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Old New Taiwanese Cuisine founder Hsueh Yung-Po (right) and Hsueh Shun-Ti (left) are father and son. They’ve reinvented the taste of Taiwan in a way that’s both old and new. Their newly established tea brand Yonshin Tea & Cake Selection Bar has franchises in places like Hong Kong, Singapore, and Japan. They’ve proven that a “master chef” is truly the master in every sense of the word. (Photo by Chien-Tong Wang/CW)

“They say it’s rare to see foreigners in the streets of Kaohsiung. That’s because all the foreigners are eating here!” Old New Taiwanese Cuisine (老新台菜) founder Hsueh Yung-Po (薛永波), nicknamed Brother Po (波哥), says laughingly as he meets this reporter from CommonWealth Magazine.

He takes out a business card. On a field of deep dark blue, golden letters trace out his name in Chinese, English, and Japanese. To the side, a drawing of magpies symbolizing success and good fortune is also printed.

Old New Taiwanese Cuisine is a restaurant on the shores of the Love River in Kaohsiung. It caters to tourists from around the world: China, Japan, Europe and the Americas. Its amazing feasts are a way to introduce the taste of Taiwan to cherished guests from afar.

Taiwanese Cooking is More Than Night Markets and Open-air Banquets

There’s a certain stereotype associated with Taiwanese food. People naturally assume you’re talking about cheap night market snacks or bustling outdoor banquets. And in fact, these are useful testing grounds for master chefs who want to hone their culinary talents as well as their hard-won powers of observation and organizational skills.

However, Hsueh Yung-Po, a 30-year veteran of the Taiwanese restaurant scene, has much more to offer.

“A Taiwanese restaurant with its own brand and fancy storefront is hard to find. These bells and whistles are usually reserved for Western, Japanese, Chinese cuisines…isn’t it strange, aren’t we all Taiwanese? We have a unique culture. But when it comes to Taiwanese cooking, people think about stir-fry shops and street stalls. Can’t we refine our cuisine and increase its value?” Hsueh Yung-Po exposits. (Read: Taiwan Cuisine Shine on Netflix Series “Street Food”)

“The reason I call the restaurant ‘Old New’ is because I’m reinventing old dishes; traditional Taiwanese cuisines can also be very innovative.”

To this end, Hsueh Yung-Po deconstructed and reinvented Taiwanese cooking to refine the cuisines and increase value. Even everyday dishes can be recrafted from the aspects of their ingredients, cooking techniques, and presentation.



Father and son Hsueh created a dining environment that combines fashion with vintage. This is the main attraction of Old New Taiwanese Cuisine and why many young gourmets who used to shun Taiwanese cooking have become their biggest fans. (Photo by Chien-Tong Wang/CW)

Associate Professor Catherine Lee (李怡君) of the Department of Chinese Culinary Arts at the National Kaohsiung University of Hospitality and Tourism (高雄餐旅大學中餐廚藝系) uses the everyday Taiwanese dish of smoked squid as an example. Old New Taiwanese Cuisine reinvents this course with a cooking technique called ‘cold smoking.’ Charcoal smoke is gently wafted into the squid after it is fried. That way, when the gourmet picks up a piece with chopsticks, the fragrant smoke is squeezed out of the squid. This is an innovation of sensory delights in terms of taste, sight, and scent. “They maintained the qualities of Taiwanese cooking but found a new way of presentation and created their own style.”

The injection of new elements into Taiwanese cooking made Old New Taiwanese Cuisine a well-known restaurant in Kaohsiung. Their most famous dishes, such as squid rice noodle soup and taro sago soup, have been touted by CNN as some of the must-eat cuisines of Taiwan.

This retro but inventive delicious taste is now being passed on down to the next generation. Four years ago, Hsueh Yung-Po’s son Hsueh Shun-Ti, CEO of Old New Taiwanese Cuisine, created the Taiwanese tea brand “Yonshin Tea & Cake Selection Bar” (永心鳳茶). He has successfully entered the youth market through social media marketing.

The age difference between father and son is only twenty years. They evolved their business from a small roadside shop to a catering group that owns two big brands and six restaurants. Their revenue last year was over 500 million Taiwan dollars. They’ve popularized Taiwanese cuisines on the global stage. Dealers from around the world—Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, the United States—have approached them to ask about franchising rights.

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Chefs Are Rightful Masters of Their Craft

Why did they take the path less traveled? Hsueh Yung-Po spent half his life working in the kitchen and his explanation is blunt: “I will not concede defeat, I will not accept fate. Why are Taiwanese eateries being belittled as ‘greasy spoons’?” He says with great pathos that because Taiwanese cooking is not listed among the “Eight Cuisines” of China, and because it’s a mishmash of Chinese, Western, and Japanese influences, its characteristics are elusive and hard to define. There’s also a sense that it’s folksy, homemade food, not as classy as Western or Japanese cuisines. Over time, it became unpopular with the younger generation and is in danger of falling through the generation gap. (Read: A Bite of Taiwan: Memories of Home and Cultural Amalgamation)

“They call us master chefs (總鋪師), the word for master or teacher (師) is in the name, just like a physician (醫師). But when people imagine Taiwanese restaurants, they think of chefs with dirty aprons stamping on wet, sticky, slippery floors in dark kitchens…if we don’t change our image, how can we ask others to respect us as masters, to want to join our profession”? Hsueh Yung-Po asks rhetorically in self-reflection.

Afraid that the art of Taiwanese cooking will be lost, he decided to become the change he wanted to see, and to preserve the taste of Taiwan through action.



Photo by Chien-Tong Wang/CW

Ten years ago, he left the seafood restaurant he worked in and opened his own little diner. He abandoned the low cost, fast production business model suited to catering for tour groups. Instead, he emphasized fresh ingredients and a menu-less, made-to-order model. Though his restaurants only had six tables, it was cozy and attractive, and so he found a niche in the market and established his brand.

His success allowed him to open a three-story restaurant three years later. The restaurant was named Old New Taiwanese Cuisine. In the beginning, they specialized in throwing wedding banquets.

It begun as a roadside shop operating on an innovative menu-less business model. It became the hugely popular Old New Taiwanese Cuisine restaurant. After expanding operations, there are now two banquet halls under this brand. (Photo by Chien-Tong Wang/CW)

Even though his business grew quickly, Hsueh Yung-Po resisted the urge to hire veteran chefs. He wanted to train his own talent. If you’re a young cook with experience in Western or Japanese cooking, or even if you don’t have any culinary experience at all, he was willing to take you in. “I wanted to recruit blank slates. If you don’t know anything, you’ll be willing to try anything.”

There’s More Than 100 Ways to Cook a Chicken

He goes on to explain: though a veteran chef possesses skills, they are set in their ways due to years of experience. “How can you change twenty or thirty years of habit overnight? Not to mention we often import new technology to invent new cuisines. Some cooks may be afraid of change and are unwilling to learn new skills.”

Besides boldly hiring a team of greenhorns, in order to remain creative, Old New Taiwanese Cuisine holds a cook-off competition every month.

Head chefs direct their teams to invent new dishes in the style of Taiwanese cooking. They can use any ingredient or seasoning they like; they are even free to decide the budget. Senior management acts as food critics who judge the results and decide what to incorporate into the official menu.

Young Hsueh Shun-Ti also cut his teeth in Chinese culinary school and served as a cook in restaurants. He observes that in the traditional mentor and apprentice system, innovative ideas proposed by young chefs are often shot down by their masters for being “too expensive” or “too complex.”

After being repeatedly rejected, their passion naturally faded. But because the sky’s the limit and there are monthly cook offs at Old New Taiwanese Cuisine, impressive new dishes are often being introduced. “A chef once came up with spicy hotpot fried rice. We were surprised, it didn’t seem a good fit! But actually it was very tasty,” he remembers with a smile.

Monthly cook off competitions add new elements in traditional Taiwanese cooking. (Source: Old New Taiwanese Cuisine)

For example, last July they added “Childhood Taiwanese Cooking” (童趣台菜) to the menu. What they did was add childhood snacks such as Science Noodles (a brand of instant noodles), preserved fruits, and roasted wheat flour into conventional Taiwanese cooking. This was a joint effort by their team of creative chefs.

As soon as senior management approved of the proposal, they added it to the official menu. Chefs who invent new dishes get a few thousand dollars in bonuses to encourage and incentivize them.

Whereas the older generation protected the traditional taste of Taiwan, the younger generation added innovative new elements.

Currently, Old New Taiwanese Cuisine has invented over a thousand dishes. There are more than a hundred ways to cook a chicken. The young blood is the driving force behind the restaurant’s innovations.

Because he would not bow to fate, Hsueh Yung-Po made it through the hardest first ten years of entrepreneurship. He established his name in the southern Taiwan culinary circle. The next step was to step outside his comfort zone and set up shop in other counties, maybe even other countries.

This important mission was given to his son, Hsueh Shun-Ti.

Hsueh Shun-Ti was born in a family of restauranters. His father is a master chef in the art of Taiwanese cooking, and his mother’s family are renowned seafood traders in Kaohsiung. To him, working in the kitchen is one of his most poignant childhood memories.

“When I was a child, father’s restaurant was a busy place. I was called in to help cut ingredients and load plates with food. Eventually, I discovered the joy of preparing and making food. Cooking for others gave me a sense of accomplishment.”

Nostalgia for a bygone age permeates the restaurant. Antiques collected by Hsueh Yung-Po are on display inside Old New Taiwanese Cuisine. Here, you can not only enjoy the taste of Taiwan, but also catch a glimpse of its beautiful traditions and culture through the decorations. (Photo by Chien-Tong Wang/CW)

Growing up in the restaurant business and being intimately familiar with its inner workings made Hsueh Shun-Ti reflect on its future. Besides banquet halls, was there no other way to further promulgate his father’s passion for Taiwanese cooking?

Tea became his opportunity to contribute to the decades-long effort. According to Hsueh Shun-Ti, the Taiwanese tea market is polarized. At one extreme, hand-shaken tea shops target younger consumers and offer cheap, convenient, quick-serve beverages.

At the other extreme, middle-age and older experts like to collect and sample top quality tea. This segment of the market is flush with cash but is also underdeveloped. Hsueh Shun-Ti thought, “Is there a way to recreate a teahouse in the spirit of the zeitgeist, and attract more people to learn about tea culture?”

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After identifying the unsatisfied market segment, he began to look for new ideas. He created the brand Yonshin Tea & Cake Selection Bar which focuses on Taiwanese tea. The name Yonshin Tea is a pun on the Chinese pronunciation of the phrase “dedication to tea” (用心奉茶).

He combined the tea with convenient Taiwanese combo meals and decorated the shop to look like Taiwan under Japanese occupation: granolithic paving, old tea cabinets, gold chandeliers and glass teapots…even the tea cups were intricately designed to look like wine glasses, so customers can sample tea like it’s fine wine.

“Lots of young entrepreneurs want to open coffee shops nowadays. But we take a different approach. The Taiwanese tea industry needs to be revitalized by the younger generation. An industry cannot transcend its boundaries without an injection of youthful energy.”

Hsueh Shun-Ti’s attention to detail recreated a vintage retro style in his teahouse. This attracted young customers who like to take selfies and share on social media. Even though a bottle of cold brew tea costs as much as 180 dollars in Kaohsiung, social media influencers spread the word and made it famous, and now it’s a must-visit for sightseers touring the area.

In three short years, major department stores such as Breeze Center Corp., Shin Kong Mitsukoshi, and Eslite have invited them to come set up shop. Yonshin Tea successfully crossed the Zhuoshui River to make a splash in northern Taiwan. The branch in Breeze Xin Yi has a standing record of making eight million dollars in one month. The average per customer transaction of the two stores in Taipei is twice as high as Kaohsiung.

Tasting Taiwan tea in a wine glass has made Yonshin Tea popular with youngsters taking selfies and sharing stories on social media. But Hsueh Shun-Ti says, “We want to be more than an internet celebrity.” How to turn a fad into a trend, a flash in the pan to an eternal flame—that’s his greatest challenge. (Photo by Chien-Tong Wang/CW)

“The market appeal of Yonshin Tea is greater than Old New Taiwanese Cuisine, it attracts younger consumers. Expanding brand awareness in this way is very clever,” says an industry expert familiar with the catering market in Kaohsiung.

But Associate Professor Catherine Lee stresses the Taipei market is always eager to try the next new thing, and in a highly competitive market, choices are highly diverse so customer loyalty is very low. How to maintain brand loyalty and increase the number of repeat customers is the next big challenge for Yonshin Tea.

In response to this, Hsueh Shun-Ti admits: “We want to be more than an internet celebrity.” To avoid being just a flash in the pan, he asks his staff to regularly change their menu to accommodate the ever-changing preferences of his customers and increase the number of repeat visits. He also added new hires to improve the quality of their food and service.

At only thirty-six years of age, he is especially cautious about how he’ll shoulder the awesome responsibility of reinventing Taiwanese cuisine.

Though he’s often visited by dealers eager to help Yonshin Tea expand overseas, he maintains a low-key attitude and says the earliest feasible date for international expansion is sometime in 2020. He’s thinking about the nuances of operating a chain store across regions, across borders.

Taiwanese restaurants are labor-intensive, so he must overcome the hurdles of stabilizing operations in each store, hiring and dispatching staff, building a supply chain for ingredients used in the restaurants, etc.

It cannot be denied there are plenty of challenges ahead. But the secret to Taiwanese cooking is: “the more localized it is, the more global it is.” Father and son master chefs have taken their first step toward achieving this goal.

“I’ve done what I set out to accomplish. The important thing now is whether I can build a platform for the younger generation, to provide them with direction and a chance to shine,” says Hsueh Yung-Po resolutely.

In the next decade, he hopes to see more young chefs take up the torch and follow in his footsteps so the delicious taste of Taiwan, beloved by so many generations, can continue to flourish and become an indelible part of our heritage.

Translated by Jack C.

Edited by Sharon Tseng