A natural-wine bar from two Hong Kong émigrés — a journalist and a photographer — on a quiet lane off Zhongshan North Road. French naturals with a deep Jura streak, plates kept plain, and a low counter built to feel like a friend's dining table.
About
Café Society borrows its name from Woody Allen's 2016 film — but the idea it's chasing is older than the movie. Café society, the 19th-century one: the New York, Paris and London circles that gathered to drink, argue and be seen. Hui Min and her husband Gao Zhongming wanted a small Taipei version of it — a room you come to for the conversation as much as the wine.
The couple moved from Hong Kong to Taiwan in 2021, mid-pandemic. Hui Min had spent eighteen years as a journalist there; Gao is a photographer. They found the space through an online listing in July 2022, on a lane off Zhongshan North Road — old enough to have character, new enough to be picking up younger rooms next door. They're on good terms with the neighbours at In Cafe: the two bars trade ice and split the trash run.
The room
It's a wine bar that doesn't perform like one. A low counter — closer to a friend's dining table than a bar pass — runs the front; a wall of bottles lines the left; café seating fills in deeper back. Gao and friends rotate photography on the walls, so the room shifts with whoever is showing.
The music is Hui Min's, unapologetically — Fujii Kaze, Faye Wong, Shiina Ringo, Anita Mui, Leslie Cheung, Akina Nakamori. She keeps it off the maudlin end and off the dated end on purpose.
The most loyal listener is myself, running the shop all day.
The wine
The list runs to French natural wine, with a real pull toward the Jura — the limestone-and-marl strip between Burgundy and Switzerland, home to the Poulsard, Trousseau and Savagnin grapes. Domaine Bornard's "Little Fox" bottlings are a regular fixture, and the fox on the label tells you the colour: facing left for whites, right for reds.
For the region at its strangest, ask about Vin Jaune — Savagnin aged a minimum six years and three months under a veil of yeast, then bottled in the squat 620ml Clavelin. Café Society has poured a Côtes du Jura Savagnin Vin de Voile alongside the easier drinking.
Pricing is honest about itself — bottles are listed in full, and a single glass is a quarter-bottle, roughly 120ml. On pairings, Hui Min is relaxed:
Wine pairing has no absolutes. It only exists in what you personally find suitable, or enjoy.
One firm rule survives that shrug — nothing with MSG, which flattens a delicate wine.
The kitchen
The cooking is deliberately plain — the wine is the point, and the plates are there to hold it up. Grilled octopus, pan-seared oysters, a steak cut from Nanmen Market Taiwan beef, a duck breast given exactly eight minutes and no sous-vide shortcut.
I cook when I'm here; my husband cooks when he's here. Our cooking is very simple.
Reporting and photography drawn from Roomie, February 2024. Doors open at 4pm; the wine list rotates, so treat named bottles as a read on the house style rather than a fixed menu.
Cafe Society Taipei
A natural-wine bar from two Hong Kong émigrés — a journalist and a photographer — on a quiet lane off Zhongshan North Road. French naturals with a deep Jura streak, plates kept plain, and a low counter built to feel like a friend's dining table.
About
Café Society borrows its name from Woody Allen's 2016 film — but the idea it's chasing is older than the movie. Café society, the 19th-century one: the New York, Paris and London circles that gathered to drink, argue and be seen. Hui Min and her husband Gao Zhongming wanted a small Taipei version of it — a room you come to for the conversation as much as the wine.
The couple moved from Hong Kong to Taiwan in 2021, mid-pandemic. Hui Min had spent eighteen years as a journalist there; Gao is a photographer. They found the space through an online listing in July 2022, on a lane off Zhongshan North Road — old enough to have character, new enough to be picking up younger rooms next door. They're on good terms with the neighbours at In Cafe: the two bars trade ice and split the trash run.
The room
It's a wine bar that doesn't perform like one. A low counter — closer to a friend's dining table than a bar pass — runs the front; a wall of bottles lines the left; café seating fills in deeper back. Gao and friends rotate photography on the walls, so the room shifts with whoever is showing.
The music is Hui Min's, unapologetically — Fujii Kaze, Faye Wong, Shiina Ringo, Anita Mui, Leslie Cheung, Akina Nakamori. She keeps it off the maudlin end and off the dated end on purpose.
The most loyal listener is myself, running the shop all day.
The wine
The list runs to French natural wine, with a real pull toward the Jura — the limestone-and-marl strip between Burgundy and Switzerland, home to the Poulsard, Trousseau and Savagnin grapes. Domaine Bornard's "Little Fox" bottlings are a regular fixture, and the fox on the label tells you the colour: facing left for whites, right for reds.
For the region at its strangest, ask about Vin Jaune — Savagnin aged a minimum six years and three months under a veil of yeast, then bottled in the squat 620ml Clavelin. Café Society has poured a Côtes du Jura Savagnin Vin de Voile alongside the easier drinking.
Pricing is honest about itself — bottles are listed in full, and a single glass is a quarter-bottle, roughly 120ml. On pairings, Hui Min is relaxed:
Wine pairing has no absolutes. It only exists in what you personally find suitable, or enjoy.
One firm rule survives that shrug — nothing with MSG, which flattens a delicate wine.
The kitchen
The cooking is deliberately plain — the wine is the point, and the plates are there to hold it up. Grilled octopus, pan-seared oysters, a steak cut from Nanmen Market Taiwan beef, a duck breast given exactly eight minutes and no sous-vide shortcut.
I cook when I'm here; my husband cooks when he's here. Our cooking is very simple.
Reporting and photography drawn from Roomie, February 2024. Doors open at 4pm; the wine list rotates, so treat named bottles as a read on the house style rather than a fixed menu.
