Beard Papas in Taipei

I love old men who make cream puffs. Following the disappointing news that the Beard Papas station in Cafe Zaiya had closed, I was both stunned and devastated. Noting that Taipei had a couple locations (one in the Shin Kong department store and another at Taipei 101), I knew I had to pay homage to a fallen comrade. I visited the one in the basement food court of 新光 (Shin Kong), which is actually a really famous Japanese department store. Among a giant list of food vendors, which I couldn't list even if I wanted to, I went straight for the puffs.


The stall is in the middle of building A8... basement 2. You see... the reason why I can't possibly list all the food places is because there are so many that is spans 4 different buildings, each of which has at least 2 floors of stalls. Imagine all the food carts in midtown Manhattan crammed into a basement bazaar of food stands and this is what you'd get. Anyway, the Shin Kong location offered only the vanilla custard creme, and an awesome seasonal mango creme (holy crap this was good). They do offer 3 different variants of crust though, original, a crispy cookie crust, and a 'French' variety that looked like a cruller twist. The original cremes clocked in at 42 NT ($1.25) and the mango at 48 NT ($1.50). I'm not really sure if the other variants of crust cost more or less (I'd imagine more), since I wanted to get the original style that I'm familiar with. Anyway, the vanilla was just as good as I remember from Zaiya (and the UWS location), but at a 50 cents cheaper, it tasted that much better. The mango... amazingly light, moderately sweet, with a nice mango scent evident with the first bite. Another home run by the old man. Of course I'd recommend this place, especially since there's one less location in the world, and hopefully they'll make the mango into a more permanent staple in the beard papas lineup. One annoying caveat though... the two women at the Beard Papas counter refused to let me take a snapshot of their stall. There's something about people in Asia not liking photography. Isn't all publicity good publicity? Besides, it's not like I was trashing them... in fact... I'm quite a fan!

Annoying run today. I wanted to do a relaxed long distance piece, something that fell somewhere between 8 and 12 miles. When I left the apartment at 5, I ran at a miserably slow pace. I did a run up around 大安公園 (Da An Park) and 台灣大學 (NTU), and I even did too laps on the track up at NTU... when I had come back to the park and checked my ipod... it was only something like 5:50. Ugh, so much fail. I ended up doing a 6.02 mile run, at a pace that would be more appropriate for a half marathon. I think the speed/sprint work I did yesterday absolutely demolished my legs. I think a rest day is in order sometime in the near future.

Also, I've come to find that I can't post/reply to comments here in Taiwan. Blogger seems to think I'm not signed in, and refuses to let me post with my googleID. Anyone else have this problem, or know of a work around?

distance for the day: 6.02 miles
distance biked for the day: 0.00 miles

distance on the year: 321.26 miles
distance biked on the year: 142.68 miles