When I arrived to interview Chef Hwang Yei and his wife and partner, Ma Hui, at Formosa Breeze, their family-style Taiwanese restaurant on Ridge Road, I wasn't prepared to sit down to lunch. But that's precisely what Hwang invited me to do. I tried to demur, but my resistance started to crumble when the first of 11 dishes - a heaping plate of emerald-colored choy sum (Chinese broccoli) - hit the table. A few minutes later, the photographer arrived and the chef made it clear that he, too, should join us. More dishes arrived: spicy beef organ (a cold salad of thinly sliced tongue and crunchy tendon dressed with a chili oil and hot chile pepper vinaigrette served with pickled daikon and carrots); hot and spicy fish (a chile and fish stock stew that included generous chunks of tender haddock and tofu finished with scallions and chili oil); stir-fried sliced beef with hot peppers and basil; stir-fried beef tendon and vegetables; and a vegetarian stir-fry of mock duck, carrot, lotus root, black mushrooms, and tofu, which had a surprising and pleasant peanutty savor (even though the chef assured me there were no peanuts in it). The dishes continued to come: an addictive deep-fried squid stir-fried with cumin seed and some very intimidating-looking dried chiles; pan-fried oysters; a delectable Taiwanese chicken roll (which bore a remarkable resemblance to a strudel) accompanied by a rough cut slaw of cabbage, red pepper, and carrot in a ginger dressing; and, finally, two chocolate brown hardboiled eggs accompanied by thick and lusciously fatty slices of roasted pork belly (the eggs, despite their frankly disturbing color, were remarkably mild and fragrant, delivering the scent of oolong tea along with the savor of soy sauce in each bite). Lunch concluded with a bowl of Hwang's favorite soup - a concoction of egg, silken tofu, and a vegetable that may have been fuzzy melon in a light broth with daikon, white pepper and tiny dried shrimp. I left Formosa Breeze two hours after I had arrived, full of respect for the remarkable variety and subtlety of Hwang's vast talent and indefatigable energy.

Formosa Breeze, which has been open for only a year, is Chef Hwang Yei's first entry into the restaurant business on his own. Apprenticed as a young man to a master chef in Taipei, Hwang has been cooking for nearly 35 years. He and his wife and their two children moved to Rochester, where they knew no one, just over a year ago, determined to bring authentically Taiwanese food to the area and start a new life for themselves. Watching Hwang work is a study in controlled chaos. As we move through his tiny kitchen, he is cleaning, stirring his stock pots, checking on the progress of a wokful of deep-frying rounds of sweet potato, always in control and always in motion. The mystery of how he managed to produce 11 dishes in the course of about 10 minutes for the lunch that he insisted I share with him and his family begins to unravel, and my appreciation for his cooking deepens.

On our first anonymous visit to Formosa Breeze, we were confronted with a menu of bewildering length, so we confined ourselves to the Taiwanese and Szechuan dishes in which the restaurant specializes ($12.95 for two dishes with rice and a bowl of Hwang's delicious "white carrot" soup). The menu stopped us short: more than half of it was in Chinese characters, and the parts of it that weren't had names like "spicy beef organ," "intestine," and "tendon," which aren't often encountered on Western menus. We turned to Hwang's wife and partner, Ma Hui, for guidance, and she suggested that we try a spicy beef noodle soup, eggplant with basil, and the ma po tofu (one of my personal favorite comfort dishes when it's done well).

Dinner started with small bowls of "white carrot" (daikon) soup - a broth akin to Japanese miso with silken tofu, bok choy, onion, meaty black mushrooms, and smooth and mild-flavored balls of ground fish. And then, as at lunch, the dishes started coming. First, a huge bowl of thick noodles, bright green and bone white slivers of bok choy, and meltingly tender pieces of braised beef tendon in a pungent broth infused with ginger and the deep flavor of fermented black bean paste. Beef tendon, tough fibrous connective tissue that connects muscle to bone, is crunchy (similar to thick cuts of calamari) when stir fried, but when braised it becomes tender and flavorful; a surprisingly tasty contrast to the texture of the beef that surrounds it. Taken with the soup and the vibrant green flavor of the bok choy, this was an eye-opening way to start off a meal full of unfamiliar flavors and textures.

Next up, stir-fried eggplant and basil in oyster sauce. Basil is more closely associated with Thai and Vietnamese cooking than with Chinese, but it is a key ingredient of Taiwanese food. Thin, light violet eggplants were sliced on the bias and stir fried until the meat within them melted into a sponge for the oyster sauce and a brilliant backdrop for the assertive bite of Thai basil. The ma po tofu was one of the best I've found in years. Ground pork, Szechuan peppercorns, fermented black bean paste, chili oil, and a handful of barely cooked scallions were stir fried with cubes of silky smooth tofu for a flavorful dish that was deceptively slow to warm up - after several bites the heat of the peppercorns and the chili oil started to build quite nicely.

The final dish, Taiwanese-style tofu, was one that we did not order, but was sent out by Hwang because he thought my 3-year-old dining companion would enjoy one of his children's favorite dishes (he did). Cubes of tofu were battered, deep fried, tossed with a sauce that included ground pork, ginger, five-spice powder (not unlike the flavor of allspice), soy sauce, and fresh scallions, and accompanied with pickled daikon and carrots. The result was crunchy and smooth, spicy and rich, with the cool-salty flavor of the pickle to cut through it all and balance the flavors.

On our second visit, we ordered the Szechuan twice-fried pork, the sa cha beef, and pan-fried rice cake. The pork was one of those studies in textures in which Hwang excels. The roasted pork was cut from the belly, edged with tender fat and very flavorful. It was accompanied by pressed tofu (cakes of bean curd that have been pressed to the texture of meat), slices of unpressed tofu, green peppers, nappa cabbage, lotus root, and black mushrooms in a black bean sauce bolstered by the smoky fat of the pork. We smelled the sa cha beef before it arrived at our table: thin slices of beef stir fried with vegetables and finished with a sauce in which soy sauce and a fistful of seductively fragrant basil played starring roles. My little boy was most fond of the pan-fried rice cake: thick discs of rice noodle stir fried with both ground and sliced pork, lotus root, bok choy, crunchy bean sprouts, and meaty slices of black mushroom, in a light and fragrant sauce with ginger and five-spice powder.

All of our meals ended with rounds of battered deep-fried sweet potatoes, a sort of tempura (a carryover from Taiwan's 50-year occupation by Japan). They made a very pleasant if unusual dessert - the sort of thing that would sell remarkably well at a carnival or a street fair, and are yet another indication of genius at work in the kitchen at Formosa Breeze. Given the wonders to be found on the Chinese-only portion of the menu, and the remarkable willingness of Hwang and his wife to help you discover the treasures therein, my advice is to tell them what you like, put yourself in their more-than-capable hands, and prepare for an entirely new experience. 

Formosa Breeze

412 Ridge Road West, 663-9280

Sunday-Thursday, 11 a.m.-9 p.m.; Friday-Saturday, 11 a.m.-10 p.m.