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.