Among the famous snacks of the Shihlin night market(士林夜市) you can see a big blue signboard of this Hot Star Fried Chicken with a long queue of people each of them holding a plastic bag given by the shop waiting for the fried chicken which cost NT$55 a piece. I was in the queue for about 15 minutes before I could get my shares, beware of the blistering heat through the little paper packet holding in your hand.

The smell you may get even as a passer- by of the shop entrance is not a big difference from that of the KFC or McDonald’s also ubiquitously found in Taipei streets, the batter outside is crispy enough, but rather thick and fully soaked with oil, pepper are sprinkled onto each piece of chicken out of the wok, a lot of them I tell you, and sadly the tastes you would get in your mouth are those seasoning more than the real taste of chicken, the meat is tender enough and as usually those adhere with bones are even more tender. A piece of fried chicken is bigger than a man’s palm, and more than enough to feed that man, but as I’ve said most of the piece is batter rather than chicken meat.

This rice noodle eatery in Ximending tourist district has actually become my place for breakfast in the past few days. A famous eatery don’t even need opulent décor or comfortable seats as the food itself is the best enticement for new and old customer, such that holding a bowl sitting or standing here and there near the entrance has become something to marvel at for new comers to Taipei like me.

Very very special indeed, I must confess I’ve taken nothing like this as a bowl of noodle before, the soup in brown is very thick, flows slowly with rice noodles of varied thickness, and a kind of brown, thin veggie that gives you the feeling of chewing tiny shredded meat in your mouth.  A few pieces of pig intestine are used which are quite crunchy and would not be too oily.

You could help yourselves anytime with the 3 different sauces as seasoning, namely Chili, Garlie, and Vinegar, though I would suggest using none of them as the noodles with its soup taste already great enough by itself.  The rice noodles is not the chewy type you would expect with ramen, garnish with corianda when it is served, this rice noodles inclines to a bland palate,  very much my kind of thing.

There has been Din Tai Fung in Hong Kong for many years, but under the hegemony of property tycoons, for every meal you spend, a significant portion of it will become rental for the shop in tourist districts such as TsimShaTsui or Central, which has seen rentals ratcheting up in multiples in recent years.  There is Din Tai Fung in China too, but for the reason of food safety and hygiene, I can do nothing but dismiss it out of hand.

I think Din Tai Fung in Taiwan has taken a more humble way of doing business, 5 pieces of their chef d'oeuvre Pork XiaoLongBao in a take-away paper box cost just around HK$20, think of what you could have with HK$20 in a Hong Kong restaurant?  That said, it is no longer just a matter of food, poor governance of a place by the authority will actually result in deprivation of the hoi polloi in many aspects of life, good food might just be the tip of an iceberg!

Each Pork XiaoLongBao is like a piece of art work, the immaculate 18 folding on the top, the translucent wrapper through which you can see the meat and the hot soup settled down at the bottom, all so delicate and meticulously integrated.  Put one in your mouth, wow!  It’s heaven, so savoury with intense taste of fresh pork.  The meat are grinded with a fine rather than chewy texture, you haven’t lived till you have tasted that!

I’ve also tried the Steam Shrimp and Pork Dumplings with the same price as the Pork XiaoLongBao, it is also a top order thing by any standard but still nothing to compare with the Pork XiaoLongBao.  A cup of tea for every take-away customer (the queue of people waiting may put you off joining them), great services by friendly, helpful and enthusiastic waitresses.

福州世祖胡椒餅 Delicious Black Pepper Cake with Pork Filling

This Black Pepper Cake bakery shown in the photos is very famous in the Raohe street night market(饒河街夜市), so be prepared to line up patiently for a while before you can buy the pepper cake. I waited for 15 minutes that night, but just for your information I’ve also seen a branch of the same bakery near Taipei Railway Station, with much less people there.

Each pepper cake is just a little bit smaller than the size of a tennis ball, with white sesame seeds on its top, very hot out the oven when you buy it with mouthwatering fragrance of meat and pepper upon giving it a bite.  The skin of the pepper cake is quite chewy and there is great taste of flour from it.  The meat filling is savoury,  and a rather coarse texture with roughly chopped up pork meat and tendon mixing up with green onion, a wonderful blend of tastes.  

Don’t miss it when you are in Taipei, to see what this little humble pepper cake can do to your taste buds, and I guess you won’t be disappointed.

Lau Tian Lu is a shop selling pot-stewed items, pot-stewed foods are traditional Chinese cuisine with meats, tofu and veggies marinated using a sauce consists of Sichuan pepper corns and aniseeds to give a special refreshing savoury favour.  Lau Tian Lu and its pot-stewed foods are perennial favourite of all Taiwanese, and of course people coming to Taiwan too.  The shop that I’ve patronized is in the tourist Ximending district, and so unavoidably a queue is something to be expected.

I’ve tried their chicken wing, duck wing, green bean, and MiXueGao米血糕which is a black cake made of glutinous rice and duck blood. The meat they use no matter chicken or duck are invariably very fresh, so the meat is still very tender ever after prolonged steeping and stewing with the marinade, better still, the fragrance of the marinade will not drown out the fresh and distinctive tastes of the chicken and duck meat.

They are really onto something with their pot-stewed items, something you couldn’t find in Hong Kong, which more often than not are too salty rather than the refreshing taste of the ingredients in the marinade.

The spare rib with no bone at all and is more probably just a piece of pork chop, are deep fried with black pepper sprinkled on the surface, the batter is not crispy and indeed soft, no taste of pork or meat at all, even my home made Brazilian frozen pork chop with marinade tastes much better.

The noodle is the cheapest of the cheap thing, over-cooked, soft and mushy in your mouth, the soup of the noodle reeks of artificial favouring, so mind your health.

The vegetable is better, simply because it is vegetable that comes with its own taste, and so nothing or little left for criticizing.

A total waste of time and money on this guidebook favourite, after all, mind your credibility dear guidebook writers.

A very humble tiny eatery with dilapidated simple décor have stood the test of time of over 30 years near the Taipei Railway Station, is there any closely guarded secret behind? I am intrigued to unveil it.

The owner is a middle-aged down to the earth man who sells his foods at quite a bargained price, and I think it is the quality of food rather than price alone that keeps his shop crammed with local and foreign pilgrimages most of the time.

Their famous Steamed Dumplings is of a bland palate, a lot of shredded cabbages along with some meat are used as filling, the wrapper of the dumpling is very thin and lushly green of the veggies inside can thus be shown easily through the translucent wrapper, very beautifully made healthy cuisine.

The Sour and Spicy soup is another gem of the shop, healthy ingredients such as tofu, wood ear fungus and cabbages are used, drizzled with sesame oil on top to finish it up, simple but re-invigorating and delicious.

Their XiaoLongBao are very good too, although much less exquisitely made, the wrapper looks thicker and less soup at the bottom than that of the Din Tai Fung’s, the taste is however very good, and the meat they use is very fresh and juicy too. Well done man, I wish your shop another 30 years in Taipei.

Rice dumpling is a traditional Chinese food for the dragon boat festival in memorial of the venerated poet and politician Qu Yuan thousands of years ago.

This shop’s rice dumpling is so fully packed with ingredients amid the mound of sticky glutinous rice, they include a salted duck egg York, a large piece of chestnut, a few pieces of dry shrimps, a small piece of shitake mushroom, and quite a large piece of pork belly meat to give a velvety texture.  The whole dumpling is drizzled over with a rather thick brown sauce tastes like oyster favour sauce in a diluted sense.  The glutinous rice is starchy enough and chewy, but all the ingredients don’t seem to blend together very well, although individually they are all very fresh and taste great.

Another thing I’ve tried is the Fish Ball Soup with Radish, altogether 3 very big fish balls are floating on the soup among some pieces of radish.  Very disappointingly, the fish balls and the soup are artificially favoured together with pepper.   The texture of the fish balls is coarse and hard, with nothing in your mouth tastes like fish at all.

This noodle shop eventually opened on the very last day of my visit in Taipei, I’ve really struck gold!

There are quite a number of their noodles that won noodle competitions a few years ago, the Boneless Short Ribs & Beef Briskets Noodles that I ordered on my day of visit is one of them.  They tout the use of boneless short ribs from USA and beef briskets from Taiwan, which agricultural products Taiwanese people are always very proud of.

The noodle only came after quite a while longer in comparison with average waiting time for other restaurants.  The first thing that caught my attention upon the first mouthful of the soup is the greatness of its quality, never have I tasted anything on par with this one in Hong Kong, so intense delicious taste of beef but not salty.  The USA short ribs and Taiwanese beef briskets are both very great with their individual distinctive tastes, albeit the local beef briskets is a little bit coarse in texture in comparison with the USA’s.  The noodles is chewy and discernibly a fragrance of wheat out of it.

It is a thing capable of rendering all beef noodles I’ve tasted in Hong Kong sound silly.  Isn’t beef noodle one of the essence of Taiwanese cuisine? Hitherto, I believe it definitely is!