Taipei is all about the animal cafés. In fact, the world’s first cat café started in the city over 20 years ago. Since then, there I’ve seen a capybara café, alpaca café, parrot café, snake café, and now, meerkat cafés!
Meerkat75 Café (75度獴主題餐廳) now has two branches in Taipei City, one here in Songshan District and another here in Da’an District.
My two kids and I recently visited the Da’an location to see what it’s all about. Before going, my kids were skeptical, because meerkats are not on their list of favorite animals.
But all three of us were pleasantly surprised. We now put it on our list of best things to do in Taiwan with kids. Read on to find out why!
Taipei’s Meerkat Café
The original Meerkat75 (the Songshan location, also called Taipei Arena location or 台北小巨蛋店) first opened in early 2022, making it one of the newest additions to Taipei’s already diverse animal café scene.
Local bloggers were of course quick to investigate (see here and here) and confirm that the meerkats, called 狐獴 (hu meng in Mandarin) are indeed 真的太可愛了啦 (really too cute la!)
Like any new thing in Taipei, the word spread like wildfire and the masses soon followed.
By the end of the year, a second location opened in Da’an district, also called the Dunnan Flagship Store or 敦南旗艦店, which is the one I’ll be reviewing here.
Because the two locations are both quite new, they are both very nice, clean, and comfortable, just with different color themes and decorations.
The meerkats you’ll meet at the two locations belong to the same family. There were only two meerkats in house when we visited, but I’ve seen photos with up to four at once location.
How to Make a Reservation
Even though the initial hype has worn off, the two Meerkat Cafés are still very popular, not to mention that foreign travelers are now hearing about them, too (thanks to bloggers like me LOL!).
Therefore, I’d say it’s very smart to make a reservation, especially on weekends when most locals go.
Here’s the reservation link for the Songshan location. You can also find the links for each one on their GoogleMaps entries.
On the Songshan location reservation page, you’ll need to choose how many people (2位 = 2 people), a date (2024年9月14 號 = Sept 14, 2024), and an approximate time. Then it will give you a list of available times and you click one to book it. 上午 = morning and 下午 = afternoon.
On the next page, it will ask for a phone number (Taiwan number is best, but it allows international) for receiving a confirmation.
If you aren’t able to receive a text to your number, click “改用電子郵件” (use email instead) and enter you email address. Ignore the remaining options / clickable boxes, and click the red “完成訂位” (complete reservation) button to submit.
Here’s reservation link for the Da’an location. This one is on a different platform, so it will look a little different.
It asks for number of adults (2位大人 = 2 adults) and kids (2位小孩 = 2 kids). They don’t mention which age counts as a kid, so I would count anyone under 18.
The small print on this page says that under 6 is not allowed. But I know from personal experience and reading reviews that children under 6 ARE allowed. They just won’t be able to go into the meerkat petting room. They will still be able to see the meerkats in the glass pen.
Next, choose your date, click a desired time, and click 完成訂位 at the bottom. On this platform, it requests a Taiwan phone number only. The small print says that visitors who don’t have a Taiwan number can contact them via their Facebook page to make a reservation, but it may take a day or two for them to reply.
If you make a reservation via their Facebook page, make sure to indicate which location, 台北小巨蛋店 (Songshan Taipei Arena) or 敦南旗艦店 (Da’an Dunnan Flagship).
The booking page also mentions that if your group is more than 4 people, you should call them to book. If you don’t speak Mandarin, you can try messaging their Facebook page instead.
How to Get There
For the Songshan Location, it’s a 7-minute walk from exit 4 of Taipei Arena MRT on the Green Line. Note that Taipei Arena’s Mandarin name is 小巨蛋, which literally means “Little Giant Egg”, as it is shaped like a huge egg.
For the Da’an location, it is a 5-minute walk from Xinyi Anhe MRT on the Red Line. Since this is very close to Taipei 101 and Xiangshan (Elephant Mountain), consider to visit those attractions on the same day.
Also don’t miss this cute Fumean Cats-themed 7-Eleven near this location. I’ll share our photos of it at the end of this article.
Our Visit to Meerkat75 Cafe Da’an
When we arrived at our reserved time of 11:30 AM on a weekday (the first time slot of the day), we were pleased to find that there were only a few other groups in the restaurant at the same time as us.
Upon entering, we were asked to remove our shoes. I was immediately pleased with the restaurant’s elegant design (as far as animal cafes go), playful yet refined artwork, and ochre color theme.
It’s also worth nothing, there was no smell (some animal cafes can be a little stinky). And the animals are not running around freely, like in some animal cafes.
We were seated at a table with a comfortable booth. Right away, we noticed the two meerkats in a glass pen not far from our table. We could go up and observe them as we wished.
One of the meerkats kept being naughty, knocking over something in the pen, and the staff had to keep entering to fix it. My kids though this was hilarious. As you can see in the pics, the meerkats are wearing cute (ridiculous?) outfits.
Our server started by handing me a sheet detailing the restaurant’s rules of conduct. The list is in Mandarin but you can scan it with GoogleTranslate or other translation apps to read it.
We would need to order a minimum of TWD 400 per person (including the kids), and there would be a 10% service charge applied on top of that.
Some rules were obvious – don’t be too noisy, watch the kids, don’t bang on the glass on the meerkat’s cage, and so on.
Some were less obvious, like when you meet the meerkats, you should empty your pockets beforehand, and let them come to you before you try to touch them.
After reading the rules, we told the staff to add us to the waiting list to meet the meerkats. They do the encounters in 15-minute slots, giving the meerkats a break in between each slot.
Even though the restaurant was not very busy, it took a full hour for our names to come up, so I suggest getting your name in right away.
In total, you’re allowed to stay for up to 2 hours, but we left right after we got to meet the meerkats, so that was about 1 hour and 15 minutes.
We had other meal plans that day, so we only ordered one drink and one dessert per person – that was enough to meet the minimum.
These came quickly, so we had plenty of time to enjoy them before our names came up. For drinks, our eyes naturally homed in on the iced drinks with colored layers.
My kids chose a “Sea Blue Coconut Dream”, which was sea blue on the bottom, with a slightly salty egg-white foam on the top (this foam topping is very trendy in Taiwan right now) and a “Creamy Rose”, which was half green and half pink.
As pretty as they were, the drinks were just OK for us (the salty foam was a bit much…) The desserts were fantastic, though. We had a cheesecake and a chocolate pie – both were extremely rich and beautifully presented.
If you’d like to enjoy a full meal, the menu features (like most other animal cafés) Western dishes, like quiche, pasta, salad, steak, and deep fried foods.
According to Taiwanese reviewers, the food is good, but if you’re coming from a Western country, you may not be so impressed (you can say the same for many Taiwanese versions of Western food).
Finally, when it was our turn to meet the meerkats, the staff took the two meerkats from their glass pen in the restaurant area and escorted us to an enclosed room at the front.
Since it was not a busy day, it was just me, my two kids, and the staff member inside the room. At peak times, there could be a few more people with you.
We had expected the meerkats to be hyper and playful. On the contrary, the meerkats immediate climbed into my kids’ laps and proceeded to fall asleep.
In the 15 minutes we had with them, we basically fell in love with the meerkats. They were so soft and cute.
My kids are massive cat lovers. Petting the meerkats as they slept on their laps was not much different than snuggling with a lazy cat, expect that these guys are quite a bit scrawnier than our cat at home.
In that time, we chatted with the staff member and learned the meerkats’ names, relationships, and some of their funny habits – I don’t want to spoil everything, so you can find out yourself. Staff members’ English ability may be vary – we were chatting in Mandarin (see my list of common Mandarin phrases here).
Somehow, the meerkats were less interested in me. I had to ask the staff to wake one of them up and give it to me so I could try holding it.
When our time was up, we felt totally chilled our after having such a calm, quiet encounter with the meerkats.
While we were in the restaurant, we noticed that another family had a child under 6. The staff were so kind to bring one of the meerkats out to their table so the child could briefly meet it. The child was allowed to carefully touch but not hold it.
After our visit, we walked a few blocks to visit the Fumean Cats-themed 7-Eleven, which my kids (as cat freaks) liked just as much as the meerkat café.
The location link is in the “Getting There” section above. (Related: read about our visit to Houtong Cat Village and Cat Island in Japan).
That’s all I have to share about our experience. If you make it to Meerkat75, I hope you have as nice of a meerkat experience as we did!