I am passing a pineapple bun bakery at the same time as the sky opens up to let out all of its rain. This is lucky for a number of reasons: one, rain hasn’t sullied Taipei’s triple-digit temperatures all week; two, this pineapple bun bakery has had a line every time I’ve walked by it and is deserted now; and three, the bakery has an awning. Serendipity.
I order a bun with butter inside, entirely out of character as I have had less than tasty experiences with pastries in East Asia unexpectedly being full of butter, like butter is a reasonable substitute for whipped cream or custard (it isn’t). But I order it here because it is what the bakery is known for, and far be it from me to turn my back on trying something that hundreds of Shida University students buy bags and bags of every day after class. Even if pineapple buns don’t have any pineapple in them and are so named only for the design on the top of the bread. Even then.
I find upon ordering that I am actually lucky for four reasons, and the fourth is that they’re just pulling a tray of freshly baked buns out of the oven. I get mine and it’s too hot to touch, so I first dangle it by a pinky, then toss it from hand to mouth to hand as I dash the few blocks home.
Oddly, the experience of eating it is heavily atmosphere-dependent. I’m a well-documented taste hardliner, maintaining a laser focus on the objective taste of the food to the exclusion of everything else: if the dish is good, it’s good, period, whether I’m indoors or outdoors, on a plastic stool or a lavish lounge chair or standing at a counter, whether it’s dinnertime or lunchtime, whether I’m melting in the heat or shivering with my hands around a mug of tea.
In the case of this pineapple bun, though, the crunch of the topping may give a sweet contrast to the soft rest of it, but I am well aware that if the cold hard butter didn’t give relief to the soft, fiercely hot bread, exactly mirroring the way the cold, sharp rain gave relief to the fiercely hot, sunny day, I wouldn’t have enjoyed it nearly as much.
I try hard, in Taroko National Park, to find food that is decent, but failing that, to at least find food that has some qualities that mirror the staggering, photographically uncapturable scale of the precipitous mountains, marble-walled and grotto-pocked gorges, and rushing, deafening slate river, but I can’t, so I allow the food to fade into the background, eating (I assume) like those mysterious creatures who claim they ‘eat to live, not live to eat’. Dumplings, noodle bowls, stir fried vegetables over rice, repeat.
The sole exception to this vacation from foodie-hood is fruit, particularly the peaches and plums sold at the highest bus stop in Taroko (Tienxiang). Women ply the bus stop, fruit in one hand, knife in the other. Without looking down, they cut slices from the fruit and offer them to everyone getting off the bus. The line of people exiting the bus then curves to the right as every single passenger, shocked by the explosive juiciness and flavor of this slice, joins a new line, this time to buy fruit. The fact that the price exceeds US farmers market prices matters not.
I also feast on guava and yellow watermelon slices for breakfast, free from the hostel, and while on the first day I’m savoring every juicy bite, by the third day I feel like it’s entirely normal (yet still wonderful) to wake up and fill up on abundant tropical fruit that just appears on my plate. The bar is set higher now for Taitung to wow me with its famous custard apple (and durian and starfruit and pomelo and real pineapples)!
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