Grilled Meat in Taipei: Ying Bao/ 鷹堡

Cuisine: Meat
Location: No. 5, Lane 160 Sung Chiang Rd., Taipei, Taiwan
Price: $$$$
Food: 3.5*
Service: ****
Overall: 3.5*


Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be a carnivore? To look at the lush green foliage around and think, well that looks absolutely disgusting, if it’s not the flesh of an animal I have no intention of putting it in my mouth? That, apparently, is the basis on which Ying Bao operates.

I first heard about this place over the summer, but ran out of time to make it to the restaurant. When asked what kind of food Ying Bao served, my dad’s response was simply, “meat.” So when the opportunity struck to dine here for dinner with some family friends, I eagerly anticipated the experience.

The closest comparative to Ying Bao is probably something akin to a Brazilian steakhouse – multiple cuts of meat, served up and carved tableside, rolling in one after another until you feel like your insides are physically suffocating from being canopied in, well, meat. However, Ying Bao takes that experience and further exacerbates it. For starters, where you would usually find a full salad bar at a Brazilian steakhouse (generally considered to be a waste of stomach space – why, you could simply eat more meat instead of have a few greens!) here, the “salad bar” consists of a bowl of iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers, with one or two dressing options, placed on a tiny side table. There is no elegant display as one might expect, to elevate the “salad” portion of the meal so that one might be able to delude themselves into believing that they could conceivably eat a reasonably balanced meal of salad and meat with what I would consider to be a ridiculous amount of self-restraint.

The restaurant itself seats maybe 25 or so patrons – a few tables in a very small space, plus bar seating that wraps around the grill. We’re lucky enough to end up at the bar, which affords front-row seats to the spectacle that is watching your food go from a raw protein to an edible one in the matter of minutes. There is no line, or separate stations, or any sort of expediting process as one might expect in a normal restaurant – just the chef, manning the grill, carving the meats, and dishing out plate after plate of delectable food to us.

Along with our place settings come two dipping sauces – one, a pungent horseradish-based mustard that stings the eyes with just a little dollop, the other a small bowl of soy paste with roughly 50 cloves worth of minced garlic in it to give it that garlicky punch. After noshing on some peanuts while waiting for the rest of our party to arrive, our meal begins.

Our friendly grill master, portioning the cod

Cod "pie"! (Dipping sauces in the background)

The tidal wave of meat begins innocently enough – cod, grilled and portioned in front of us. I’m delivered a piece that looks like pie, replete with the crunchy skin on the edges simulating a crust. One bite into the cod tells me it’s nothing like fish I’ve eaten before – I don’t know if the fish was marinated in sheer awesomeness prior to being grilled, but it oozes with flavor. Beautifully tender white cod meat flakes off the pie, shining, shimmering, splendid¹. Though it’s the precursor to a meat-filled meal, this exceptional piece of seafood turns out to be my favorite protein of the night.

Cod is followed by hoki fish filets (the same kind of fish used in Filet o’ Fish, as my extensive google research tells me) – the sister shuns them because there are bones in them (edible ones). With lime juice squirted over it, they taste like every hoki fish filet I’ve ever had – good, but nothing to separate it from others.

The first of five lamb chops

On to the land-based animals – we “open” with frenched racks of lamb, grilled whole and sliced. Like clockwork, our grill master chef plucks the racks when they are slightly underdone, slices them, and transfers individual chops back to the grill to finish. The result is perfectly grilled lamb – tender but not chewy, with a little bit of crust on the edges. With garlic dipping sauce or straight up, it’s fantastic. Seeing our delight at how good the lamb is, our chef throws about four herds worth onto the grill – before we move on to the next course, my cousin has snarfed her way through SIX lamb chops (five for me). And there’s still much to come.

Beef, awash in juices - just the way a carnivore likes

Pork neck

And finally... fatty Wagyu beef

The lamb chops beget some medium rare beef tenderloin, thinly sliced, which begets pork chops, which begets a tiny bite of Wagyu beef. The pork is a revelation – using meat from the neck, the chop has more of a bite to it, yet skirts the danger of being chewy and tough with ease. By the time the Wagyu arrives, everyone is too stuffed to move – but not stuffed enough to devour that little morsel of carnivorous gold. You know what, it’s hard to say no to juicy, tender, mouth-melting meat!

The verdict? Waaaaaaaaaaaay too much meat, leading to a feeling of complete bloatedness and inability to move. But for a gorge-yourself kind of night once in a blue moon, it sure is an experience – and rest assured, you’re getting some of the best meat there is to be had in Taipei.

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^{1. Tell me princess, now when did you last let your heart decide?↩}