Excellent Brunch and Western Food at Sprout
Once an expat haven, the Tianmu neighbourhood in Shilin district is home to a lot of great restaurants — including Sprout, one of our favourite new discoveries in the city. This western restaurant is a compelling reason to make the trek up to Tianmu despite its distance from central Taipei; although we regularly visit and review brunch places, Sprout always sticks out in our minds as an almost guaranteed good-quality meal on a weekend morning. We tend to bring our most hard-to-please friends and visitors here!
The restaurant itself is big, modern, and open, with two floors and a little balcony to enjoy when the weather’s nice. It’s self-service but very comfortable, and the staff all speak great English. There’s a nice little play area for kids on the bottom floor, making it very family-friendly.
The first thing that you must must must order at Sprout is their lemon ricotta pancakes, available at brunch time only. We stand firm in the belief that these are the best pancakes in Taipei — soft, moist, and bursting with lemon flavour, they are far simpler than other pancakes we’ve tried in the city, but somehow they beat all the rest. Pictured below is the pancake full breakfast ($410), served with eggs, maple bacon strips, and potatoes Lyonnaise, along with fresh fruit, syrup, and cream for the pancakes. The full set is good, but we strongly recommend ordering the pancakes by themselves ($290) and splitting them with your table. Not only can you all try some, but now you have room for one of their many other dishes!
We also really liked the French toast with brioche and creme Anglaise ($280), served with whipped butter, fresh fruit, and syrup. The bread was fluffy without being damp, and just sweet enough without being cloying. The fruit was a great addition, since it helped lighten it somewhat. We didn’t love it as much as the pancakes, but we would consider ordering it again.
Another brunch favourite of ours is their breakfast bruschetta ($420). This one has seared tomato, avocado, handmade bacon, haloumi, a poached egg, and a sprinkle of Dukkah seasoning (yes, we had to look that up too). It’s a far cry from traditional bruschetta, so it’s better to think of it like an avocado toast with a bunch of add-ons. Although it sounds fancy, it was pretty simple — basically an assortment of ingredients to be eaten with bread. Still, that doesn’t mean we didn’t enjoy it; the bread, baked in-house, was wonderful and fragrant, the avocado was perfectly ripe, and the Halloumi was a nice touch that we hadn’t tasted for a while.
We also enjoyed a breakfast smoothie bowl, which takes your choice of smoothie from the menu and adds ingredients in a bowl for an additional $160. We chose the Blue Zombie smoothie ($180) with blueberry, banana, milk, coconut milk, sugar-free yoghurt. For $340 total, we had it with fresh fruits, chia seeds, granola, and shredded coconut, making it a more filling option. The smoothies at Sprout are all really excellent, and even though we don’t usually go for smoothie bowls because they don’t feel like the best value, we thoroughly enjoyed ours.
We also chose the frittata with asparagus, zucchini, cherry tomatoes, and ricotta ($350). The eggs came in a sizzling pan and were creamy yet fluffy at the same time, while the veggies added some texture. We really liked this dish, but it didn’t leave as huge of an impression as some of the others.
Another dish we loved was the duck breast sandwich with red wine berries jam ($400). With sous-vide duck breast, seasonal mixed greens with sherry vinaigrette, red wine berries jam, and aged parmesan on a homemade ciabatta, this sandwich was absolutely to die for. The duck was so soft and juicy, perfectly complemented by the tangy jam and shredded parmesan. The only bad news, however, is that this was a seasonal item. Let’s pray it comes back soon!
Feeling like pasta, we went for the pumpkin, bacon & cream variety ($340). We didn’t have high hopes for this, but it exceeded all expectations: the sauce, made from blue cheese and pumpkin puree, was creamy and rich, almost too rich at times, but absolutely heavenly. Bacon bits, asparagus and cherry tomatoes added a bit of texture, but honestly, this was a sinfully rich creation that we enjoyed every last bite of. We would choose to share this if we ordered it again.
Hearing that their sandwiches were great, we chose the LGBT sandwich ($320), which is “an upgraded BLT sandwich with mixed lettuce, beef tomato, homemade black pepper bacon strips and guacamole on sourdough slices.” Damn, that sandwich was good. The bread was thick and fluffy and fresh, slightly toasted to hold it together and add a crunch. They were not stingy with the avocado, which made a surprisingly great addition to a normal BLT. We were pleasantly surprised to discover that all sandwiches come with a side dish of your choice, and in this case we chose a divine cold cauliflower and broccoli salad. Highly recommend.
Feeling encouraged by the LGBT, we ordered the turkey and avocado sandwich ($380) on our next visit. It sounded a little nondescript at first, but this sandwich was just as good as the last. Huge chunks of turkey breast, slice after slice of avocado, beef tomato, lettuce, swiss cheese, and avocado yoghurt ranch, all on whole wheat bread made this a thoroughly enjoyable option from start to finish. Once again, we were shocked at how liberal they were with the avocado — yes yes yes.
Feeling quite carbed out, our next choice was the Mexican chicken & avocado salad ($360), with mixed greens, seasoned chicken breast, avocado, cherry tomatoes, and black beans corn salad with an avocado yoghurt dressing. It’s hard to choose a salad over a sandwich when they’re the same price, but we’re glad we did: in no way did we feel like we were restricting ourselves by eating this salad. Look at that chicken and avocado. Look at it all! The chicken was tender, juicy, and perfectly seasoned, while the vegetables were crunchy and fresh, perfectly accompanied by the dressing. This salad was an excellent choice, and we wouldn’t hesitate to order it again.
Next, we went for the mixed mushroom, bacon & spinach salad ($350). This salad boasted sautéed mixed mushrooms, bacon bits, boiled egg, and sliced red onion stirred in with spinach and mixed greens, topped with a bacon vinaigrette. We also loved this salad, although we weren’t raving about it quite like the previous Mexican version. The ingredients worked very well together and again, it didn’t feel restrictive at all because of the generous portions of egg and croutons. The dressing was nice and salty, its bacon flavour coating the greens nicely. We liked the mix of textures between the greens, eggs, bread, mushrooms, and bacon, too. We would order this salad again, but nowhere near as quickly as the first one.
We were also big fans of the falafel salad ($360) with falafel, roasted veggies, and a lemon tahini dressing. We especially loved the grilled veggies (who doesn’t), and were quite taken with the falafel themselves, although we did feel that they were slightly on the dry side. Still delicious, though. The tangy lemon dressing was a nice accompaniment, but we confess that we obliterated most of the ingredients piece by piece before being left with a bowl of lettuce. Lesson learned. We would order this salad again, but it wasn’t our favourite of the bunch.
Lastly, we ordered a homemade scone ($150 by themselves, $260 to upgrade to a full breakfast). This was probably our least favourite of the many things that we ordered, but that doesn’t mean it was bad: it just didn’t live up to the high standards we’d set based on their other dishes. The scones were soft on the inside, crunchy on the outside, and not overly sweet. We would’ve preferred them to be served with clotted cream and jam instead of the honey and butter that they came with, but hey — now we’re just nitpicking. They were fine.
As you can see, we’ve made multiple trips with multiple groups to Sprout, and been impressed every time. It isn’t cheap, especially if you go all-out with beverages and desserts, but for the quality of the dishes, we don’t mind paying slightly above-average. Our favourite way to experience the Sprout brunch is definitely to order a bunch of different dishes to be shared (especially the pancakes — don’t forget them!).
Check out their menu below, which we pulled from their Facebook page.
What’s the vibe?
Bright and open-plan Western-style restaurant in Tianmu. Expect crowds of expats and yoga mommies — especially during weekend brunch, the restaurant’s busiest time. It’s self-service, but the food is absolutely worth lining up at the counter to order. It’s also family friendly with a play area for kids downstairs.
Worth it?
Despite being pricey and inconvenient to reach, it is completely worth it. Everything we’ve ever tried here has been delicious and filling, and we love the laid-back vibe.
Would you go back?
You can probably see from our pictures how many times we’ve been back.
| Sprout |
| Chinese Name: Sprout 初芽 |
| Hours: 8:30am – 9pm, closed Mondays |
| Phone: 02 2876 6080 |
| English Address: No. 31, Section 7, Zhongshan North Road, Shilin District, Taipei City, 111 |
| Chinese Address: 111台北市士林區中山北路七段31號 |
