Besides the more traditional ingredients, the Taiwanese oolian also uses many local ingredients, such as pork meatballs and blood puddings.

One is lion's head, a soup-casserole of oversized pork meatballs cooked with a hearty cabbage broth.

It consisted of three or four light, airy pork meatballs atop shredded cabbage with a necklace of emerald green baby bok choy.

A hearty dinner of solanka soup, pork meatballs, creamed vegetables, savory pancakes and mineral water came to $6.

His "lion's head" pork meatballs came in a sumptuous winter-melon broth, with enoki mushrooms impishly used as "eyes."

For example, spicy pork meatballs with greens (I liked these very much), a chicken-and-bean stew (unexciting) and a strawberry rhubarb crostade.

Xíu Mại is a pork meatball in a tomato sauce often served with a baguette.

Big, loosely knit pork meatballs, called lion's heads ($10.95), are flavored with ginger and served on a bed of Chinese cabbage.

Among the dumplings, the best were the wasabi shumai, pork meatballs crunchy with water chestnuts and zingy from the wasabi.

They are not the usual big, doughy bombs found elsewhere, but savory pork meatballs in thin, delicate wrappers.