Custard Apples and the Capital of Food

It’s been tough, culinarily speaking, for the past week or so, being on the relatively rural East Coast of Taiwan. Non-culinarily-speaking, of course, it’s been wonderful. I spent 80 miles with my butt on a scooter, surrounded 360 degrees around with expansive ocean views, carpeted with palm trees, anchored by endless mountains. Puffy clouds stuck to the mountains like glue, never quite making it over to cover the sun that was slowly cooking me alive. To escape it, I ‘had’ to take a random side path in the general direction of the ocean, hoping to find a swimmable beach. I found a secluded cove sparsely spotted with students of a Taiwanese surfing class, with black volcanic sand and regular, rolling, body-surfable waves. Standing ankle deep in the water, spooning the insides out of a smooth-yet-gritty custard apple and spitting the seeds into the waves, I considered aborting my circumnavigation of Taiwan right there and just planting in Dulan for the remainder of my week and a half. Instead, after the custard apple had gone, we continued up the coast to Yuli and back down the East Rift Valley to search out an indigenous restaurant that first turned us away for not having reservations, and then, upon seeing how burnt and exhausted we were, squeezed us into a table with strangers and served us a set meal (that, unfortunately, was so salty my tastebuds died for a full day afterward, but the pleasure here was in the journey).

Taitung itself’s saving grace, as advertised, was the plentiful and cheap fruit, particularly the aforementioned custard apple. I bought exclusively from a lady who took it upon herself to crack the top off the first custard apple of my life and scooped out the first spoonful for me. (At least, I told her it was my first custard apple. I’ve had soursop, which a perfunctory Google search tells me is the same thing, but if it is, the version is Taitung is so much better as to be effectively a different species.) As for the rest of the food, I should have just stuck with whatever was pulled out of the sea that day, because my best meal there was a single, palm-sized grilled whole fish served with lemon and salt.

I’m in Tainan now, though, where I essentially fell out of my hotel’s sliding glass doors and into a famous bowl of noodles with black vinegar and shrimp broth. Served with saucy pork-topped sauteed yam leaves, both dishes were aggressively garlicky, but other than that, mild and understated enough to stand the test of a leisurely half-hour lunch. And coming out THAT door, I was bombarded with dessert shops (Hokkaido-style cheesecake, cupcakes, soft serve, gelato, milk tea ice cream…) juice bars (with ingredients from dragonfruit to osmanthus to kiwi), smoking grills full of skewers, and all manner of whole, chopped, raw, grilled, boiled, and/or souped seafood. Keep in mind too that this was 3:00pm, a time when most Taiwanese in other cities are deep into midafternoon heat-induced siesta time and all their restaurants are shuttered.

So I’m guessing Tainan will be as overwhelming to my tastebuds as the East Coast scenery was to my eyes.