Taiwan: "Small Eats"

Taiwan is best known for its xiao chi, which literally translates as "small eats." When I hear xiao chi, though, I think of any food or drink specialty sold from either street stands or tiny mom-and-pop stores. As with many Southeast Asian countries, Taiwan thrives primarily on fresh food cooked and served street-side by small, steaming, and efficient operations, often family run. It's what makes eating so unbelievably cheap and convenient there.

Everyone's favorite xiao chi turns them into a child again. Everyone has their favorite(s), the one (or two) thing(s) they just can't get enough of. I'll cover our favorite xiao chi here, and then cover the remaining categories of food, like breakfast and night markets, in my next entry.

I'll start with Mark's dad, because he was maybe the most enthusiastic out of all of us. He very deliberately sought out bahwan (meat filled glutinous rice ball) and eel noodles.

There are many variations of bahwan - some fried, some steamed, and each one with a slightly different sauce. We started the trip with the version Mark's dad had been talking about for months, a fried one from Taichung. Mark's cousin Ah-Ghen has a daughter that just happens to go to school in Taichung, and she graced us on our first night in Taipei, not only with her presence, but also with Taichung's famous bah wan.

I have to admit, the one from Taichung really lived up to the hype. It's all in the sauce! Let me just say how proud I am that Taichung is famous for something so yummy, because that was my birthplace (not literally in the bahwan shop, just the city).

I can't say the same for the steamed shrimp version we tried in Tainan, although Mark and his dad loved it. To each his/her own. I think it looked much better than it tasted, or maybe it's because we ate eel first (see below), and that sort of killed my appetite.

Mark and his dad tried a third version, steamed and filled with pork, at the Liouhe night market in Kaohsiung.

Then on our last day, cousin Ah-Ghen, knowing how much his uncle loves it, brought a Taipei version for lunch. (I didn't have any. I'd like to say I saved my last day for my favorites, but quite frankly, I was all out of appetite! Weak sauce!)

Bahwan is pretty filling, but Mark's dad always managed to eat a second one!

Onto eel. I love unagi, barbecued eel Japanese-style, but I was absolutely not a fan of the eel in Taiwan. Eel noodles clearly evoke powerful childhood memories for Mark's dad, however, because however unsanitary or unappetizing the eel stand or dish, he gobbled it up. He could not wait to show us the place he used to frequent thirty-some-odd years ago.

My mom later told me this sign said something about the bottom of a coffin, or something morbid like that. Anyway, it was about dinnertime, and we had just spent an hour or so driving to and through Tainan to get to this deserted food market and a very unsanitary-looking stand where Mark's dad apparently used to get eel noodles from twenty or thirty years before. I won't include here the picture of the raw eel - I don't want you to lose your appetite completely - but at least the owner/chef put on a show for us.

I was really hoping the crazy hot flame killed any germs that may have been in the eel.

It tasted okay. Just not something I wanted to drive an hour or so to eat.

We spent less than an hour in Tainan, which was a shame because I know there is a lot of good food in Tainan, and we didn't hit any of it.

I did manage to snap a picture of this drink shop with a sense of humor. I just thought it would be a nice place to get a drink in the future, but when my parents read it in Taiwanese, I cracked up. So this is for my fellow Taiwanese friends, who know how funny "black white drink" is when said in Taiwanese.

The eel noodles showed up one more time, thanks to cousin Ah-Ghen on the last day. Still not appetizing.

Tsua bing (shaved ice) probably turns lots of people into a kid again, and Mark's mom was a prime example. Our first opportunity came in Kaohsiung, at A-po (granny) shaved ice. Half the table ordered taro and red bean.

Cousin Mu-Tang and I ordered the mixed fruit, which was SO good. The fruit is SO fresh and SO ripe - mango, watermelon, guava, kiwi, banana.

Lots of shaved ice venues serve savory foods, too. While A-po is famous for their shaved ice, they apparently also have great tomatoes. Again, it's all in the sauce. Sweet, salty and ginger-spicy (I think it's ginger).

A-po is an old, famous chain, but 5th aunt claimed there was a better place, which we went to the next day.

Mark's mom was all over it. We went twice, and both times, she was the first one up to the counter, ordering her toppings before the rest of us even got to the counter.

The dark sugar syrup was their special touch (as opposed to the more typical sweet milk syrup), and their ice really was the finest shaved ice I've ever had.

Mark's mom likes to eat her tsua bing by mixing everything together into mush. She claims that's the "right" way to eat it, so you get all your toppings in every bite.

Mark and I liked to eat in a more controlled fashion. Mark's reason is simple - hates his iced-anything to melt before he finishes eating, and if you mix it all up, the ice melts quicker. My reasons were less specific. I just know that I love having a few first bites of just ice and sugar/milk syrup, and then slowly dig my way down to the buried toppings, eating each topping individually as well as together.

Apparently, Mark and I don't eat with enough abandon, because his mom watched us with disapproval.

We also tried a random place in Taipei near 6th aunt's house toward the end of our trip. We definitely don't need to go back to this one. The ice was not finely shaved (possibly even pre-shaved and then kept frozen), and the toppings were less tasty.

Finally, before getting to Taiwan, I had heard of a place called "Monster Ice" that was supposed to be the most famous shaved ice in Taipei. Well, I hadn't seen any Monster Ice anywhere in Taipei, but was told this new Yong Kang 15 mango shaved ice was all the rage.

It must have been. Not only was the place crowded, Taiwan's first lady was there with a large group of friends, sitting just the next table over from us!

It did not disappoint. Mango ice cream topped a layer of sweet, perfectly ripe, fresh mango, atop a perfect amount of finely shaved ice soaked in sweetened milk syrup.

This was my favorite shaved ice experience - well worth the extra few bucks it cost. The mango ice cream and fresh mango was delicious. I later found out Yong Kang 15 replaced Monster Ice on Yong Kang St., hence my difficulty with finding Monster Ice.

Speaking of my favorite things: I had my sights set on papaya milk from the outset. The best I had the entire trip was the first, in a cute neighborhood near Yanmingsan.

It had the best papaya flavor and was nice and creamy. Next time I go back to Taiwan, this place and Milk King are the only two places I want to go for papaya milk.

I had another one at the Dream Mall in Kaohsiung, which was also satisfying, but not nearly as good.

Finally, at Liouhe Night Market in Kaohsiung, I sidled up to what appeared to be a very popular papaya milk stand.

Again, it was not as good as my first one, but good enough to finish. :)

Mark didn't really have a particular xiao chi item he was aching for before he got there, but as soon as he saw a grilled corn stand, he found his thing. The first one we spotted was at the Shihlin Night Market. We called this guy the "corn master."

It cost over $3 (over 100nt), and we had to wait 10 minutes after choosing and ordering the corn while the corn master did his thing, but it was apparently well worth it. More on night markets in the next post.

In Hualien, there was another stand selling a similar style corn for about 1/3 the cost. Mark's dad ordered four, at a medium spice and medium softness (you could specify kernel texture - not sure if this translates to how long the corn is cooked), but they were too spicy for everyone except for Mark.

So Mark ate 3. (We had to toss the last one.) I'm sure he would have loved to return to Shihlin for another from the corn master, but we never made it back.

Mark and I were both bananas over the fruit in Taiwan. We knew we wanted to eat as much guava (me) and wax apple (Mark) as possible. Little did we know how good the bananas would be, too!

We were greeted on day 1 with fragrant, meaty guavas. So refreshing after a long flight!

For most of the trip, we ate the crisp guavas with the white meat inside, but on our tour of Northern Taiwan, I found a pink guava vendor in Jiu Fen.

They sold pink guavas both to eat and in juice form to drink. I chose the sliced pink guavas to eat, and she kindly sprinkled some dried prune powder on top. Oooohhh, so gooooooood.

This was my favorite fruit experience the entire trip.

Thanks to Mark's mom, we were equipped with a bag of guavas pretty much every car and train ride we took. On the train ride down to Kaohsiung, she added a bag of wax apples for Mark.

She also sent us onto the plane with a big bag of wax apples, and Mark ate way too many on the plane ride home (you can't bring them off the plane - they won't make it through customs). It wasn't pretty, but he got his fill.

Finally, I almost forgot, the bananas! While exploring the Taroko Gorge near Hualien, a random vendor on a hiking trail kindly gave us a bunch of freshly picked bananas. Unlike the ones in our supermarkets, these bananas were clearly tree ripened, and oh, what a revelation! I was skeptical (who just gives you some bananas while you're hiking?), but I did not regret taking the chance. As soon as I bit into it, I knew: this is what a banana was supposed to taste like; this is what all the bananas I've eaten before aspired to be (and never became).

Then, I discovered a different type of banana (the shorter, fatter variety in the picture below)!

It's called bah jiao (as opposed to xiang jiao), and it smelled like ... apples! Its texture was so smooth and taste so refreshing. Delicious!

Up next, breakfast, night markets and more!

Taiwan: Eating in Restaurants

Food is more pervasive in Taiwan than anywhere I've ever been before. Yes, there's good food to be found just about anywhere in the world, but I find myself everywhere else having to search for the good stuff. In Taiwan, you can't escape it.

In a place where fresh, skillfully-prepared food is everywhere, you can imagine the standard for what constitutes really good food is high. In fact, Mark and I were laughed at by his aunts and cousins because we thought everything ... well, almost everything ... was good, and we weren't just being polite.

Even if I read Chinese proficiently enough to follow Taiwan food blogs, which I don't, it would be impossible to prepare for Taiwan as I normally do for other destinations, which usually involves having a specific itinerary, reservations where necessary, and backups just in case. There's just too much. Because my online and textual resources were limited (guidebooks really cover only the basics, and I never trust them without cross-referencing), I queried friends and family in the U.S. with recent experience eating in Taiwan, and the most common response - and single best suggestion - I received, was to trust the friends and family I planned to meet up with in Taiwan. Tell them what I was looking for, and have them point me in the right direction.

In order to keep the length of this blog entry at a palatable length, I've split up my food discussion into two parts. I'll start with the kind of eating more familiar to the Western world: eating in restaurants.

Right away, on Day 1, Mark's 6th aunt took us out to a great lunch. I don't know how to read the name or exactly where it is - somewhere in Taipei - but here's the front door for those that can read Chinese:

The first dish was this braised pork in a freshly made sesame bun. It was almost like the gua bao I had been reading so much about, the gua bao that Momofuku's pork bun is modeled after, the gua bao I would have later at a night market. A slightly different variation, but what a really great interpretation!

I could have eaten three buns for lunch and be done, but the afternoon progressed with a lot more good stuff, including the first and second of many great bamboo shoot dishes to come (didn't get good pics of those before folks dug in) and some fresh seafood.

steamed fish

fried octopus

This crab soup in particular was oh. so. good. Just unbelievably rich with seafood flavor. I found here and throughout the trip that when you combine Taiwan's love of soup and accessibility to really fresh seafood, a truly great seafood soup is never far away.

Finally, the black sesame-filled fried dough. Simple. Heaven.

This being my first meal with Mark's relatives, I erred on the polite side and had only one. Everyone else ate anywhere between two (Mark and his mom) to five (his dad) of these! I was pacing myself, whereas Mark's dad was eating like this was his last trip to Taiwan.

I was up early the next morning, having not completely adjusted to the new timezone yet, so despite a pudding cup at 5am and a slice of bread at 7am, I was pretty hungry by 8:30am when Mark finally woke up. We walked out the door around 9am, headed to the corner of Roosevelt and Ningbo East, and then had no idea whatsoever which direction to go. Little did we know we could have just crossed the street, and less than a block up was a Yung Ho soymilk breakfast place, a bakery, and an entire indoor food court where fresh steamed pork buns could be had. We would learn all of that later.

Instead, we opted for what I thought would be a sure thing: Yong Kang St. Although it was clear the food activity here would be high later in the day, at 9:15am it didn't look like anyone was ready for customers yet.

Then Mark read this sign advertising sheng jian bao, one of my favorite things to eat!


The restaurant is called KaoChi (or Gao Ji), and out of sheer hunger, we stumbled in the open door and ordered a dozen sheng jian bao (their smallest order) to go.

Cost: ~$3! We destroyed the first four, while walking to a nearby park frequented by senior citizens. We proceeded more slowly on the next four, leaving the rest to snack on later. They're about two bites a piece. I'm getting hungry just thinking about them.

Even though we took the sheng jian bao to go, which might fall under the rubric of small eats or street food (see next blog entry), we would find out later that KaoChi actually is one of the better known restaurants on Yong Kang St. (a much touted alternative to the famed Din Tai Fung), and return later with the guidance of Mark's aunt for a very nice sit-down dinner. So I've included it here in the restaurants blog entry.

Both his aunt, his parents and our friends marveled that we had (a) found it on our own without intending to, and (b) already eaten there on our second morning.

Shortly after that adventure, our friends Charles and Lois picked us up and took us to ... a Peking restaurant!?! Surprise, surprise, the Taiwanese do not eat only Taiwanese food. Even though their local cuisine is highly developed, another huge part of Taiwanese food culture is their interpretation of food from other Asian cultures (according to some, often better than those other Asian cultures themselves). For instance, I'm told Taiwanese-Japanese food is excellent, although I did not get the chance this trip to try it.

We did, however, enjoy this impressive Peking meal featuring, of course, the Peking duck.

We started with a squash/gourd soup. Taiwan's squash and gourds are a treasure, in my book, and this soup really took it to a whole new level. One of the top 10 dishes of the trip for me. OK, top 10 veggie dish at the very least.

They carve the duck tableside, and what a performance it is. The duck carver worked so quickly it was impossible to get a still shot of him (and yet the duck barely moved).

The duck meat and skin was served in various forms, all of them NOM-worthy:

stuffed tofu

After a couple more courses, including a soup with bean thread noodles (my favorite Asian noodle!), there was the finale - yet another tableside presentation. Those three red blurs are the buttons on the coat of the server that is pulling fine strands of sugar rapidly across the dessert, over and over again, from one end of the table to the other.

It turned out to be simply fried yam or sweet potato coated in syrup, topped with black sesame and the spun sugar strands. Simple. Delicious. Impressively presented. It went down easy, despite my having stuffed myself to the limit, and I would have had more if there were any left. Yummm.

the gang

And what would you guess this feast (no other word to describe it) cost in U.S. dollars? About $25/person including tax (and possibly a service charge - no practice of tipping in Taiwan). I can't imagine finding this quality for this price anywhere in the Western world. You could maybe pull off a $25/person Peking duck dinner at Great China in Berkeley where the service is basically non-existent, the ambiance old and greasy, the food okay, and you can be sure you'll taste in your tea the powerful suds used to wash the teacups.

We encountered our next restaurant meal in Kaohsiung the next day. After a brief 2-hour ride on the high speed rail, we arrived just in time for lunch, which was a short walk down the street from 5th aunt's penthouse apartment. At the Dali shopping mall, the 8th and 9th floors are devoted to fine dining. We ate at Shanghai Shanghai (not a direct translation of its actual Chinese name).

The nian gao (glutinous rice dish), a measure of any Shanghainese restaurant, was quite good, and somehow lighter than the versions I've had here in the U.S. (You can imagine a plateful of glutinous rice can be quite heavy.) While the drunken chicken was nothing special, again, we could not lay off the bamboo shoots, this time marinated in mild chili oil.

Their signature dessert: candied glutinous rice flour balls.

Lunch the day after was on the 40th floor of the Han-Hsien International Hotel, where my cousin, Chen Yi-Li, works. Great views, great food, and a great re-introduction to Kaohsiung.

Yi-Li really hooked us up. She ordered everything, from sashimi to sharks fin soup to dim sum to salad. Did I mention there's really great seafood in Taiwan?

uber-fresh sashimi platter(drool-worthy) crispy-skinned pork & steamed chicken

luo bo gao (daikon radish cakes)

chang fen

(surprising and refreshing) seafood salad

genuine sharks fin soup

That's right, I ate real sharks fin. I had no idea I was eating fake stuff until I had this. When in Rome ...

lamb chops (another tasty surprise!)

And then, drum roll please, the star of the show: bamboo shoots topped with Asian mayo. Mark and I pretty much destroyed this plate on our own. It was mostly Mark.

The best part of the meal, though, was reconnecting with my aunt and her three daughters after more than a decade. I didn't realize how much I missed them, and certainly won't let another decade pass before I see them again.

It was a quick 2.5 days in Kaohsiung, and next thing I knew, we were having our goodbye meal with Mark's 3rd, 4th, 5th aunts and Kaohsiung cousin, at Hwa Young in the Dali shopping mall.

In addition to dim sum dishes, and some wonderfully fresh sauteed vegetables, there was an amazing buffet display, of savory and sweet items.

The dessert cart did not disappoint. Two of my favorite things combined: warm taro soup with the tiny, clear tapioca pearls. If only I could have this at the end of every meal ...


Next thing we know, we're back in Taipei. Our first dinner stop was none other than KaoChi.

Apparently this sweet green onion fish is popular at restaurants serving Shanghai fare.

fresh greens

blanched green beans and bamboo shoots

XLB

Next stop: Hualien. We stayed at the Parkview Hotel, which offered a buffet breakfast and lunch.

With great views of a park. Hence, Parkview.

Lunch

Breakfast

The Parkview also offers various restaurant options. We tried the Cantonese restaurant, The Village.


Back in Taipei for the final leg of the trip. We finally make it to Taipei 101. The Grand Market is their food court, and it is huge. While technically not a restaurant, it's indoors, not small eats, and contains full-service restaurants, so I'm including it here.

There's no easy way to capture the magnitude of this place, because it just keeps going and going. In addition to your McDonalds, KFC, Subway, and a dozen other places you might expect to see in a food court, this food court offers full-service teppanyaki and shabu shabu, amongst a slew of other Eastern and Western foods.

Yes, I did. I got pasta. Spaghetti with meat sauce, to be exact, like you'd find at the Old Spaghetti Factory. I couldn't help it. These little girls were slurping it up like it was the best thing on earth, and you know what? It hit the spot, the way only good "bad" pasta can. I'd venture to say at least as good as the Old Spaghetti Factory.

We balanced out the pasta with some chicken rice, which quite frankly wasn't as good as the pasta.

Bloggers and Chowhound postings rave about Flavorfield in Taipei 101, so when I came across it after lunch, I had to stop in and try something.


I opted for this coconut raisin pastry and a cup of coffee. Good coffee, good pastry, good enough to make me want to try more stuff there the next time.


The only restaurant I specifically requested was KiKi, based on independent recommendations from Taiwan natives Betsy and Inga. Thanks to Betsy and Inga, and thanks to Lois for making the reservation!

As with about 50% of the restaurants we dined in, in Taipei, we were greeted with a carafe of sour prune juice. An awesome idea that I would love to see implemented in the Chinese restaurants in the U.S.
Inga highly recommended the crispy deep fried egg tofu (I think it's steamed egg inside), and one of the first things Betsy asked me upon my return was whether I had tried it. And now I know what all the hullabaloo is about. I don't know how they make it, but it is heaven.

squash with salted egg (genius!)

something spicy I stayed away from

sliced pork belly

In our tour of Northern Taiwan, somewhere between Toucheng and Keelung, we stopped at this seafood restaurant that Mark's dad and 6th aunt knew about.

Oh, the seafood. These cockles/clams cooked in thai basil took me way back. I must have been a young child the last time I tasted this particular type of clam, and the deeply buried memory of that flavor took me back so far so fast, that right then and there, I saw an image of my parents twenty-some-odd years ago. And I missed them, and wished I was eating this with them.

fresh cuttlefish

You'll find all over the message boards and blogs about Taiwan some mention of a legendary noodle place called Tu Hsiao Yueh (loosely translated as Slack Season) and their Tan Tsai noodles. I couldn't remember "Tu Hsiao Yueh," much less the Chinese characters, and I was sure none of our Taiwanese relatives would understand "Slack Season," so I wasn't planning on going. And even when we got there, while I was fascinated by the setup - this low-to-the-ground noodle station you encounter at the entrance - I still hadn't made the connection.

It wasn't until after we ordered noodles, Mark's mom started explaining what "Tu Hsiao Yueh" means, and I started reading the explanation on the wall, that it all came together. So here it is, the famous tan tsai mien:

Or rice noodle, if you prefer:

milk fish belly

bamboo shoots with Asian mayo

Our last meal with friends was ma la guo, or spicy hot pot. They provide a basic broth containing ... skip over this if you're faint at heart ... sour cabbage on one side, and duck blood cake and tofu on the other (spicy) side. Then you order meat, mushrooms, meatballs, fishballs, other vegetables, intestines, etc., to your heart's content.

They'll refill the soup bases as often as you like, and endless rice and sauces. I'm told only a sucker eats rice at these places, but half the table couldn't help it - it's apparently really good with the soup! I, for one, was too full to get that far.

We started out with the mildest spicy pot, and then when the lame girls dropped out of the equation, the boys requested a soup refill with the medium spicy broth. Even I, one of the weak ones, will admit it looks much spicier than it actually tastes.

I think next time, Mark's going full on spiciest pot they have, because while he liked the flavor, I don't think it was spicy enough for him. Goodbye Charles, Lois, Jason and Bella, until next time!

Our last dinner in Taipei was anticlimactic. We were back at Yong Kang St., this time trying some Northern Taiwanese cuisine.

This steamed white fish was the best part of the meal.

No clue what this was - obviously deep-fried something with a very gooey center - was also pretty good.

It's unfortunate we have to end on a medium-low note here, but don't worry, we'll pick it up with xiao chi ("small eats") in the next entry, and I guarantee that will have a happy ending.