World Foodie Guide

My first guest blogger is fellow foodie and über-photographer Kang from LondonEater, who kindly agreed to write about his recent (and first) gastrotrip to Taipei, Taiwan. When I visited Taipei, I fell in love with the food, but I’ve written very little about my visit, as I wasn’t blogging back then. Taipei is also on my list of 25 Food & Travel Destinations. So over to Kang and his Taipei Tales…

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Taipei City is the capital of Taiwan, a country which is famous for its diverse gastronomy, typhoons and the occasional international popstar. The flight from London took about 16 hours in total… which included a little detour to visit my folks in Brunei first, but upon landing, it was amazing how everything suddenly switched over to Mandarin, as if someone had switched languages midway through a movie. My Chinese is… passable… as a Chinese person largely brought up in an English speaking environment, adjusting to the new setting was fascinating to say the least.

“Ni Hao” says the immigration officer.

“Sorry?! Oh right, Hello mate” says the LondonEater.

A smile, a nod and an imaginary wink – Welcome to Taiwan.

Day One…ish.

We landed close to 10pm, but decided to immediately start our foodie tour with a trip to a porridge house, of sorts. We headed to Fu Xing South Road. A so-called ‘supper street’ (at least that strip) as it is home to local Taiwanese supper delights such as dou jiang, which is a soya milk which isn’t just a soya milk. Similarly Taiwanese porridge is a little different from the usual Hong Kong style ‘congee’ that I’m used to. For starters it’s not white and creamy. It is otherwise known as ‘xi fan’ (??) and I would describe it as soaking rice in a broth with sweet potatoes. Anyway, so these porridge houses commonly open to the wee hours of the night, and to accompany the porridge is a huge selection of dishes. Steamed fish, octopus, smelly tofu (we’ll get to this again), pig’s ears… let’s just this isn’t Mr Chow’s £6.50 eat all you can.

As it was suppertime, we ordered but a few dishes to whet our appetite for the eventual journey ahead. I’m not the biggest fan of xi fan if I’m honest, but the steamed cod was warm, silky and gelatinous – really yummy stuff.

Day Two

The next morning I woke up to birds chirping and a warm breeze. Taipei was a bona fide urban jungle which had a seemingly lazy groove. I made a new best friend when I was there, but we’ll speak more about him later on. Any gastro-pilgrimages to Taiwan have to include sampling proper Taiwanese beef noodle soup. We were now on the look out for a local favourite which goes by ‘Liao Jia’ noodle stall (Liao Jia translates to House of Liao’s) and is next to Jiang Kai-Shek memorial hall. We chance upon what looked like an unassuming backstreet filled with car repair shops. Anyway, in between these car repair shops was a small pink door, people kept coming and going and just outside the door, there was a huge queue – epitome of a hidden gem.

Inside, the décor is nothing to shout about – this was just another Chinese café. On the table, there is a ‘common’ bowl of what looks like pickled lettuce (I could be wrong). We started our meal by ordering a few ‘small dishes’ (direct translation I assure you) which are about 50p each. First up – Silky tofu (direct translation again) with century egg. Wow… I was mildly blown away. The sweet gravy was very appetising, served cold, the tofu was silky, just ever so slightly sweet but mostly it had this very pure character to it, which was analogous to a superbly distilled vodka as opposed to something less refined. My better told me that this was pretty common stuff, but man, you’d never find anything like this in London. We also ordered smoked pigs ears.

Ahh yes, there is it – Beef Noodle Soup. Liao Jia is famous for their clear broth, qing dun style (a clear broth made from ox bone with no soy sauce). The broth is light but wonderfully fragrant with a rich smell of the bovine. Warming and full-flavoured, the tender beef chunks were hearty and the noodles were simply perfect. Bouncy, squidgy and it was as if it was releasing oxygen every time you chewed on it – very well made. This entire meal costs about £2.50 by the way.

Dinner was a meet up with the better half’s family and friends at a restaurant called Yun Song off Lane 216, Zhong Xiao East Road. This place specialised in Yunnan cuisine ….and stinky tofu. Let’s cut to the chase then shall we:

I wasn’t privy to the logistics, the (organic) stinky tofu is a“private” house special – only regulars could order this. It is limited to 10 slices a day, and legend has it, that it is a treat for the owner’s daughter if she gets good results for school exams. So, my first experience of proper stinky tofu was interesting to say the least. It was analogous to a mild semi-soft cheese, nutty and grainy, the palette punctuated by an earthy fermented aroma. If you’re a fan of mature cheese, you might like this one.

Other dishes we tried include a mung bead and vermicelli salad – a variation of grass jelly. And we also had a plate of sliced pig’s head skin.

Day Three

So far so good, in addition to the food, I was particularly enjoying the shopping. They sell a lot of attractively packaged limited edition Japanese products which was great, oh and I also blew my budget on a new camera (which I no longer own incidentally) when I went to the ‘camera’ district. For lunch, we decided to give Ding Tai Fung a go – now a successful franchise expanding into neighbouring Asian countries.

This place has a rather interesting history, they serve what can be interpreted as Shanghai cuisine but has its roots firmly in Taipei. Its founder Yang Bingyi was born in China, but moved to Taiwan. While in Taiwan, Yang and his wife consequently started making and selling xiao long buns on the side. The buns were of course well received and this led to them opening the restaurant. The original restaurant is located on Xinyi Road, Taipei. There are three branches in Taipei and we went to the Zhong Xiao branch (at the start of Lane 216). Also, this particular street is a little gastro-street unto itself as you can find pretty good lu-wei (braised assortments with bean curds, offal, Taiwanese blood pudding, chicken wings).

We kicked things off with an order of their signature xiao long buns – a thin pastry nearly translucent, stuffed with prawns, these little gems were bouncy, fresh and viscous with the juices well sealed within the bun. Above are the shao mai with shrimp and pork (corrected after Mr Noodles’ comment)

Next up was pork chop and fried rice. A simple dish, but it was a cracker. The best pork chops I’ve ever tried. Sizzling, smoky and seasoned to the brim – it was clinical and wholly appetising.

By far my favourite of this meal was the Zha Zhiang Mian (Minced pork noodles). The noodles are of the hand-pulled variety and it was immensely delicious. Airy and bouncy (a la al dente) , the minced pork topping was incredibly rich and the combo produced a taste which struck a good balance of being juicy and dry.

As the sun went down, we were at yet another family dinner, this time at the Teppanyaki restaurant at Regent Hotel.

I won’t dwell too long on this one, since it was a ‘western’ style grill house in the Benihana vein with the chef performing acrobatics in front of you. Instead I’d like to draw your attention to the Taiwanese abalone called ‘Jio Kung’ (nine holes); a lot smaller than the Australian ones I’m used to. Rubbery and flavourful – I love grilled seafood.

Of course, I was interested in the street food stalls, and those places were well, by the street.

We didn’t know the history behind this particular street stall, but the food looked good so we ordered a few dishes. Everything served in paper cups for hygiene, we ordered a bowl of ‘mee fen tiau’ soup (short vermicelli soup), a plate of blanched taco (octopus) accompanied by a thick soya sauce with wasabi. The last dish in the picture is made from a cut of pork that sits closest to the liver.

The Final Day

As the last day rolled along, I was strategically planning how I was going to bring back all the bottles of sake and stacks of pineapple cake which I had just bought. As it was a Sunday, we headed up to Yang Ming mountain for a bit of high altitude fresh air. This part of the trip was quite exhilarating. Near the summit, there are a few restaurants which specialise in cooking ‘mountain vegetables’. As I understand it, the produce is sourced from the mountain.

We had a huge feast here, I didn’t really recognise all the dishes we had, but it included deep fried whitebait, stir-fried clams, stir-fried sliced beef and it was finished with man-tous of assorted colours.

Notice all the steam rising from the dish, wonderfully atmospheric. Clams cooked with Basil.    

Here we go – more rising steam from a plate of stir-fried wild boar and mountain vegetables.

I was now running out of time, but there was still so much I had yet to experience in Taipei. In the end we did manage a trip to one of the Night Markets – the Tung Hua Street Night Market.

Bustling, vibrant, full of life – I had stepped into a Taiwanese movie with ‘Little S’, the atmosphere at the street market was so uplifting, families ran food stalls which catered to families enjoying a night out. The social camaraderie gave me all kinds of warming feelings inside, and I was simply revelling in the mood.

We chanced upon this old guy selling salted chicken in spiked brine from a stainless steel bowl. There was a huge crowd gathering around him, and herd mentality ensured that I stuck my camera to capture abit of the buzz. Oh, we bought some chicken as well, £1 for a portion I think it was.

We also managed to try a ‘Gua Bao’ – loosely Pocket Bao – and is bit like a Taiwanese burrito. Made with finely grounded peanuts, pork slices, pickled greens and soya sauce, the bun itself was sweet, mellow and just warming.

Ahhhh….

I wish I could show you more of the small bites I had while on this trip, but there were far too many of them to blog about. For me, that was the beauty of Taiwanese cuisine, every corner you turned, there seemed to be something to eat, something to drink and something new to learn, and I had only just begun to scratch the surface.

I was reluctant to leave Taipei, I wished my trip was just a couple of days longer… I walked past a lot of grill houses which looked really interesting, but more over I also left behind my new best friend – qio qio. Plans are already in place for a future trip to Taiwan in 2010 with a view to kidnap qio qio and install him in his spiritual home – in my London flat!

LondonEater’s full Flickr gallery can be found here

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Tags: food, food & travel, LondonEater, Taipei, Taiwan, Taiwanese, traveleating