Miyahara 宫原眼科 (Taiwan)

One day, if you chance upon a genie in a bottle and he grants you three wishes, what wishes would you make? 

I will think about the other two another time, but I think it's a pretty good deal to wish that I can eat all the ice cream available without getting fat, sick or broke (I'm kidding, or maybe not. By the way, does that constitute three wishes?). 

When we went to Taichung, one of the places on my must-go list was the immensely popular Miyahara 宫原眼科. Built in 1927 by Miyahara Takeo, a Japanese ophthalmology doctor, it was the largest ophthalmology clinic in Taichung during the Japanese occupation. As time passed, the condition of the building started to worsen and was only revived later by a pineapple cake company. 

The interior was meant to be designed like Hogwarts and it was beautiful, especially with the high ceilings. But that was it. Although they sold products like pineapple pastries, chocolate, tea etc., I didn't spend much time in the main area because the products looked expensive. 

But the one part of Miyahara that attracted long queues was the ice cream shop and we had to see for ourselves what was so great about the ice cream.

They had a wide variety of ice cream- just chocolate alone, there were 16 different chocolate flavours, with different origins and intensity. We went for the 80% Smoked Uganda Chocolate Ice Cream and it was rich without being too bitter.

There were also plenty of fruit flavours (including seasonal fruits) and tea flavoured ice cream. We tried the Grape ice cream since we never had such a flavour before and it was refreshing without being too sweet.

It does not end here. If you order a sundae, you get to choose toppings as well and get a free small scoop of ice cream. You could choose from different pineapple biscuits, traditional wedding biscuits  and shortbread etc. Basically all the fattening stuff.

I was so excited to dig into my Ice Cream Sundae (NT$160 for 2 scoops + NT$80 for the sundae) that I didn't even take a proper picture of the ice cream. Besides the fact that the ice cream was obviously quality ice cream, we also loved the almond biscuit, pineapple biscuits and sweet guava. Actually, I loved every single thing about the sundae.

After the last bit of waffle biscuit and ice cream went into our mouths, we suddenly were concerned whether we could fit into the jeans we brought along for our holiday. But really, absolutely no regrets.

Miyahara 宫原眼科
No. 20 Zhongshan Road
Central District, Taichung City