Fleur de Sel Autumn Menu: Squab, Lotus Seed and Chef Li’s Honour
Taichung’s Fleur de Sel announces tasting menus from NT$3,880 and four main-course choices. Explore seasonal dishes, service charges, meal times and Chef Justine Li’s French honour.
Fleur de Sel in Taichung has introduced an autumn tasting menu, with two announced starting prices of NT$3,880 and NT$5,880 per person, plus a 10% service charge. Chef Justine Li also received the Chevalier of the French Order of Agricultural Merit on October 19, presented by Frédéric Laplanche, director of the French Office in Taipei. The food and operating information here is based on material supplied by the restaurant, focusing on how the dishes connect French techniques, Taiwanese ingredients and the chef’s memories.
Chef Justine Li at Fleur de Sel, whose autumn menu connects French techniques with Taiwanese ingredients.Justine Li with Frédéric Laplanche, director of the French Office in Taipei, documenting the October honour.
From rose kombucha to onion soup, autumn moves between cool and warm
The opening bite uses rose kombucha to introduce acidity. Another combination brings crab, yuzu and fennel together, placing seafood and botanical aromas at the start of the meal. The raw-scallop salad uses crème fraîche with scallops, apple, dried sausage and yuzu foam, adding white ginger lily from Taichung. Its idea goes beyond decorating seafood with flowers: dairy, fruit acidity, cured meat and floral aromas each have a distinct role.
A rose holds a pink spherical bite for the autumn rose-kombucha appetiser.The restaurant’s raw-scallop image uses white foam and shell references in its presentation.
For a warm course, the gratinéed onion soup returns to beef consommé and onions cooked down over a long period. According to the restaurant, the recipe has remained for twenty years and recalls Li’s early studies in France. The accompanying breads take different paths: black-truffle potato sourdough draws on her learning in Germany, olive-oil focaccia looks to northern Italy, and the rose-shaped croissant uses French butter. European experience therefore appears beyond the meat mains.
Four main-course choices, then lotus seed and osmanthus memories
The announced mains are roast young lamb, Iberian pork cap, longan-wood-grilled squab and F1 Japanese New York strip steak, with autumn ingredients including aubergine, fermented black garlic and chestnut. These are choices, not four meat dishes served together in one set. The squab is grilled over longan-wood charcoal and paired with burdock and autumn persimmon, combining wood aromas, fibrous roots and fruit on one plate. Diners can compare their preferred meat and cooking method before checking the corresponding set price.
Roast young lamb is one of four main choices; every set does not include all four meats.
The lotus-seed Mont Blanc replaces a familiar French dessert’s principal flavour with lotus seed and osmanthus, inspired by the chef’s grandmother’s lotus-seed cakes and osmanthus honey. Restaurant photographs show fine piped strands building its silhouette, with a thin lotus-root slice and leaves adding visual references. Another dessert, pear, white ginger lily and candied winter melon, borrows the meringue form of a French floating island and adds Taiwanese candied winter melon. Both begin with familiar ingredients, but reinterpret them through shape and texture respectively.
Lotus-seed Mont Blanc with osmanthus recalls the chef’s grandmother’s sweets.
Prices, meal times and the Shizheng Road address
Fleur de Sel opened in June 2004 and has now been operating for twenty-two years. The honour marks another point in the restaurant’s sustained practice of French cooking. Its autumn menu brings that history back to specific dishes: traditional onion soup and French breads sit alongside white ginger lily, lotus seed, osmanthus and candied winter melon. For a first-time visitor, looking at how ingredients meet techniques offers a clearer introduction to this season than remembering the medal’s name alone.
The announced starting prices are NT$3,880 and NT$5,880 plus 10%; including the service charge, those starting amounts become NT$4,268 and NT$6,468, with the actual selection and extras charged separately. The restaurant is at No. 581-1, Shizheng Road, Xitun District, Taichung; telephone 04-2252-0991. Published meal times are 18:00 Wednesday to Friday, and 12:00 and 18:00 on Saturday and Sunday, with Monday and Tuesday closed. Ask about the day’s menu, main-course choices and dietary restrictions when booking; published meal times do not mean walk-in seats are guaranteed.
