Astoria Cafe
It was so many years back when I noticed this famous cafe ‘Astoria Cafe (明星咖啡館)‘ in 隱地‘s books. He was one of my favourite Chinese writers when I was a NZ high school student. He often mentioned that Astoria Cafe was a cafe where most literary authors loved to spend the whole day in there while only ordered one cup of coffee! The Astoria Cafe was closed in 1989 and what he missed that good old time so much.
I also felt so sad that I had no chance to visit this cafe during my summer vacation back to Taiwan. I almost forgot this since I started to work in this Taipei city.
Just about a few weeks ago, I happened to see the TV news saying the Astoria Cafe was reopened in 2004 and will be soon closed due to Taipei Capital Redevelopment Project. Suddenly, I was reminded how much I was so willing to visit this Cafe! So here I came!
Astoria Cafe is pretty easy to find the way – just opposite of the City God Temple (城隍廟) in 武昌街. The ground floor is Astoria Bakery and the first floor is the Cafe.
Probably because of the TV news of that previous day, there were so many people in the Cafe.
Astoria was established in 1949 by a few Russians. It was used to be a home restaurant for those Russians escaped from Communists Russia to China and then to Taiwan. Chiang Ching-Kuo (蔣經國) and his Russian wife were used to come here a lot for family events or Russian cultural events.
