TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Nestled in a quiet alley in Xinyi Anhe, Lin Restaurant, a French counter-style eatery, has been newly selected for the 2025 Taiwan Michelin Guide.
The creative force behind the recognition is 33-year-old Chef Tsai Kai-lin (蔡凱霖), who honed his skills at L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon in Taipei. His culinary philosophy, shaped by his time at Robuchon, fuses refined French techniques with a deep respect for seasonal, high-quality ingredients.
The new menu, launching Sept. 16, is a personal expression of the season inspired by Tsai’s most cherished childhood memory: gathering with family each autumn to enjoy fresh crabs. This sense of warmth and harvest is the guiding principle of the menu.
Dishes are plated in autumnal hues of woody red and fallen-leaf yellow, a deliberate choice to reflect nature’s colors. Seasonal ingredients include king crab, trout, and New Zealand venison to evoke forests and earth.
The menu opens with a cheese puff, onion soup, monk’s head cheese — a homage to classic French onion soup with a crispy puff filled with savory broth and topped with delicate shavings of cheese.
The star dish is drunken crab, caviar, fennel. Tsai steams king crab meat and seasons it with Hua Diao wine, Shaoxing wine, and apple vinegar. It is layered with French fennel cream and lobster consomme, then topped with Iranian caviar — a luxurious reinterpretation of his childhood feast.
Tsai’s creativity also shines in the main course, red deer, buddha jumps over the wall, maitake mushrooms. He gives the classic Taiwanese soup a French twist by making a clear broth from chicken stock, jinhua ham, and other prized ingredients.
The autumn set menu starts at NT$3,880 (US$120) per person, with a limited lunch set available Fridays and Saturdays for NT$2,880.
(Taiwan News, Lyla Liu video)
Dining and Cooking