YEN Chinese Restaurant - Modern Restaurant in W Taipei Hotel

YEN Chinese Restaurant is located on the top (31st) floor of the W Taipei Hotel. In keeping with the bold and modern character of the hotel, the Yen restaurant does not have the gold and red motifs of a traditional Chinese restaurant. Instead, its bright contemporary decor could easily be a place for a French restaurant. But we are glad they have chosen to have a Chinese restaurant in this space. Dim sum and roast duck dishes look good in modern settings as well.

YEN Chinese Restaurant W Taipei Hotel Review

Not a Michelin Star Restaurant

Our last visit to YEN was several years ago. It still looks very much the same except that some places may be in need of a polish. At that time it was ranked by TripAdvisor as the #3 of 12,163 restaurants in Taipei. Currently we could not find any similar ranking across the entire Taipei. But there is a district ranking where Tripadvisor ranks it #7 of 810 in the Xinyi district. Not bad but that was not an improvement. It also does not have any Michelin Star in the Taipei Michelin Guide, which may be a blessing for us as it was easy to get a table for lunch.

YEN Chinese Restaurant Menu

YEN Chinese Restaurant W Taipei dim sum menu

Here are pictures of some pages from then Yen restaurant menu. On this visit we selected the scallion pancake with sesame (NT$280), steamed vegetarian dumplings (NT$290), deep-fried turnip shreds with cheese (NT$270), Cantonese style roast duck, plum sauce (NT$780) and Chef’s special fried rice (NT$880).

Lunch at YEN Chinese Restaurant W Taipei

Our lunch started with a small complimentary snack.

The first dish to be served was the roast duck. This was similar to our experience in Ya Ge restaurant in the Mandarin Oriental Taipei. The duck was very good – crisp skin yet with a juicy interior.

The fried rice is one dish that would make us want to make a return visit to Yen restaurant on our next visit. The rice was dry and fluffy with an adequate aroma of wok hei. Lots of small seafood pieces and some added crunchy bits make every spoonful taste slightly different.

The dim sum items were served around the same time as the rice. The scallion pancake is a common snack in casual Taiwan eateries. The posh version in Yen (picture above) looked beautiful and was stuffed full of ingredients. We had tried the deep-fried turnip shreds with cheese (picture below) on our last visit. We were impressed by the consistency of the restaurant. They look sculptural and were as well-made and tasty as they were years ago.