The Guest House (請客樓) review record traces a V-shaped curve: two Michelin stars from 2018 to 2022, a demotion to one star in 2023, a top-to-bottom menu overhaul in late 2024, and the Momentum Award at Taiwan's 500 Bowls in 2025. This is the Sichuan-Huaiyang restaurant on the 17th floor of the Sheraton Grand Taipei, and this guide sorts out the booking rules, the menu prices, and the before-and-after line running through its reviews, so the homework is done before you go.

The thirty second version: budget about US$50 to $100 per person a la carte, weekday lunch sets from about US$90 (plus 10 percent service); booking runs on TableCheck; canceling within 72 hours costs about US$16 per person for regular tables and from US$156 per private room; a reservation is held for only ten minutes; the ten-person casserole chicken must be pre-ordered; men need sleeved tops and long pants; and the biggest trap is reading reviews without their dates, because the 2022 service complaints and the 2025 award describe the same restaurant in two different eras.

The last page carries a checklist of twelve things to do before you go. Every one is an action, not a feeling. One of them involves a clock: your table here is held for exactly ten minutes.

01 · Reservations

The number that matters here is not a date, it is 72 hours

Booking The Guest House is not a midnight race the way Le Palais is. The work here is in the rules themselves. Online booking runs on TableCheck (the EZTABLE page now shows the partnership suspended), and the number to memorize in the TableCheck terms is 72 hours: regular bookings canceled inside 72 hours of the meal incur a fee, and deposits on special bookings are refundable only up to that same line.

Online booking	TableCheck, the current primary channel. EZTABLE is suspended, and booking systems named in pre-2021 blog posts are obsolete
How far ahead	No official window published. The TableCheck page does not state a bookable range, so open the calendar and look. Third-party guides suggest two to four weeks ahead for banquets and one to two months for holidays, as experience rather than policy
Telephone	Restaurant +886-2-2321-1818; TableCheck also lists a reservations line, +886-2-6633-1652
Regular cancellation fees	Within 72 hours of the meal: about US$16 (NT$500) per person for open seating; about US$156 (NT$5,000) per small private room (3 to 4 seats); about US$313 (NT$10,000) per medium room (5 to 13); about US$625 (NT$20,000) per large room (14 and up). A card guarantees the booking with no advance charge
Special bookings	Holiday, event and custom-menu bookings take a prepaid deposit, fully refundable if canceled 72 hours or more before the meal, forfeited afterward with no date change. The amount varies by package
Late arrival	Tables are held for 10 minutes, stated plainly in the terms
Private rooms	Thirteen rooms in three sizes (accounts also describe a 17th and 18th floor split with ten rooms upstairs; records disagree). Minimum spend is quoted by phone with no published figure; a single 2022 account records about US$938 (NT$30,000) for one room
Waitlist	None on record
Dress code	Official terms: sleeved tops and long pants for men, elegant dress for women, and no slippers or sandals. The restaurant reserves the right to refuse entry
Accessibility	Guests with limited mobility can be seated in a step-free area on the 17th floor if flagged in advance

As at the other starred tables in this series, one task belongs inside the booking itself: the signature casserole chicken is a ten-person production dish that must be pre-ordered, and the fish maw chicken soup, the caramel mullet roe and the applewood-smoked beef ribs sit on the same pre-order list. No official lead time is published, so the safe play is ordering when you book.

What I would confirm first at this pricePrivate room cancellation fees are charged per room, not per head: a medium room forfeits about US$313 and a large one US$625. Anyone booking a room for a company or a family should hand the 72-hour deadline to whoever owns the calendar. Rules written this precisely tend to be rules that get enforced.

How to plan it

Calendar firstNo published booking window exists, so a date only counts once you can see it open on TableCheck.
Once bookedPre-order the casserole chicken for a ten-person table, and put the 72-hour mark in your calendar.
On the dayTen minutes of grace only. Shandao Temple station exit 2 puts you three minutes away, which beats gambling on parking.

02 · Getting there

Two top floors, one for dining and one for banquets

The Guest House takes the Sheraton Grand Taipei's 17th and 18th floors: the 17th holds the open dining room and a glass-walled kitchen, the 18th is given mostly to private rooms (room counts vary by source, as noted on the previous page). The address is Zhongxiao East Road Section 1, with Shandao Temple metro station exit 2 a two to three minute walk away and Taipei Main Station about ten minutes on foot. Like Le Palais, this is a table that out-of-town guests reach without learning the city.

Address	17F, Sheraton Grand Taipei Hotel, No. 12, Section 1, Zhongxiao East Road, Zhongzheng District, Taipei 100, Taiwan
Telephone	+886-2-2321-1818
Hours	Lunch 11:30 am to 2:00 pm (last order 1:30 pm), dinner 6:00 pm to 9:30 pm (last order 9:00 pm), open every day (current TableCheck listing; pre-2023 accounts citing lunch to 2:30 pm are out of date)
Metro	Blue line, Shandao Temple station exit 2, 2 to 3 minutes on foot; Taipei Main Station about 10 minutes
Parking	Hotel basement garage, one hour credited per NT$1,000 (about US$31) spent, capped at 3 hours per car (official terms)
Being seated	Lobby elevator to the 17th floor. The glass kitchen faces the dining room

The structural consequenceLunch closes at 2:00 pm with last orders at 1:30, half an hour earlier than most hotel Chinese dining rooms, so a late lunch does not exist here. Meanwhile the two-floor split lets the house hold two entirely different occasions at once: a quiet bowl of braised rice downstairs, and a twenty-person banquet upstairs, neither hearing the other.

03 · Menu logic

A menu where the small plates carry the name

The cooking is Sichuan-Huaiyang: Sichuan heat and seasoning built on Huaiyang knife work and patience. And since the first Taipei Michelin guide in 2018, what this room has been known for is not one trophy dish but its row of refined small plates. The menu runs a la carte first with sets as the shortcut, which makes the per-head cost friendlier than the address suggests: about US$50 to 100 covers a full meal, the lowest entry point among the three starred Chinese tables this site has covered in Taipei.

A la carte band	About US$13 to 40 (NT$420 to 1,280) plus 10 percent service. Small plates, wok dishes, casseroles and rice all sit inside this band
Sample prices	Whispers cold cut about US$14 (NT$460); Xu Family mapo tofu about US$23 (NT$720); dry-fried green beans about US$28 (NT$880); yan du xian pork and bamboo casserole about US$29 (NT$920); sesame oil chicken braised rice about US$37 to 40 (NT$1,180 to 1,280); Suzhou-style soup dumplings about US$16 (NT$520). Compiled from 2024 to 2026 accounts
Set menus	Weekday individual lunch sets from about US$90 (NT$2,880), with higher lunch tiers and dinner sets recorded around US$156 to 250 (2025 to 2026 accounts; names and tiers per the official site)
Pre-order dishes	Casserole chicken about US$146 (NT$4,680, serves ten); fish maw chicken soup about US$213 (NT$6,800); caramel mullet roe about US$90 (NT$2,880, serves ten); applewood-smoked beef ribs about US$71 (NT$2,280)
Service charge	10 percent
Vegetarian and seasons	No published vegetarian program, so flag it when booking. The menu keeps a core list plus seasonal campaigns, and the late 2024 Sichuan overhaul was the largest revision on record. No fixed seasonal cycle is published

Against the other two tables this site has covered: Silks House runs about US$60 to 95 a head a la carte and Le Palais about US$80 to 125 and up. The Guest House at US$50 to 100 is the one where an unplanned, ordinary dinner is actually possible. Its expensive items are concentrated in the ten-person pre-order dishes, so a small table that stays out of that column has a surprisingly low ceiling.

How to read this menuFor two people, spend the budget on small plates and the braised rice, which is this kitchen's home ground. For ten, the casserole chicken and the pre-order dishes are the main event. This menu flexes across head counts better than either Silks House or Le Palais, and that is exactly why it works as the entry point to Taipei's starred Chinese dining.

04 · Signatures I

One large signature, one small one

Two names in the public record of The Guest House draw no argument at all. The large one is the casserole chicken: about US$146 (NT$4,680), serves ten, pre-order required, and its reviews hold steady from 2019 through 2026, straight across the demotion year. The small one is Whispers: an approximately US$14 (NT$460) cold plate of pig's ear pressed against pig's tongue, named for the image of an ear against a tongue, and a 500 Bowls plate winner in 2025.

Casserole chicken	A ten-person production soup on the pre-order list. Multiple accounts converge on the density of the broth (a 2023 forum write-up puts it above most chicken paitan ramen broths), and the second round, with cabbage, tofu and glass noodles added to the pot, recurs across records. A 2025 500 Bowls plate winner
Whispers	The pressed ear-and-tongue cold plate, with several accounts describing slices thin enough to pass light. A 2025 500 Bowls plate winner, and the flagship of the house's small-plates identity
The small plates	A standing roster of about ten refined small plates. Knife-work items such as the shredded dried tofu (about US$9 to 13, two sources with differing prices) have carried the restaurant's story since the first Michelin guide in 2018
What reviews say	The casserole chicken is the most repeated and most year-stable dish on record; the praise for Whispers and the small plates centers on knife work. Neither area was named in the 2022 to 2023 wave of complaints, which makes them the safest orders in the house

The ten-person format decides how the casserole is used: it is not a walk-in dish, it is the switch that turns a dinner into a banquet. A table of two or four cannot reach it, and loses less than it sounds, because the small-plate-and-rice half of The Guest House costs far less and wins the same plates.

Take your time The name Whispers describes the dish itself: an ear pressed against a tongue. A restaurant whose own name means inviting guests made its most famous small plate in the shape of a secret being told. Sometimes the menu tells the story better than the history does.

05 · Signatures II

The menu that came back from Chengdu

In late 2024 the Sheraton sent The Guest House's chef, Hsu Hung-Te, to Chengdu to study under Xu Fan, founder of the one-star restaurant Xu Family Cuisine, and about twenty authentic Sichuan dishes entered the standing menu on his return. That is where the menu's Xu Family mapo tofu gets its name. This overhaul is the key to reading the restaurant as it exists now: most of the seven plates and the Momentum Award it took at the 2025 500 Bowls went to post-overhaul dishes.

Xu Family mapo tofu	About US$23 (NT$720), made with brine-set tofu from Shiding. Named in 2025 and 2026 accounts as the overhaul's signature piece
Sesame oil chicken braised rice	About US$37 to 40 (NT$1,180 to 1,280). A fixture of accounts since 2022 and a 2025 500 Bowls plate winner
Other 2025 plate winners	Sichuan pepper crispy squab, mala abalone in chili oil, and white pomfret rice noodle soup, joining the casserole chicken and Whispers for seven plates in all, plus the Momentum Award
Dim sum	Suzhou-style soup dumplings about US$16 (NT$520); a red bean pan-fried pastry appears in early Michelin-era records. No published limits on dim sum service hours
Off the menu	Press coverage mentions pickled-chili century egg (reported as a near-universal regulars' order) and mala chicken knee cartilage among items not always printed. Ask at the table
Rumored dishes not listed here	Braised sea cucumber with scallion, Dongpo pork and roast duck circulate in older accounts, but nothing in the last three years supports them as current signatures, so this guide leaves them out. The official seasonal menu is the reference

The pre-order rules in one line: the ten-person dishes are ordered when you book, the small plates and rice at the table, and the Sichuan line only exists after late 2024. When reading any account written before then, remember its author never saw half of the current menu.

An advisor's readA starred chef flying off to apprentice under another starred founder is rare in Taipei, where most kitchens at this level are defending rather than relearning. The practical takeaway for a visitor: aim your order at the Sichuan half (the mapo tofu, the squab, the boiled beef line), because that is the newest face of this kitchen and the one the awards are currently endorsing.

06 · Drinks

No corkage, a glass-washing fee instead

The bring-your-own policy here differs from both other restaurants this site has covered: instead of per-bottle corkage there is a per-glass washing fee, about US$3 (NT$100) per wine glass and about US$1.60 (NT$50) per spirits or other glass, stated in the official terms. Four people opening one bottle pay about US$13 in total, under the US$16 per bottle at Silks House and an order below the US$38 recorded at Le Palais.

Glass fee	Wine glasses about US$3 (NT$100) each, spirits and other glasses about US$1.60 (NT$50) each (official TableCheck terms)
Pairing	No published information. Ask when booking
Tea	No published figure. Comparable rooms charge tea per head, so leaving a few dollars per person in the budget is prudent
The comparison	Cost of bringing one bottle for four: The Guest House about US$13, Silks House US$16, Le Palais US$38. This is the most bottle-friendly of the three

Per-glass pricing carries a practical corollary: the fewer the drinkers, the cheaper it gets. Two people sharing a good bottle over Sichuan food pay under seven US dollars in fees, close to a token charge for a starred room. A banquet host should run the multiplication the other way, since twenty glasses in a private room becomes a visible line on the bill.

The structural consequenceThe glass-fee system sends the opposite signal from Le Palais: this house welcomes your bottle. Combined with the gentlest a la carte band of the three, it creates a meal the other two cannot offer, a bottle from home over a table full of small plates.

07 · Reviews

Reviews that read in two halves

The scale first: about 4.4 stars across roughly 2,200 Google reviews (via a third-party aggregator, worth reverifying before relying on it); 4.2 across 306 on Tripadvisor; 3.9 across 29 on iFoodie. What follows includes only points repeated across three or more sources, isolated remarks left out. This record has to be read in two halves: 2022 to 2023, the late two-star era through the demotion, and everything after the late 2024 overhaul.

Praised repeatedly

The casserole chicken. The most stable dish across years, with the dense broth and the second-round serving repeating through the record, unshaken by the demotion
The small plates and the knife work, with Whispers as the flagship and light-through-the-slice descriptions appearing independently in several accounts
The sesame oil chicken braised rice, a fixture since 2022 and a 2025 plate winner
The recovery after the late 2024 Sichuan overhaul: the Xu Family collaboration, seven plates and the Momentum Award at the 2025 500 Bowls, and 2025 to 2026 accounts nearly free of complaints
Private rooms and hosting. Praise for soundproofing and privacy runs from 2019 to 2026
The room itself: a tall 17th floor space in composed Chinese style. An English review calls the decor dated but the atmosphere apt, which reads as neutral-positive

Repeated warnings

Service was once unstable. Records of slow pacing, unannounced dishes and clearing lapses concentrate in 2022 to 2023, including one long one-star account. By 2025 and 2026 the accounts had turned to praising service, so this warning needs its expiry date attached
The price argument. A la carte group meals around US$78 to 88 a head drew forum comparisons with unstarred institutions, and the not-cheap verdict runs from 2017 through 2026
Some non-signature dishes called plain or unremarkable, concentrated in 2021 to 2023 records, with no comparable cluster after the 2024 overhaul

How to read this setA demotion usually reads as decline, but this timeline tells a different story: after losing the star in 2023 the house changed its play, with a new chef, an apprenticeship in Chengdu and a rebuilt menu, and then took the Momentum Award in 2025. The service complaints belong to the earlier era, while the signature column held steady throughout. Deciding whether to visit in 2026 on the strength of a 2022 review is the single easiest mistake to make about this restaurant.

08 · Planning the meal

The lowest doorway into Taipei's starred Chinese dining

The first seven pages collapse into three scenarios. Exchange rate at roughly NT$32 per US dollar, figures including the 10 percent service charge, rounded, based on 2024 to 2026 published records. The official seasonal menu is the reference before you go.

Two people, small plates	Two or three small plates, the mapo tofu, one braised rice pot and soup dumplings, about US$100 to 130 all in, US$50 to 65 per person. Bring a bottle and the glasses cost six dollars. The gentlest entry into starred Chinese dining in this city
Four people, the Sichuan line	Three small plates, the mapo tofu, the squab or boiled beef, the yan du xian casserole and a braised rice, about US$220 to 280 all in, US$55 to 70 per person. The post-2024 overhaul, complete, on one table
Lunch sets	Weekday individual sets from about US$90 (plus 10 percent), dinner sets recorded around US$156 to 250. For the day nobody wants to order
Ten people, a banquet	The casserole chicken (pre-ordered) plus one or two pre-order dishes and a shared menu, about US$80 to 110 per person. Private rooms carry a quoted minimum, and the cancellation fee is per room, so hand the 72-hour line to the organizer

On timing: last lunch order is 1:30 pm, so lunch plans start early, and the 6:00 pm first dinner seating is the softest. There is no midnight ritual here, and a visible date on the calendar is usually a bookable one, which makes this the least stressful reservation of the three. Its hurdles are rules rather than scarcity: manage 72 hours and 10 minutes, and the rest is dinner.

How to plan it

On a budgetThe two-person small-plates meal starts near US$50 a head, the lowest starred entry point in town.
First visitFour people on the Sichuan line, under US$70 a head, covering the newest menu in the house.
HostingCall two to four weeks out for a room and the casserole chicken, and settle minimums and deposits in the same call.

09 · Nearby

For the day the calendar says no

Booking pressure here is lighter than at Le Palais, though banquets and private rooms still ask for weeks of lead time. The alternatives sort into the usual three layers: the same building, the walkable district, and Taipei's other starred Chinese tables.

In the same building

The Dragon: the Sheraton's Cantonese room, a former Michelin Plate and 500 Bowls recipient, the in-house Chinese fallback
Kitchen 12 (buffet), Sukhothai (Thai) and The Anteroom (steak and Western): the Sheraton's dining floors have their own depth

The district and Taipei's starred Chinese tables

Mountain and Sea House (Renai Road Section 2, about 15 minutes on foot): handcrafted Taiwanese banquet cooking, one Michelin star plus a Green Star. The other starred table in this district, in a different cuisine entirely
Le Palais (Palais de Chine Hotel, about 2 kilometers on the far side of Taipei Main Station): Taiwan's only three-star restaurant, 2018 through 2026, with a calendar that opens at midnight on the first of each month. The full guide is here →
Silks House (Regent Taipei, Zhongshan station): the Cantonese room that earned its first star in 2026. The full guide is here →
Ya Ge (Mandarin Oriental Taipei, Dunhua North Road): one-star Cantonese for nine straight years, and the easiest booking of the four. The full guide is here →
Tien Hsiang Lo (The Landis, Zhongshan District): one-star Hangzhou cooking, the nearest neighbor to this restaurant's Huaiyang side
Chi Pin Hsuan (Hengyang Road) and Dian Shui Lou (Huaining branch): the old-guard Jiangzhe tables in the station's walking range, in the no-reservation-race tier

An advisor's readThe three starred Chinese tables this site has covered now form an entry ladder. Start at The Guest House, the lowest doorway at about US$50 a head. Step up to Silks House, the newly starred Cantonese room with the loudest current buzz. Save Le Palais, three stars and a midnight race, for the summit. Conveniently, the booking difficulty climbs in exactly the same order.

10 · Details and history

From members-only club to Momentum Award

The Guest House began as the members-only club of the old Lai Lai Hotel, a room that literally served only invited guests, opening to the public around 2005 (a date recorded in a single source). In 2002 the My Humble House group took over the hotel and raised the Sheraton flag, and in 2018 the restaurant entered the first Taipei Michelin guide with two stars, one of the flag-bearers for local Chinese cooking that year.

The chef	Hsu Hung-Te, who spent eighteen years in the group rising from apprentice to chef, taking over the kitchen around 2022 to 2023 (no official date published). In late 2024 he studied in Chengdu under Xu Fan of Xu Family Cuisine
The former chef	Lin Chu-Wei, apprenticed at fifteen with over thirty years at the stoves, in this building since the Lai Lai era. The face of the two-star years from 2018, and Hsu's mentor. His departure date and destination are unreported
The room	An open dining floor with a glass kitchen on 17, where the knife work and noodle making happen in view, and a floor of private rooms on 18. The cooking is Sichuan-Huaiyang: Sichuan flavor on Huaiyang craft
The group	My Humble House took over the Lai Lai Hotel in 2002 and renamed it the Sheraton Grand Taipei; the group also runs Le Meridien Taipei, Mu Jiao Xi and Humble House. The Guest House has no sister restaurant

The record, year by year

2018–2022	Two stars in the MICHELIN Guide Taipei for five consecutive years, from the inaugural guide
2021–2024	500 Bowls: 3 plates, then 4, then 5, then 1, the low point of 2024
2023	Demoted to one star, with the chef transition around the same period; one star held from 2023 through 2026
Late 2024	The chef's apprenticeship in Chengdu, with about twenty Xu Family Sichuan dishes entering the standing menu
2025	500 Bowls: 7 plates plus the Momentum Award, mostly for post-overhaul dishes and the long-standing signatures
2026	One star renewed in the MICHELIN Guide Taiwan 2026, announced 21 July

Take your time The 500 Bowls curve is more honest than the star count: 3, 4, 5, 1, 7. The 1 sits in the valley after the demotion, and the 7 is the score the kitchen brought home from Chengdu. A restaurant inside a fifty-year-old hotel chose its worst year to become a student again. That is the line in this table worth carrying to the meal.

The Guest House Taipei Review: Menu, Prices, and Tips