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" Tianmu 1980,” a limited-edition gift set wrapped in a Japanese furoshiki cloth, turns the neighborhood’s ice cream parlors, cafés and Beer Street into a financier, a dacquoise and a snowball cookie.

Ask anyone who grew up in Taipei about Tianmu, and the stories sound alike: ice cream near the roundabout, a long coffee under the plane trees, and, after dark, bars and restaurants from half a dozen countries. In the 1980s and 1990s, American military families and expatriates gave the district a worldly yet easygoing character that locals still call its golden era.

CHIRON PROPERTY, a developer focused on residential design and quality of urban living, is bringing that era back through OSMOSIS, its lifestyle arm. Its partner is Chuan Tung Bakery, a Tianmu institution founded in 1984 that has served the neighborhood for more than four decades. Together they have created “Tianmu 1980,” a gift set of three desserts developed by Chuan Tung’s pastry chef Hsing-Wei Chen.

Chen spent years in France, where he worked at the Parisian pastry house Dalloyau, collaborated with Meilleur Ouvrier de France pastry chef Yann Brys, helped found Pâtisserie Tourbillon and won awards at French pastry competitions.

“Tianmu’s elegance built up slowly, over decades,” Chen says. “We wanted to make more than a box of pastries. Pairing classic technique with contemporary design, we hope people can taste the Tianmu they remember.”

Three desserts, three scenes

1. Ice Cream Snowball Cookies: childhood

For many Taipei children, a trip to Tianmu meant ice cream: Swensen’s by the roundabout, Taiwan’s first Dairy Queen, and the castle-like Häagen-Dazs storefront. These small, round cookies crumble lightly in the mouth, like the powdery snow they are named for, and play on the layered, colorful flavors of an ice cream counter. Their round shape also nods to Tianmu as a meeting place for people of many backgrounds.

2. Mocha Financier: the café afternoon

Taiwan’s first Starbucks opened in Tianmu in 1998, but the district’s café habit was already well established. This financier, a small French almond cake, is made moist and tender with deep-roasted coffee beans, giving it a rich, toasty aroma. A white chocolate coating adds gentle sweetness, like the milk foam on a mocha, and softens the coffee’s bitterness. It is meant to be eaten slowly, the way afternoons used to go on Tianmu’s tree-lined streets.

3. Honey, Candied Orange and Hops Dacquoise: Beer Street

In the 1980s and 1990s, the stretch of Zhongshan North Road Section 7 known as “Beer Street” filled with international bars and restaurants, where Americans, expatriates and locals shared drinks and music. This dacquoise, a light meringue-and-nut cake, is airy inside with a thin crisp shell, a nod to the golden head of a freshly poured beer. Baking-grade hops add a faint herbal note, while honey and candied orange supply sweetness and a bright citrus finish.

The gift set

Instead of a paper box, the three desserts come wrapped in a furoshiki, a traditional Japanese carrying cloth. Its design is built around “collecting the beautiful moments of everyday life,” with illustrations of street corners, cafés, desserts, afternoon walks and Scandinavian furniture. The cloth is reusable, so it can carry a lunch, a book or small keepsakes long after the pastries are gone.

“Tianmu 1980” is sold at the Tianmu 1980 specialty store [address / opening hours / price / quantity to be added]. The shop plays a selection of vintage records curated by Pei-Ju Lin, owner of the vinyl store Sounds Good.

Source:  https://www.foodnext.net/news/newsnow/paper/6471205083