Neihu District, Taipei City｜好好食房 Soup Up- 西湖店

This place serves mostly chicken based food and meals. They have various flavors for their soup meals from spicy to thick broth. They also have rice and noodle options to go with the soup but you can ask what is recommended. They have English menu but the Chinese menu is more extensive. Foreign credit cards are also welcome for mode of payment.

Had a souped up lunch at this place today, which opened just a few weeks ago. Seems to serve hearty, healthy meals that incorporate traditional soup broth methods with modern sous vide techniques in many of their dishes. This restaurant focuses on chicken — soup broth, meats, etc — which I’m going to appreciate as we’re heading into the winter months. I had the “thicker” (concentrated) soup named “濃一點”. Wife had a medium-spicy “剝皮辣椒” version, and kids shared the clam-chicken soup. The broth is actually quite flavourful and MSG-free: it’s not a typical heavy broth, but the richness and depth of flavour are certainly there. In your average chicken soup store, those soups normally have bone-dry meat in them (because they’ve literally had the life cooked out of them to make good soup), but Soup Up has achieved something special here: their broth is rich and flavourful, but the generous pieces of chicken have been gently cooked to tenderness and still remain juicy and succulent. It’s not a combination that purely traditional methods could easily achieve. the soups also come chock full of vegetables! All the soups are also paired with a choice 麻油麵線 (sesame oil noodles, one of my favourite carbs) or chicken rice (which is chicken with some awesome fried shallot oil over chicken-flavoured rice). With the noodles, they even provide a ramen tamago (糖心蛋) that is perfectly made: my (wildass) guess is it’s sous vide then equilibrium brined for 3 days. I only had a sliver of it because my daughters wouldn’t share. We also ordered a side plate of chicken: their sous vide chilled chicken breast has the kind texture I’m aiming to achieve at home. Will need to ask the temp/time next visit!! There’s an ample selection of sauces and dips on the side where you can help yourself, but the flavours of the sauce they provide in your set bring sufficient kick already. Both my food-snob daughters stuffed their faces continuously. That’s a good sign. Will definitely be back. Overall, their prices are quite reasonable — we averaged $215/person all in — considering the effort that’s gone into all the dishes. The restaurant itself is clean and modern, brightly lit and comfortable. And kid friendly. They have more seating upstairs, but I didn’t go up there. Note: they do get quite busy during weekday lunches, but as they don’t close for the afternoon, I could just shift my lunch to be a bit later.

It's delicious! ! ☺️❤️ The chicken is very tender and the chicken soup is rich and not greasy. The noodles are cooked just right, not soft, and the portion is just right. The picky eater also praised it👍 The space of the restaurant is very good, it is very comfortable to chat elegantly and drink chicken soup