Japanese Restaurant in Taipei: Signature "Mixed Vegetable Donabe Rice" with Q-textured, savory and salty flavors

Text & Photos bySan Gao Chi Han

I’ve wanted to try this place, Juuichi, on Roshi Street for ages. On Saturday night, I called at the last minute to confirm. The person on the phone said they close at 11 PM and advised us to arrive by 9:30 PM at the latest, so we booked for then. The lady working there was super kind and welcoming—the whole experience from entering to leaving the restaurant felt warm and cozy.

There’s a wooden sign at the entrance that says their signature dish is donabe rice… If your Japanese isn’t great and you can’t read the menu, just flag down the lady inside and ask her for help right away. The bummer this time was that some items were sold out—unfortunately, we couldn’t get horse sashimi or flounder sashimi.

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The first side dish was dried fish flakes with mashed radish, drizzled with a bit of soy sauce—it smelled really good.

We started with some stir-fried napa cabbage to warm up; the flavor was pretty standard.

These soy-sauce-marinated shishamo (smelt fish) with eggs were grilled until crispy and fragrant—savory with a nice sweet-salty balance. The fish roe was juicy and had a good texture too.

The freshly made omelet took a while. It was hot and fluffy, with a simple eggy taste and mild sweetness.

The clams were pretty good quality, plump and juicy. Naturally, we drank up all the broth (sake) at the bottom—so tasty.

Fish pieces coated in plum paste and wrapped in shiso leaves before frying. They drained the oil well, which was nice.

The white fish had a slightly firm texture, with a thin, crispy coating. The flavor was light and not greasy.

A plain pork hamburger steak, not too big, served with a sweet-and-sour sauce.

The fat content was moderate—not overly rich or greasy as I’d feared. It was a pretty good hamburger steak. The sauce had a stronger flavor, so it paired nicely with a bowl of plain rice.

After a wait, the star dish finally arrived. Topped with shrimp, shiitake mushrooms, and quail eggs, but the generous layer of egg strands on top hid most of it, making the presentation look a bit plain.

When you dig in, there’s a lot of carrot, bamboo shoot, burdock root, and shredded shiitake underneath. The veggies were all simmered until very tender. The rice and broth were cooked until fully infused with flavor—Q-textured, savory, salty, and not mushy at all. It’s a simple but delicious dish.

This wasn’t what I ordered. The ingredients weren’t anything special, and the cost-performance ratio seemed a bit low. (I think it was around 400–500 NT$?)