The person controlling everything is chef Paul Lee. Tall and handsome, he wouldn’t be out of place on the movie set of Crazy Rich Asians. Standing in the open kitchen he is dressed not in the standard white chef’s jacket but in a dress shirt, similar to the three-Michelin-star chef Alain Passard. Except Passard is usually in a white apron while Lee is in a blue apron that is for the commis in a French kitchen. Perhaps Lee is signaling that he is still learning.
While he may be humble, Lee is a very experienced chef. Born in Taiwan and studied at California’s Blue Ribbon Culinary School, Lee trained at Joël Robuchon's restaurants in Las Vegas with Tomonori Danzaki and in New York City with Xavier Boyer. He also worked at Martin Berasatagui’s Michelin-three-star restaurant in Spain. Prior to returning to Taipei, Lee was the executive chef at the fine dining restaurant Patina in downtown Los Angeles. Working with Joachim Splichal he changed the menu at Patina to an all tasting menu format. At age 37, Lee is one of the few chefs working in Taiwan with extensive experience in fine dining restaurants.
Impromptu only has one tasting menu. Every diner eats what Lee wants to cook. For anyone imagining Impromptu as a place where one can have a conversation with the chef, and he would create a special or new dish on the spot, one would be wrong. This is not like Pierre Gagnaire where he may improvise in the middle of dinner service. After all Lee trained at Robuchon and Robuchon didn’t believe in running specials. Robuchon believed that frequent menu changes meant one is trading perfection for variety. The menu at Impromptu doesn't change everyday and not even every month. Even when the menu changes after a month or two, it is not wholesale.
As Impromptu doesn't offer an à la carte option, it is not a restaurant that one can visit frequently, unless one wants to eat the same dishes over and over. Since the restaurant opened in late summer of 2018, I have been there twice. The visits were six months apart with different menus but in a similar format. I enjoyed both of my dinners.
The restaurant is located at the southeast corner of the shopping mall in the basement of Regent Hotel. From the corridor of the mall, a sliding door of translucent tinted glass opens into the restaurant. On the right is a small bar that doesn’t seem to be used much by the guests. On the left are tables with banquettes. In the middle of the space and in full view of the diners is the kitchen and counter seating.
The restaurant is small. There are 14 seats at the counter and about the same number of seats at the tables. There is also a private room in the back that can seat up to ten people. The ceiling is a bit lower than one would like but this is not the fault of the restaurant; the ceiling of the entire shopping mall is too low. One design flaw of the restaurant is the choice of the chairs for the counter. The seat is not wide and is made more restrictive by the armrests. Armrests for the chairs at the table are fine because the diners are usually talking across the table. The situation at the counter is different as one’s dining companion is on the side. The armrests make turning to the side to talk quite restrictive and uncomfortable. It would be nicer to have seats without armrests like at L'Atelier de Joël Robuchon. The alternative would be to have swivel chairs.
The size and setup of the restaurant seem like a Japanese kappo restaurant, but the overall feel is not. The color palette of the restaurant is quite neutral with off-white, taupe, and light and dark wood. While wood is used for the surfaces, the appearance is not natural but more synthetic. The ceiling is mostly exposed except for the area above the counter. The design reminds me a bit of the restaurant designs by the late David Collins, albeit with a lesser budget. The table setting is simple, with no charger plate nor placemat. There’s just a napkin folded in a square, a water glass, and a wine glass. Small vases with flowers dot the counter. The overall feel of the restaurant is quite pleasant.
Depending on the season, the tasting menu starts with one or more cold dishes. For my first dinner in the summer, there are three cold dishes in a row. The first course is hamachi, watermelon, aguachile. The second is scallop, sakura shrimp, whey, and cucumber. The third is ayu fish, guava, and Sichuan peppercorns. The touch of Sichuan peppercorns is very interesting and done with great precision - just the right amount of numbness in the flavor profile. If one of the criteria for being a good chef is coming up with his or her own combinations of ingredients, then Lee certainly hits the marks.
Lee calls his food new American cuisine and this sounds like a good term. He is trained in the French tradition but his food is multi-cultural. He uses many Asian ingredients such as shaoxing wine, fermented black bean, Chinese sausages, Sichuan peppercorn. He also takes ideas from all sorts of cuisines. In a single tasting menu, there is Chinese noodle, Italian truffle pizza, yakitori, Vietnamese sandwich, French blood sausage, and South American chimichurri sauce. Throughout the dinner the ingredients don't repeat and all the different ideas and tastes go very well together. I really appreciate and like Lee's global outlook, which is more interesting than the narrow focus on Taiwanese flavors of some restaurants in Taipei.
After the cold dishes, bread is served as one of the course. The bread is way too hot as I can barely hold the bread comfortably with my bare hands. Anyone who made bread knows bread should not be eaten straight out of the oven. One needs the bread to cool down a bit for the crust to develop. I assume the bread at Impromptu is baked earlier in the day and reheated during service. While having a hot bread seems satisfying it doesn’t allow one to get the full taste of the bread. In my first dinner, the bread and butter are served as a stand-alone course, and as such they are not special enough. I don't understand why this type of bread or why just one bread. In my second dinner the same bread and butter are served with the soup, which makes more sense. Nevertheless, the role of the bread in the set menu is a bit unclear. It seems the restaurant feels a meal should include bread, but without a baker, the bread program seems a bit half-hearted.
One savory course in the set menu provides the diner with a choice. To choose an alternate entails a supplement. At both of my meals I go with the supplemental charge but I wish I hadn't. For my first dinner, instead of Taiwanese pork, I added NT$550 (a quarter of the price of the entire menu) to have a thin slice of Japanese wagyu beef of unknown grade. It turns out to be the worst dish of both dinners. My dining companion orders the pork and is much better. In the second dinner I forego the truffle pizza and instead spend an extra NT$380 for lobster noodle with burnt scallion. While the lobster noodle is better than the wagyu sukiyaki, the noodle isn't that interesting.
The sequence of dishes build up to the main course, a large format protein dish that is shared by multiple diners. The first time I am there, the main course is roast goose. A cook presents the goose in the beginning of our dinner, prior to serving the amuse bouche. The large bird looks impressive, beautiful, and delicious looking.
However, by the time the goose is served, each guest only receives a very small portion - about the size of my two fingers. If the idea is to leave the diner wanting more, it certainly succeeded. The contrast of before and after is simply too jarring. Despite the size, the goose is very nice.
In my second dinner, the pièce de résistance is roast pork loin. Again the large pork loin is first presented whole to the guests.
The individual serving of the pork loin is bigger than the goose, but still a bit on the small side to my liking. The loin is nicely roasted and the boudin noir, eggplant, and kale on the side are all very nice. I just wish there is more of it.
A reinterpretation of bahn mi is served on the side. Instead of baguette the sandwich is with fried steamed bun. This is very delicious but again the portion is tiny - more like a finger food served at a cocktail party.
The set menu has two desserts. One of them is a fruit. For my first dinner I have the fig with aiyu and shiso, which recalls David Chang's comment about figs on a plate. The second time the fruit is strawberry with Sichuan peppercorn and lemon marigold. The fruit desserts provide some interesting flavor combination, but they are not technical.
At both of my dinners, six months apart, the main dessert is a white chocolate bread pudding with frozen foie gras. The dish reminds me a bit of the frozen foie gras at Momofuku Ko in New York City. At Impromptu, the foie is chilled quickly with liquid nitrogen in front of the diners. This must be a signature dessert of Lee since it stays on the menu. I enjoy the dessert, but I don't need to eat it twice in six months. Dessert at Impromptu is good but not elaborate and without much wow factor. I suppose the restaurant doesn't have a dedicated pastry chef.
After a petit four and a milk tea, Lee personally hands a menu to every guest and asks about their meal. Once service is over, Lee is more relaxed and happy to talk about his ideas. The menu comes in an envelope but is not printed à la minute. In one of my meals there is a glitch. Lee is not able to procure the sweetbread and serves a squid instead. However, the menu still says sweetbread. I wish Lee would really embrace the idea of impromptu to change and print the menu daily.
There’s a small wine list, totaling less than 30 bottles. The majority of the wines are between NT$2,000 and NT$4,000. The mark-ups of the wines are reasonable. For instance, a bottle of Billecart Salmon brut rose is on the list for NT$3,800. The same bottle is priced at NT$9,200 at Mandarin Oriental Taipei. The corkage fee is $750, less than other comparable restaurants. Wine or cocktail pairings are also available. The beverage program is friendly but, compared to the food, it is not as interesting.
The price of the menu is NT$2,200. This number seems to be carefully considered. While it may not be deemed as cheap, it doesn’t feel expensive for the number of courses offered. However, besides the aforementioned small portions, the ingredients are not expensive. With just one menu, Lee can offer a better price and be sure the quality is consistent for a small number of people. The restaurant is not big, but it is not small like a restaurant in Tokyo where the chef and an assistant can do everything. Perhaps at this point the restaurant simply doesn't have the staff and capacity to change the menu everyday.
Operating a western restaurant in Taipei is difficult. The business and personnel aspects of the restaurant will always be challenging, yet I cannot help but think the cooking part is a bit too easy for Lee. Impromptu just has dinner service and many of the dishes are not highly technical. Lee has the experience and talent to operate a grand restaurant. Maybe Taipei may never have the market for real luxury. But wouldn't it be nice if Lee can open a restaurant where I can have the lièvre à la royale, my friend can have the turbot, and we can order another dish to share? After being opened for less than a year, Lee has already gained one Michelin star. I want to know what's next?
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