu encourages you to smell the
steeping cup, to catch its scent, light and floral. Every five minutes,
he refills your pot with water and repeats the process. Extra tea is
poured into a flowered jug, which you take refills from as you
please.

Needless to say, this leads to excessive tea drinking. We sipped
fragrant Oolong green tea and smoky Pu-erh ($3.29), but you can choose
from a large menu of Asian and Western teas; for New Year’s purgers,
there’s more complex health blends ($7.99 per pot).

To anyone used to Chinese vegetarian snack foods, Formosa does not
create original twists on standard dishes. Many snacks are pre-fab and
Liu imports them from Toronto.

If you’ve never eaten such delights as mock meats, those novel
staples of Buddhist-style cusine, this may be one of the few places in
town you can try them. The soy drumsticks ($1.69) are layers of soy
wrapped around a stick of sugar cane. It mimics chicken, including the
crisp brown skin. Likewise, soy flakes on top of the fulsome Formosa
Combo ($8.29) resemble bonito flakes, the mushroom stalks look like
braised beef and that pink chunk isn’t ham in the veggie sushi ($3.39).
The shao mai ($2.69) imitates pork sausage, as does the speckled soy
meatballs in the soup. Nothing tastes like meat, but the texture is
freakily accurate.

The stuffed buns ($1.99) are standard issue, the dumplings ($10.99
for 20) are better, filled with mushrooms, cabbage and carrot. The
sticky rice ($2.89), wrapped in a lotus leaf, is perfectly sticky with
a shitake mushroom sauce.

With just three tables, Formosa is almost as small as Maud Lewis’
house. Lunches are busy. Like you’d call a neighbour before you dropped
in for tea, call ahead to see if there’s space before you visit (note:
There are two banquet rooms upstairs for parties of eight-10).

Then there’s gifts that make the whole trip on the 52 bus
worthwhile. Formosa house is novel because Liu has created something
unique (yet apropos) in Dartmouth: a total outsider art experience from
the moment you open the door. A playful mix of wonder and innocence;
imagine the Lewis house filled with Asian bric-a-brac. There is not a
dull thing to look at and everything has a price tag. Tea, teacups and
pots of all sizes share space with lanterns, statues, paintings, snow
globes and fans, heaped on one another in a fantastic collage of
tchotchke.

It’s all this, and dumplings. Myself, I bought a painting of the
Titanic sailing happily in the midday sun, oblivious to the disaster
ahead. I think it captures the zeitgeist of 2009. But then, eating
lunch with frog and monkey statues, surrounded by mountain lakes
usually takes the edge off.

Got an out-of-the-way snack shack you want to tell us
about? Email us at food@thecoast.ca.

This article appears in Jan 15-21, 2009.