épii

At épii, Taiwanese dishes such as runbing and herbal soup meet French and Italian influences. One visitor’s dinner course began with runbing, a Taiwanese-style spring roll in which fillings are wrapped in a thin, egg-like pancake and served with peanut powder and coriander sauce. The herbal soup that followed included ingredients such as Job’s tears and goji berries, while the sautéed Matsusaka pork came with a Taiwanese fish-sauce dressing. Each course dish incorporated Taiwanese ingredients or seasonings, making it an appealing choice for an evening of varied flavours.

Another dinner guest described short pasta with sea lettuce and dried shark, as well as a starter pairing Akashi octopus with fruit and herbs. The meal ended with poached venison loin, remembered for its tenderness and subtle nutty aroma. The guest also mentioned natural wine and craft mead. It’s one example of how a dinner course gives the restaurant’s seasonal vegetables, fruit and herbs room to shine.

At lunchtime, there are sets that can be ordered without a reservation. The salad plate set brings together seasonal vegetables, carrot râpée, a nut-studded rice-flour savoury cake and a steamed bun, with seasonal soup and a drink. It’s a good fit for a vegetable-focused meal; the drink is a choice of herbal tea or the house coffee. Alternatively, the Taiwanese taro-ball-style gluten-free gnocchi comes with a sauce that changes daily, seasonal vegetables, soup and a drink. Choose it when you’d rather make gnocchi the centrepiece of lunch.

Lunch visitors have also mentioned chilled edamame soup, pork wrapped in melon and lavender-mint panna cotta. Another guest recalled lotus-root soup and chewy bread, followed by tofu pudding for dessert. These seasonal examples give a sense of a lunch menu shaped by Taiwanese herbal cuisine, with the approach extending from the soups to the small sweets.

The weekend afternoon café menu includes simple tofu pudding with a choice of syrup, as well as a sweet mung bean and Job’s tears soup. For the pudding, choose lemongrass and black bean syrup or rose syrup, and add house-made taro balls if you like. The sweet soup is available cold or warm, so you can choose a dessert to suit your mood.

Breakfast is available as a reservation-only Taiwanese course: three dishes—seasonal rice porridge, runbing and xian doujiang—followed by herbal tea and a small dessert. From lunch sets and reservation-only courses to afternoon tofu pudding, there are Taiwanese flavours to choose from throughout the day.