Or maybe I’m just making excuses for Taiwan, whose food I want to rave about unreservedly, but can’t.
Don’t misunderstand: there were some high points – gasps of surprise, lucky finds, and, of course, a steady stream of cooling and diverse fresh fruit juices. But Taiwan, to me, was more of an initial dazzler than something that kept me interested for the whole three weeks. (Let me stress: food-wise only! I’m still dreaming about what it’d be like to settle down on the Hawaii-esque East Coast with a scooter…)
New dishes/ingredients tried that I’d never tried before:
Eel noodle soup: This is a Tainan specialty, and can be easily picked out among the glass-fronted street stalls, because these display cases are filled with little (roughly finger-sized) deboned brown eels. They are stir-fried with onions and then, in my opinion, ruined, by throwing the whole thing in a sweet, viscous broth. I actually ate this twice because I thought the first broth was a mistake. Without the broth, the eels are delicious, with a firm texture unmarred by bones, and the second time I chose to rudely leave my bowl of broth on the table.
Milkfish soup and fried milkfish: I dedicated a whole entry to milkfish – it was that good. All hail the milkfish, especially the version that showed up on the street exactly when I needed a refreshing, fish-skin covered, gingery break from braised everything.
Scallop and algae dumplings: These lime-colored dumplings were filled with scallops and dry pork and dipped in a vinegary chili sauce. While very simple, these were perfect, and I wished I’d ordered two sets of these instead of hedging with a set of pork dumplings. Incidentally, I would not have been able to order these had a stranger in line not come to my rescue and showed me how to write in my order in Chinese. One of Taiwan’s many perks is its insanely friendly population, any one of whom will without hesitation buy your train ticket if the machine is giving you trouble, physically walk you to your (even very far) destination, hand you free food on the subway for no reason (really, it was a bag of dried mango), and most importantly for me, help you order in restaurants.
A mystery vegetable translated as ‘mountain cabbage’: Raw, it looked like a small, narrow head of cabbage whose leaves twisted into curlicues at the ends, and cooked, it was softened by a mildly fishy broth, studded with whole slivers of garlic, and coated in tiny translucent anchovies.
Yam leaves with pork sauce: Another soft-when-cooked leaf, somewhat like spinach except… fuzzier.
Yellow watermelon: A watermelon, but yellow, and crispier, like an Asian pear!
Yellow watermelon: A watermelon, but yellow, and crispier, like an Asian pear!
Custard apple: I tooted the custard apple’s horn (and the horn of the lady selling them in Taitung) in another entry, but you can think of it as a delicious grainy-pudding-textured sweet pear.
Taro leaf (I think)-wrapped native grain and breadfruit-pineapple sausage: These two require a backstory. We were walking back from a turn in the local park, dominated by twisted dead-looking trees, ponds filled with birds, and a coconut-shaped sun shelter, when we came upon a very culturally-exploitative-looking festival wherein a Chinese announcer introduced performers from one of Taiwan’s native ethnic groups one after another as the audience munched on mountains of grilled pork and drank from jugs of what looked like Tang. We attempted to observe this from afar, but were invited in, handed plates, and had our plates aggressively filled. Hidden under all the grilled pork were the two gems that make up the title of this bullet point. The first tasted like tangy Cream of Wheat; the second was much more interesting. Even as tired of pork as I was, the addition of sweet pineapple and just-plain-bizarre breadfruit (it tastes kind of like creamy banana bread) made me eat it enthusiastically, which was good, because all eyes were on us. I shouldn’t have been surprised, this being polite, generous Taiwan, but all the food and festivities were free. We enjoyed the traditional songs and dances, but wished they weren’t treated like carnival sideshows.
Guancai ban (coffin cake): This dish is much touted in Tainan, but it tastes like nothing more than the kind of pot pie served exclusively to people over 70 or under 7. It’s basically fat Wonderbread toast filled with a cream sauce spiced with one grain of pepper and one grain of salt, filled with soft spam-like meat and soggy carrots and peas. How this made its way in Taiwanese cuisine is a mystery to me. Had I eaten this in any other context, I would have hated it, but it was so different from everything I’d been eating that it was pretty refreshing.
Luffa with clams: Part of an ultimately disappointing experience at one of Tainan’s more lauded restaurants, the luffa had the texture of a sponge crossed with okra, and soaked up the verging-on-spoiled clam taste. Pass, although I’d give it another try at a different establishment.
Stinky tofu “fries”: This was my second time eating stinky tofu, and it was a decidedly less stinky experience. A nearby Spanish-speaking, durian-popsicle-selling vendor (long story) told me that street tofu has steadily become less stinky in Taiwan due to complaining neighbors of night markets. I find this disappointing. Much like blue cheese, the stinkier the better!
Abalone on a stick: I’m pretty sure I have had abalone before, but not grilled. This was the Kenting Night Market’s single saving grace.
Favorite meal:
Actually, I can do this for Taiwan. Hands down. It was the two dollar milkfish soup in Tainan. No frills to the bowl, no walls to the restaurant, just spirals and spirals of oily fish skin in gingery water.
Meal That Broke A Significant Streak
YongKang Beef Noodle soup. I hadn’t eaten beef for months (and in fact it’s been almost a full year since I’ve had a hamburger), but last time I went to Taiwan and failed to get beef noodle soup, I was mercilessly made fun of by Taiwanese expats and basically everyone who had visited Taiwan before. The implication was that I had totally wasted my trip. So: YongKang Beef Noodles. I ordered half tendon, half meat, and marveled at the well-marbled, fall-apart texture of the beef and the fact that the spice of the broth didn’t get tiresome. Part of the reason I don’t eat beef is that it can easily get shoe-leathery. This was more like clouds.
Ranking of Night Markets:
1. Raohe Street (Taipei)
I’ll rhapsodize about Raohe Street for a bit, but let me first describe what it was up against: I came here on my last night in Taiwan, when I had had it up to here with night markets. I was tired of the things on sticks, fried things, mysterious cauldrons of five-spiced things, the vague aroma of stinky tofu without the strong taste of stinky tofu, vendors lackadaisically yelling the names of their dishes over and over again while playing Candy Crush on their phones, and shoulder-to-shoulder sloooow shuffling. I didn’t want to eat anything created to be easily edible while walking. I didn’t want to see theatrical pouring of egg or tossing of waffle batter, or anything whipped or decorated into the shape/visage of a face.
Raohe Street, though, had substance. Not at one stand in its considerable length did I see anyone selling anything that would look better on Instagram than it would taste in your mouth. And it had variety! I saw things at Raohe Street I’d never seen at other night markets: stinky tofu ‘fries’ with kimchi, mulberry-hibiscus juice (served in baby bottles for some reason), guavas with punched holes for ice cream, pepper buns actually baked in giant, air-wavering kilns, cactus fruit juice, durian popsicles, and much more. I was sad that the famous pepper bun filled me up most of the way (and that it was my last night) so I couldn’t try more things.
2. Keelung Miaokou (Keelung)
The most organized and easily navigable market I have seen also offers a staggering variety of fresh seafood. I had sashimi in Kenting and was incredibly unimpressed, but here the sashimi is better despite being served out of a metal container on the street. You can get any kind of fish, clam, mussel, oyster, crab, lobster, etc., prepared any way you could possibly think of.
3. Ningxia (Taipei), Liouhe (Kaohsiung), Ziqiang (Kaohsiung), Shida (Taipei), and Taitung (Taitung). All of these – even Ningxia, which was unceremoniously knocked from its previous perch on the podium – blur into a haze of hawking and crowds. An honorable mention will go to a few for specialties: Ningxia for its egg yolk pastry and Taitung for its custard apple lady.
99. Kenting Street (Kenting)
I’ve covered how Kenting was very, very much Not About Food and will not rehash this here except to wonder aloud how it gets its throngs of seafood-searchers without actually having any good seafood on offer.
And While We’re on the Subject, a Note on Night Markets
When you travel to Taiwan, you mostly likely land in Taipei, which invites you to try one of its eight gazillion night markets. All eight gazillion of them are stuffed with people and flashy stands that make it so easy for you to point and choose without speaking a lick of Mandarin. You gorge yourself on things that would be prohibitively expensive in the US, like abalone, scallops on sticks, or oyster pancakes, or things that seem new and exciting, like stinky tofu or grilled spice-dusted whole squid, or things that are at the head of inexplicably long lines, like pepper buns or banana pancakes, and get high on the whole new, heady, overwhelming experience. But then you wake up after a week and wonder, are there any vegetables in the world that aren’t braised, pickled, or drowned in pork fat? Are there any spices other than salt, red pepper, or MSG? Will I ever eat food prepared with care rather than thrown together on a 2×2 plank at the moment I order it?
Best Dessert
There was fierce competition for this category, as Taiwan loves it some sweets, and will take any excuse to stuff something with whipped cream, encrust it in sugar, turn it into ice cream, wrap a waffle around it, drizzle it over a pile of ‘snow’, encase it in a ‘sandwich’ made of cookies, or throw it in a cup with sweet tofu. The winner did not have to do any of those things. It wasn’t a reach. It was a simple cone of strong Earl Grey ice cream (in Tainan across from the Grand Mazu Temple).
—
After looking wistfully at Raohe Street Night Market’s offerings with a totally full belly, I got a good night’s sleep, tried to visit a closed art museum, got my feet mercilessly beaten up by a masseuse, lost the code to my coin locker at the Taipei Main Station and therefore would have lost my suitcase if it weren’t for the nice staff at the TRA booth, and got on a plane to Changchun, China, where I will be sampling illegally imported North Korean seafood, among other things to be announced by my gracious host.
Stinky tofu “fries”: This was my second time eating stinky tofu, and it was a decidedly less stinky experience. A nearby Spanish-speaking, durian-popsicle-selling vendor (long story) told me that street tofu has steadily become less stinky in Taiwan due to complaining neighbors of night markets. I find this disappointing. Much like blue cheese, the stinkier the better!
Abalone on a stick: I’m pretty sure I have had abalone before, but not grilled. This was the Kenting Night Market’s single saving grace.
Favorite meal:
Actually, I can do this for Taiwan. Hands down. It was the two dollar milkfish soup in Tainan. No frills to the bowl, no walls to the restaurant, just spirals and spirals of oily fish skin in gingery water.
Meal That Broke A Significant Streak
YongKang Beef Noodle soup. I hadn’t eaten beef for months (and in fact it’s been almost a full year since I’ve had a hamburger), but last time I went to Taiwan and failed to get beef noodle soup, I was mercilessly made fun of by Taiwanese expats and basically everyone who had visited Taiwan before. The implication was that I had totally wasted my trip. So: YongKang Beef Noodles. I ordered half tendon, half meat, and marveled at the well-marbled, fall-apart texture of the beef and the fact that the spice of the broth didn’t get tiresome. Part of the reason I don’t eat beef is that it can easily get shoe-leathery. This was more like clouds.
Ranking of Night Markets:
1. Raohe Street (Taipei)
I’ll rhapsodize about Raohe Street for a bit, but let me first describe what it was up against: I came here on my last night in Taiwan, when I had had it up to here with night markets. I was tired of the things on sticks, fried things, mysterious cauldrons of five-spiced things, the vague aroma of stinky tofu without the strong taste of stinky tofu, vendors lackadaisically yelling the names of their dishes over and over again while playing Candy Crush on their phones, and shoulder-to-shoulder sloooow shuffling. I didn’t want to eat anything created to be easily edible while walking. I didn’t want to see theatrical pouring of egg or tossing of waffle batter, or anything whipped or decorated into the shape/visage of a face.
Raohe Street, though, had substance. Not at one stand in its considerable length did I see anyone selling anything that would look better on Instagram than it would taste in your mouth. And it had variety! I saw things at Raohe Street I’d never seen at other night markets: stinky tofu ‘fries’ with kimchi, mulberry-hibiscus juice (served in baby bottles for some reason), guavas with punched holes for ice cream, pepper buns actually baked in giant, air-wavering kilns, cactus fruit juice, durian popsicles, and much more. I was sad that the famous pepper bun filled me up most of the way (and that it was my last night) so I couldn’t try more things.
2. Keelung Miaokou (Keelung)
The most organized and easily navigable market I have seen also offers a staggering variety of fresh seafood. I had sashimi in Kenting and was incredibly unimpressed, but here the sashimi is better despite being served out of a metal container on the street. You can get any kind of fish, clam, mussel, oyster, crab, lobster, etc., prepared any way you could possibly think of.
3. Ningxia (Taipei), Liouhe (Kaohsiung), Ziqiang (Kaohsiung), Shida (Taipei), and Taitung (Taitung). All of these – even Ningxia, which was unceremoniously knocked from its previous perch on the podium – blur into a haze of hawking and crowds. An honorable mention will go to a few for specialties: Ningxia for its egg yolk pastry and Taitung for its custard apple lady.
99. Kenting Street (Kenting)
I’ve covered how Kenting was very, very much Not About Food and will not rehash this here except to wonder aloud how it gets its throngs of seafood-searchers without actually having any good seafood on offer.
And While We’re on the Subject, a Note on Night Markets
When you travel to Taiwan, you mostly likely land in Taipei, which invites you to try one of its eight gazillion night markets. All eight gazillion of them are stuffed with people and flashy stands that make it so easy for you to point and choose without speaking a lick of Mandarin. You gorge yourself on things that would be prohibitively expensive in the US, like abalone, scallops on sticks, or oyster pancakes, or things that seem new and exciting, like stinky tofu or grilled spice-dusted whole squid, or things that are at the head of inexplicably long lines, like pepper buns or banana pancakes, and get high on the whole new, heady, overwhelming experience. But then you wake up after a week and wonder, are there any vegetables in the world that aren’t braised, pickled, or drowned in pork fat? Are there any spices other than salt, red pepper, or MSG? Will I ever eat food prepared with care rather than thrown together on a 2×2 plank at the moment I order it?
Best Dessert
There was fierce competition for this category, as Taiwan loves it some sweets, and will take any excuse to stuff something with whipped cream, encrust it in sugar, turn it into ice cream, wrap a waffle around it, drizzle it over a pile of ‘snow’, encase it in a ‘sandwich’ made of cookies, or throw it in a cup with sweet tofu. The winner did not have to do any of those things. It wasn’t a reach. It was a simple cone of strong Earl Grey ice cream (in Tainan across from the Grand Mazu Temple).
—
After looking wistfully at Raohe Street Night Market’s offerings with a totally full belly, I got a good night’s sleep, tried to visit a closed art museum, got my feet mercilessly beaten up by a masseuse, lost the code to my coin locker at the Taipei Main Station and therefore would have lost my suitcase if it weren’t for the nice staff at the TRA booth, and got on a plane to Changchun, China, where I will be sampling illegally imported North Korean seafood, among other things to be announced by my gracious host.
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