He wanted to be the first Han chef in the Indigenous banquet world, but became a rural planning PhD instead: Wu Jin-yi's Amis French cuisine dream

The appetizer is a bouquet of dried flowers lying in the snow (fuki leaves, Asparagus bean leaves and enoki mushrooms), kalipay bread arrives with dried betel palm leaf sheaths, the salad features twelve kinds of wild vegetables and fruits competing in splendor, the stock used for the risotto has a dozen-plus wild vegetables contributing themselves, the tomahawk pork chop is paired with sword bean mash and red-stemmed betel leaf, and the cold soup sends begonia stems and oranges into battle together.

The seven or eight early-summer dishes served at the French restaurant Aredetay all submit to one palate ideology: the sweet, sour, bitter, spicy and astringent flavors of Amis cuisine. With this French restaurant opened in Tabalong, Guangfu, Hualien, Wu Jin-yi not only wants to promote Amis cuisine and share the cultural context behind Indigenous ingredients, but also has the ambition of establishing Amis cuisine as a distinctive culinary tradition.

Wu Jin-yi has many titles: PhD from the Technical University of Munich, secretary-general of the Taiwan Association for Urban and Rural Development, research scholar for the Council of Agriculture's national spatial planning, chief advisor on environmental landscape for the Hualien County Government, and more. He has keen insight into national spatial planning and development, and has also introduced the experience of regional revitalization from Japan and Germany, but these titles and areas of expertise are far removed from "operator of an Amis French restaurant."

The planning ideas Wu Jin-yi proposed after absorbing foreign experience are a distance measured in light-years from Taiwan's current situation, which inevitably makes one wonder: is opening a restaurant his local practice after returning to Hualien? Or did he give up being a scholar who can only lament that "one hates iron for not becoming steel," and decide to pragmatically open a restaurant to make a living?

Taking Ina as his godmother, learning Amis flavors through banquet catering

Born in the busy district in front of Zhongli Railway Station, Wu Jin-yi is an authentic Hakka man, and his family worships the Three Lords, the Kaizhang Shengwang, and Lord Guan and the Crown Prince at Zhenlianbi Tian Temple. Just as his studies and expertise are completely unrelated to food and beverage, his family of origin is also far removed from Amis culture.

His connection with Hualien began at National Dong Hwa University. Although he was studying at the Institute of Natural Resources Management, Wu Jin-yi took many courses on ethnic relations and followed Professor Yu De-hui in conducting fieldwork in Tabalong, Guangfu. He not only recognized the tribe's Ina as his godmother; after being discharged from military service, feeling that the city "is not a place for humans to live," he simply moved to Hualien and made a living in the tribe with his godmother, who did banquet catering.

Wu Jin-yi's Hakka mother was such a good cook that she could cater banquets, and he grew up immersed in it, the only one among the three brothers who could help as a little assistant. With this sense of culinary appreciation grown into his DNA, Wu Jin-yi followed his godmother in banquet catering in Tabalong, handling the front-of-house for banquets and sometimes helping in the kitchen as well. The labor in the tribe allowed him to accumulate knowledge and skills in Amis cuisine, as well as an identity and attachment that grew into his very bones.