Updated, September 2022
opening hours and menu updated
Come to 3 Coins with a big appetite, that’s my advice.
3 Coins is one of the first restaurants to be awarded 1 Michelin Star in the opening of the Michelin Guide to Taipei in 2018.
They’ve definitely done well to keep the old style decor inside.
The menu is vast, check it out on the website.
We came with a party of 8, and paid around $1,000/person. You can go for the set meals, but we opted to choose exactly what we wanted to eat, instead, and it worked out around the same price…
Time to eat!
XO醬炒蘿蔔糕 XO jiàng chǎo luóbo gāo
XO sauce fried turnip cake
We’ve all had this for breakfast at some point, but here it is brought to life with beansprouts, chilli, and egg. Fried together to crispy and delicate perfection with some soy sauce. It’s a good start, that’s for sure.
百合炒蘆筍 Bǎi hé chǎo lú sǔn
Stir-fried asparagus
All about the greens. These asparagus were tasty, fresh, and crunchy.
富貴明蝦球 fù guì míng xiā qiú
Deep Fried shrimp with sweet sauce
Deep fried to perfection, the skin was crunchy and crisp and the shrimp inside was meaty and delicate. The sauce is a little sweet, so it may not be for everyone, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.
蜜汁叉燒包 mì zhī chā shāo bāo
Baked char Su buns
As we were ordering, we were asking the owners at 3 Coins advice on what to get. She recommended the weekend special oven baked Char Su Buns. Say no more. Gimme, Gimme!
Crunchy and rich on the inside, when you bite in the rich bun gives way to juicy and sticky pork inside. Again, slightly sweetened with honey, it’s a sweet and salty combination that is internationally applauded. What a dish this was. Absolute Must-Order at 3 Coins.
港式片皮鴨 gǎng shì piàn pí yā
Cantonese duck
$1980/duck cooked two ways
The house special at 3 Coins is the duck served two ways. Here we can see that the duck has been roasted to crisp-skin perfection, and is being carved up table side for some theater.
Served with chewy pancakes, the waitress will do 1 per person to start with, and then leave the remainder on the table for you to tuck into when you see fit.
Add hoi sin sauce ^
Thinly sliced cucumber and green onions/scallions ^
Duck ^
Roll ^
Chow down ^
The duck itself was really fatty delicious. The skin was amazingly crispy, and the flavours were popping like you expect them to. My only potential gripe is a personal one, in that I like my pancake to be a little thinner and a little more dry. As you can see above, 3 Coin’s pancakes are quite thick and they were a bit heavy.
百花釀鬼馬 bǎi huā niàng guǐ mǎ
Deep fried shrimp cake (drool)
Crispy shrimp cake with sweet and sour sauce. Delicious, albeit a little oily.
捲餅四季豆 juǎn bǐng sì jì dòu
Green beans with wraps
Only one of 3 things in the world (so far that I have uncovered) that I do not eat, are these disgusting beans. I call them ‘Squeaky beans’ for the texture and sound they omit when chewed. But, we were with other people so duly obliged to order.
They are served with the same pancakes as the duck was served with, and looked appetising. I tried it (as I invariably do just in case the texture has changed in the many years I have dispised the vegetable), and it squeaked. One mouthful was enough for me. The beans were quite salty, giving way to a bit of spice. They were also quite greasy. But the table seemed to enjoy them…
干鍋肥腸煲 gān guō féi cháng bāo
Intestine pot
I regularly campaign hard for intestines. These were as delicious as any others I have tried. Cooked in this pot with onions, ginger, chilli and Thai basil, the flavours were good.
菌菇牛仔條 Jūn gū niúzǎi tiáo
Stir-fried beef with mushrooms
Tip – get one of those pancakes and stuff this beef into it, you won’t regret it.
This beef was beautifully cooked, the flavours were great, and the texture was spot-on. I highly recommend this at 3 Coins.
臘味炒飯 là wèi chǎo fàn
Fried rice with Cantonese sausage
I have most definitely had nicer fried rice, although the flavour of that Cantonese sausage was very tasty.
The fried rice was a bit greasy, truth be told.
So if you order the duck, it will be cooked two ways. You MUST order the roasted duck 3 Coins, of course, and we also went for the duck in the soup. They use the leftover duck from your pancakes, and cook it up together in this huge bowl of soup. Honestly, not really what you want at the end of a huge meal. But, tasty, nonetheless.
Opening Times: Monday – Sunday 11:30 – 14:30 and 17:30 – 21:00
Tel: 02 2381 7180