Industry Story
2020.05.15

Curry of Love – You Are All My Saligaga

Exclusive indigenous specialty curry

In the Amis language, Saligaga means siblings, family, and friends. On the path to his entrepreneurship, Chang Meng-Tsung and his wife Lin Wen-Hsin, have invited their saligaga to fulfill their dream of opening a restaurant.

Curry is the epitome of spices that can be infused into numerous ingredients. As a couple with Japanese and Amis pedigree, they have fused Chinese and Japanese cultures by adding indigenous specialty spices to Japanese curry, culminating in a curry that has become the signature dish of the establishment. With such an opportunity, he relocated his stall in Tainan to his hometown in Taitung, where he opened a small restaurant downtown named Saligaga, hoping that patrons of Meng-Tsung's and Wen-Hsin's restaurant will become their saligaga.

The best embodiment of practice makes perfect

"In the initial stages, the failure rate was extremely high. However, we have absorbed customers' feedback and comments along the way and made improvements. Although the process is an arduous one, we insist on using traditional spices to prepare our dishes." In a bid to promote and carry forward indigenous specialty curry, the owner Chang Meng-Tsung hopes to create more opportunities through this store and invite more people to join his team. At Saligaga, every dish represents a sense of persistence in upholding traditional gourmet culture. It is hoped that cooking will help indigenous youths to come home and seek employment, so as to continue the traditional wisdom and heritage of traditional indigenous cuisine.

Welcome to our beloved Saligaga

"We used 32 types of spices and adjusted their ratios according to the characteristics of the main ingredient. Ingredients such as roots, stems, and leaves are added to curry to enhance their overall richness and nutritional values." Since rhizomes produce a naturally sweet taste, there is no need for excessive seasoning, so fresh and dried prickly ash is added to curry to enhance its flavors and create different flavors. 

After coming home to Taitung, the couple met many tribal women and elders, and they also obtained a lot of ideas and suggestions from them to endow Saligaga's curry with more possibilities.

Chang Meng-Tsung and Lin Wen-Hsin started Saligaga to let more indigenous people and friends identify with their beliefs, as well as market indigenous characteristics and incorporate them into food that everyone consumes daily instead of leaving these characteristics confined to certain regions. At the same time, they also aim to promote indigenous ingredients and spices both domestically and internationally.