My first meal in Taiwan ended being a Cantonese lunch - dim sum to be specific. Le Palais is the only three-tire rated restaurant in Taiwan, and there seems to be some controversy around it. I won’t get into arguments about whether it compares to three-stars around the world; but I did mentally compare it to the top dim sum restaurants I’ve been to- Lung King Heen*** and Sun Tung Lok**. I would say both of those serve dim sum that is head and shoulders better than any I’ve eaten elsewhere. And I am happy to report that Le Palais’s dim sum equals those place in execution, though maybe not in creativity and variety. The menu is fairly limited for dim sum. Also, many have criticized their dinner menu.
Pricing is ambitious, though not much more than I remember from the aforementioned places in HK.
We started off with Oriental / Asian Beauty tea - a Taiwanese specialty.
Rice rolls with fried crueller and shrimp this was orders of magnitude better than what I had at Dragon Beaux - the soft texture of the rice roll, perfectly crisped donut, and properly flavorful shrimp
Tim ho wan styled char siu bun with sweet crust. This was a great execution of this style, but I am not as enamored of this specific dish as others; if you like the style, I would definitely order it here
Scallion and pork dumpling with preserved egg This was friggin awesome and the second or third best thing we ate during the meal; the preserved egg was really pungent but complemented the other flavors
Har gow Flawless execution - nice texture with a bright, fresh shrimp flavor (sorry for the banding on the picture)
Onto the baby roast duck! You need to preorder this - I was splitting with my wife so we got this instead of the full roast duck. This was excellent - perfect crispness, fatty richness, and duck flavor. Oh and of course they serve it on a duck shaped plate and provide a poem. Just to compete with the Azurmendi’s of the world 
This, along with the scallion dumpling above, was the 2nd or 3rd best dish we had.
Siu mai with abalone I’m getting repetitive but excellent
When you order the duck, you are given an option to have soup or a couple other styles (typhoon stir fry being another one). We chose soup. Really great way to use the duck.
Golden lava bun
Sesame ball with actual molten sesame sounds simple but I’m hard pressed to find it in a lot of other restaurants. This dessert dish was the best thing we had. A Perfectly greased and crisped accompanied the sesame liquid middle. Sigh - I wish I could get something this dreamy here.
the duck poem
