When I lived in Taiwan as a child, and even when I spent time there as an adult, going to the capital, Taipei, always felt like a treat. It was an outing to the big city where things seemed larger, fancier, more important, and fuller of possibility than my little world. The metropolis was home to the world’s tallest building, Taipei 101, from its opening on December 31, 2004 until 2010 (when the Burj Khalifa in Dubai took the record).

Children have their own very personal set of priorities, and mine was to make sure I got a rose-flavored gelato every time I went up to Taipei (the name literally means “north Taiwan,” so one goes “up” to Taipei from almost anywhere else on the island). I had discovered it by chance in the food court of what was the largest department store in the city before 101 was built, and I’m not sure if I fell in love with the rose flavor itself or the fact that it was the most novel flavor I’d ever seen and I didn’t know anywhere else that had it.

As an adult, I usually let whichever family member or friend I was there with decide where we would go for coffee or tea or a meal. It’s been a long time since I’ve visited, so my memories are a bit faded—or, I should say, the vivid ones are of moments with people rather than details of the place.

One of the samples I requested with a recent purchase was Taipei eau de parfum by the Hong Kong brand One Day, founded by Michael Wong, who is also the perfumer.

From the brand:

Ground soy, steamed glutinous rice and taro;
Scent and nuance of beans, grains and roots.

Soybeans strained and boiled into milk, the aroma of steamed rice and taro rising in the air. Flour and dough kneaded into taro balls, rolled hearty in bowls.
The gourmand sweetness enters the Taipei morning, moves into mid-day alleys and into the night.

Through rusted concrete and its rigid colors, the aged scent remains in the wooden builds between cool-toned concrete lofts.
The rootyness stains the narrow alleys between the low-rises downtown, brushing through the gates and chairs, kitchens and windows.

The rice lingers and weaves into the background, meeting the underlying tone.
The scene of old temples by the night markets.
The intimate human touch of town.

The warmth of the software that runs between the solidity and old, in the air and things that flow.

• Top notes: soy milk, rice, taro
• Heart notes: guaiac wood, iris
• Base notes: musk, vetiver, sandalwood

The scent is immediately familiar to me in a foody way—warm, like genmaicha and grains, and something creamy and lactonic… yet not dairy. A wholesome whiff of steamed rice in a rice cooker, ready to be fluffed into a bowl. The promise of nourishment. In Taiwan, as in many Asian cultures, relationships are nurtured around food.

I find the highlight of soy milk for Taipei to be ingenious, as one of the traditional Taiwanese breakfast items is hot soy milk with fried dough sticks to dip in it. These go hand in hand, so much so that one of the most popular love songs by JJ Lin (林俊杰) is titled “soy milk and fried dough sticks” (or “Perfect Match” for an international audience). The accord is cleverly done so as to steer clear of dairy milk, supported by a sturdy base of rootiness and the scaffolding of something toasted and ground a bit coarse.

A tangent: you could also go all out and have a savory breakfast of “salty soy milk with egg”—in which not only egg but also green onions, tiny shrimp, and dried radish are added, and the fried dough sticks are chopped and function more like croutons in soup.

My skin seems to eat up the scent quickly, but it lasted most of the day on my clothes, even after a long, sweaty walk exposed to sun.

I don’t really get much suggestion of “intimate human touch” from this perfume. Ironically, the movies and music I consumed when I was younger (and prone to being influenced by the sappy, wistful romantic themes that saturated these art forms) tended to emphasize the lonely aspect of being single in a big city. Beautiful young people pining for each other, each thinking their love is unrequited. Raindrops splattering on a windowpane, obscuring the city view. (The videos were of lower resolution back then, too.) On the bright side, one could always find a good dessert at any hour, presumably, and a taro-flavored one at that.

If you can’t tell by now, I’m a bit too biased by the name to review Taipei objectively. I wonder what I would have thought of it if it had been presented to me with no name, or a different story entirely. It’s been a few years since I smelled Gri Gri Ukiyo-E, but its opening genmaicha note, dense and hearty, comes to mind. I think that lovers of toasty and milky scents will like Taipei, and if I keep sniffing past the grainy outer layer, I can detect a mildly floral note lurking, smiling prettily—however, like the thin creamy filling of a wafer roll, you can never quite get it on its own.

How does this type of fragrance sound to you? Do you have any favorite “city” perfumes?