la vie by thomas bühner
A restaurant for beautiful moments and unforgettable memories. Experience the unmistakable taste of two worlds.
A showcase for nature’s bounty.
Our cuisine knows no boundaries. It is important to us to combine the environment, excellent products from Taiwan’s mountains, fields, river and sea, with cosmopolitanism.
Taipeh
The mountains, the river, the sea, the forests—opens a treasure chest of creativity in me. I incorporate nature, farmers and producers into my cuisine, influenced by my experiences and the cooking style of Europe. Our cooking combines products from Taiwan with the best from all over the world. Products transform into ideas. I have a picture in my head of how a dish will look and taste. It is like a concert with many instruments: Each flavor is important, and together they are unique. I want to convey that quality to the guest. Clear, pure and minimal. Unforgettable.
Happiness is a feeling to be collected, creating the most beautiful memories. Small happiness: a ray of sunshine over a clear, glass-blue stream, a day in the mountains, sunset at the sea. Great happiness: a first holiday in a faraway country, a meal for two. Even if they have passed, the moments remain. A certain taste, a scent, a texture, and they come back to life. Our cuisine awakens memories of childhood discoveries, of nature, of amazing perceptions. But it also creates unknown connections and thus new memories. It is a collection of happy moments, tasted in one evening, remembered forever.
Not always, not everything, but always the best.
The seasons are our natural limits. They make up the quality of products, wherever they come from. These items reveal their origin, their growth, their maturing and their culmination through my cooking. In this way, we want to awaken beautiful memories in the guest and create unforgettable new ones. We use old and varied techniques such as fermenting, preserving and drying. Grilling also plays an important role, because nothing is more original in preparing food than the power of fire. We want to awaken culinary memories and create new ones. Our menus are based on the seasons and change with them.
The strength and taste of the products have their own peak, determined by the location, the weather, the soils, the available nutrients. We refine the best products at their peak of flavor and reveal their pure character. Taiwan and the mountains, fields and sea around it is the great culinary pantry of our cuisine. Many production methods have been handed down and we make use of what is available locally. These products and methods are combined with our experience and knowledge of European cuisine.
It is our evening together.
Xavier Yeung is very important to me. He is the first among equals. Together with the kitchen and service team, we are always exchanging ideas, constantly trying and discussing new things. That drives creativity. It is precisely because there are different opinions, ideas and approaches that we create great dishes. It’s a process of constant optimization, and everyone is involved. We have a clear vision of how our kitchen and service
should be, what our culinary art and hospitality should be. How this is achieved in detail is the joint work of the team. And we like to show that in our glass kitchen. As a guest, you give meaning to everything we do. Your expectations, curiosity, appetite make us happy and demand our best. As hosts, we give our guests the most precious things: time and attention. We share beautiful moments.
Fire, air, earth, water – the four elements – la vie.
