Before opening Rih Jin Studio in Taichung in 2022, chefs Wu Ben-yi, Chang Yun-cheng, and Shen Ke-wei each spent considerable years working in Michelin-starred restaurants in France, Australia, and Taiwan. Rather than turning egg yolk pastries into molecular-gastronomy experiments, they brought the kitchen habits of breaking down ingredients and calculating ratios into pastry-making — the classic recipe stays, but the logic behind the hands has been swapped out.
Last year's debut "Rih Jin Egg Yolk Pastry" already proved itself in the market, and this year the wrapping technique has been tightened up another notch. Two types of butter are used: French AOP Isigny cultured butter and Normandy cultured anhydrous butter, paired with two grades of flour — Nisshin's "Violet" soft flour and "Camellia" strong flour. Madagascar vanilla seeds are folded into the oil dough and oil pastry, which is rested for 24 hours before being rolled and folded twice. The filling is smooth red bean paste wrapped around a fully-cured red clay salted egg yolk, with the outer skin brushed with two layers of free-range egg wash, then topped with French Guérande fleur de sel and black sesame before baking. The layers are built up through the interplay of butter and flour, while the fleur de sel balances out the sweetness of the red bean paste.
The gift boxes come in two versions — "Sunlight" and "Moonlight." The former uses a warm red-brown-orange gradient to paint the light and shadow at the boundary between sunrise and sunset, echoing the "Rih" (sun) in the brand's name. The latter takes on a more restrained, blended tone, closer to how moonlight spills across the night — tying into the reunion imagery of Mid-Autumn Festival. The outer layer of the gift bag continues the warm gradient, while the inner lining is finished with silver foil that catches and reflects light as the angle shifts — a detail most people won't notice until they've opened the box.
The other signature item, the "Iberian Acorn Pork Honey Savory Cake," follows the path of classic Taiwanese savory sponge cake, but swaps out every ingredient along the way: the top and bottom layers are honey sponge cake made with red sandalwood honey, sandwiching a filling of hand-stir-fried Spanish Iberian acorn-fed pork shoulder, mixed with premium Xinshe shiitake mushrooms and diced bamboo shoots, finished with edible gold leaf on top. The sweetness of the honey sponge cake pulls against the richness of the acorn pork's natural fat, essentially re-balancing the ratios of a savory cake that's already familiar to Taiwanese palates.
