The interior design of the restaurnat has lived up to its name "Orient Dragon" and eyeballs attractive in terms of bold choices of black and red colors everywhere. Dimlighted against its background, the red color and the omnipresent bird cages are apparant the selected theme which reminiscense of the 19th century tea houses culture of China.

The restaurant is managed by the SWMALL group which owns "Taiwanese-style" chain boutique hotels and fitness centers in Taipei and Taichung. Fitness center members enjoy benefits such as discounts at the restaurant or, occasionally, free coupons for SPA massage threapies one floor up from the restaurant. Having being long-term members of the fitness centers, Sophia's and my parents one day decided to check out the restaurant and found it an interesting place and brought back menu for Sophia. Once a huge fan of fitness centers in the U.S., I myself preferred their fitness centers over other major ones in Taichung for the nicely layoutted swimming pools and jacuzzis. Sophia and I chatted in the jacuzzi when we visited home from the U.S. Oh, I forgot to say that, we have known each other for more than twenty years -- we were born one month apart to two best girlfriends in college. Though we studied in different schools when we grew up, our paths never crossed until we both decided to go abroad in the early 20s, and after a few years, we packed home and boarded planes from the U.S. bound for Taipei on the same day two months before today. Sophia worked in San Francisco while I lived in Boston/Cambridge, and we'd probably have different interpretations for food and culture because of that. We decided to launch this blogger project partly for fun, partly because I have been asked by a bunch of my backpacker friends about where to dine/what to do in Taiwan over years. Seeing is Believing, we make the choice of making it a photographic report of cuisine and places. Anyway, we'd kick off and hope that this is a good start.

The occasion's a celebration of a stage that we completed our adventurous days in a foreign country. Apparently a majority of visitors are groups of a family of four or more who came to search for casual, relaxing and inexpensive Chinese cuisine with a little bit of creativity. Overall, the service is above average. Each customer has one's own tea set for no extra charge, and the goodies have included most popular Chinese cuisines. One dish has a hugh red basket-shaped container, the ones grandmas would use in pilgrimage and we later found that it is lamb B.B.Q.
The place could have been a popular place like Kitti Chai of New York had it elaborated its entrance a bit more and maybe add a cocktail lounge to it. But most customers here are also appraently abstinent from alcohol, juding from the menu of tea.

The dishes we ordered: cherry shrimp fried rice, Water lilies and pork slices, Xihu style sour fish, orange-flavored fried chicken, black pepper beef. Pictures are uploaded to http://eticc.blogspot.com.