This shop at the entrance of the Ueno Park (a hotspot for the mesmerising sakura in spring) has hundreds of year of history specialising in eel rice served in a delicated rectangular lacquer utensil.

The service was very good with some jolly enthusiastic middle aged ladies in traditional kinomos taking care to your every needs. The interior decor is not particularly sumptuous with quite crammed furniture which is typical of Tokyo, however, cleanliness and tidiness are scrupulouly observed which are in the psyche of every Japanese I think.

I ordered a medium size eel rice which came in about 10 minutes time, it was served with a small bowl of kimchi, a soup and a cup of Chinese tea.

The rice was not very impressive, its fragrance was not as appealing as ordinary Thai rice, it was soft to the extent in line with the eel meat that they formed a homogeneous enjoyable mix inside your mouth.

The two big pieces of eel were unquestionably fresh, and so overwhelmingly redolent with the fatty fishy aroma, there were tiny little bones amid the eel meat that inadvertently impart the variation of textures. A bottle of herb which the waitress made enticement to me, when sprinkled onto the eel, though tasted bit exotic (Arabic) it got along with the eel very well.

The kimchi sadly was only a small bowl of it definitely worth mentioning, the veggies were crunchy, would not be very salty as you would encounter in street stalls, there were even two short brown trunks of fresh ginseng which tasted so refreshing.

Considering the price, it is a place that one should expect to pay for their services above the foods, because I actually found eel rice with similar quality in less renowned eateries in Tokyo, though with less salubrious environment, are much more budget friendly.   

 

The man over 60 is the son-in-law of the founder of this shop of cured ducks who currently resides in the Pingtung County with another shop there.  I've talked to him knowing that their family originates from Nang Hai, Guangdong province of mainland China, which followed the Chiang's regime in moving to Taiwan in 1949.  He told me he is still in good health, and he was a Guomintang general when Taiwan was still under the rule of the Chiang's family.

Conversation last for half an hour with both of us standing in the shop as the shop is only a place for buying the ducks out but not eating the ducks there.  With NTD$170 I bought a pack of spicy duck which is a pre-packed, chopped up half-duck.  Besides half-duck you can also find a whole slew of duck items like duck wings, gizzard, liver....etc.  Spicy or not at the discretion of the customers, I've seen many local dwellers bought the duck and streaked away with their scooters parked outside the shop not even needed to take their helmets off.

The duck meat is a bit hard, it is intended to be eaten out of the fridge, but very tasty, a bit sweet with a balanced blend with the spiciness.  The duck skin is the gem alas not healthy, that's life!  I placed the duck inside the hotel's fridge and enjoyed a few pieces every morning, toothsome!

And above the taste of foods there is always the warmth and affection of southern Taiwanese to be treasured, what an experience!



 

 

If you hadn't visited the Ruifeng nigh market in the Zuoying district of southern Taiwan, you surely wouldn't have believed that a humble snack stall among many many others would have been up to such a professional standard, eat your heart out 5 stars hotels in HK!  

Actually on the day of my visit, I chose this little stall just because it was among the few that still had empty seats.  The menu of this snack stall is all about stinky tofu which invariably cost NTD$60, so I ordered a Deep-fried Salty Pepper Stinky Tofu, then bided my time taking some photos and videos of the buzzy surrounding.  

The tofu is not of strong taste as you would find in HK, or made of bona fide sewage as you would find in mainland China, the outside is golden yellow and crispy, with a good partnership with green onion, small salted dry fishes, and consummated with spicy pepper on top, I promise you it's a top notch thing by any standard!  

Just a bit too salty and add to the burden of you kidney, but you wouldn't have it everyday, right?  Next time you visit Ruifeng, take notice that Monday and Wednessday are night market holidays.  

Together with a few photos of the stylish Tainan Museum of History I want to introduce this old shop in the Anping district of Tainan selling traditional shrimp rolls and many other traditional snacks of Tainan.

I took a tourist bus to the Anping district with my maps, being led astray by my own carelessness I hopped off at a bus station or two earlier than what should have been, I asked a middle-aged man just came off his scooter still with his helmet on, he enthusiatically showed me the way and invited me for a free ride with his scooter, my goodness, it was just about 200m away from where we had started, and he could well have told me to tread my weary way to it! That's Tainan people, a genre of Chinese these days you could rarely found in the world.

Back from my digression to foods this Wang's shrimp roll is not very mouth-watering indeed, the deep-fried wrapper in batter is crunchy enough, the pork, shrimp and green onion as filling are fresh, texture is satisfactorily varied but the pork is too mushy to my tongue and the shrimp too small, garnished with some shredded pickled ginger the different tastes don't seem to blend with each other well. The paste comes with the shrimp rolls includes some wasabi and bland oyster sauce.    

I decided to give the Tainan shrimp roll another chance so I came in this Zhou's Shrimp Roll, I ordered a Shrimp Roll and a bowl of Fish Balls Soup.

Being much more commercially run than the previous Wang's Shrimp Roll, the shrimps they used are bigger in size but they cut the shrimps down into dices, the taste of shrimp is more intense than the shrimps of Wang's and less meat filling is used. Some pickled ginger for garnishing is very salty though fresh and crunchy.

The Fish Ball Soup is disappointing, artificial favouring is used and the texture is monotonous, though veggies in the soup are fresh.  I resolved that would be the last dish of shrimp roll for me in Tainan. What about the fish balls, I thought I would give it a second chance, let's see.

A lot of deep-fried shrimp cake free trial along the Anping Old Street,  I wonder anyone would still starve to death living in Tainan!

This Zhou's eatery is about desserts such as tofu custard(pudding), sweet mung bean soup....etc, customers can order them either cold or hot. I really intrigued to compare their tofu custard with that of HK's, as there are famous eateries for tofu snacks in HK too. I ordered a Tofu Pudding with Mung Beans, I ordered it cold, the mung beans dissolve in mouth immediately, the result of prolonged cooking, the tofu custard is firmer than HK's in texture, greater fragrance of soya beans than HK's, overall a bit too sweet but no big deal.

Great delicate dessert! 

This renowned traditional drink business sell his drinks for only a few HK dollars, and generally Taiwanese restaurants, no matter how famous they are, sell their delicacies at a much lower price than HK, take the famous Din Tai Fung as an example, its Xiaolongbao is 80% more expensive in HK than in Taiwan, why?

Due to the hegemonic control in all walks of lives by a few property tycoons, and collusion with an undemocratic government, rental has ratcheted up to an outrageous level, go to any restaurant in HK, very probably a large portion you paid doen't end up in your mouth but into the pockets of a greedy rapacious few, how unfair it is, shame of HK!

The standard Winter Melon Tea is too sweet and faint in taste of winter melon, however, the Low Sugar Winter Melon Green Tea is much better, so much refresh taste of the green tea and winter melon, so re-invigorating, particularly in the hot humid summer of Taiwan, for NTD$15 or HKD$4, it is a patent steal !   

This eatery is famous for its oyster foods, it has two floors and the 2nd floor is much more spacious and comfortable. I ordered an Oyster Omelette hoping that it would beat the one I had had in the Taipei Shihlin night market. I could tell it trounced the Shihlin market’s, which costs NTD$45, a landslide victory for this Chen’s oyster eatery indeed.  

The Oyster Omelette is a fried assortment of oysters, mung bean sprouts, sweet potato powder, egg and onion, with a sweetened tomato sauce on top.  It is a very traditional snack of southern Taiwan and the Chiu Zhou area of mainland China.    

The oyster they use are really fresh, each of them are sturdy and succulent, the scallop of the oyster even so tiny can still be felt in your mouth and is chewy and tasty, the mung bean sprouts are so fresh and crunchy, and the tomato sauce evince the real fresh taste of tomato.  The assortment of texture and color is wonderful to your eyes and taste buds at the same time.  

For anyone with interest in good foods, it couldn’t be something to be missed anytime in Tainan.  Judging by the price of NTD$50, it’s again a steal by any standard.

This shop with a fetching yellow signboard is at a very prominent location in the old street of Anping. They sell a variety of foods, from rice cake, rice dumpling to milkfish thick soup and a lot more. 

Frankly my stomach had already been quite full when I pottered along and passed by this eatery, but every tradition Tainan snack is an enticement on its own so I couldn't help but entered to find a seat for a new excursion.

The rice dumplings they sell are humble ordinary day to day thing for Tainan dwellers, it is drizzled with an sweetened oyster sauce all over its surface, a little bit of garlic sauce is also provided for different people's palate, the glutinous rice is starchy enough, five spices powder has probably been used to give the smell of the glutinous rice, the lean meat inside the dumpling is a little bit hard and not succulent enough though the fatty meat is velvet and full of fragrance, peanuts, dry shrimps and a small cutting of shitake mushroom can also be found.

Corrugated iron sheet is used on one side of the walls, may feel hot in the peak of summer but with air conditioning it was very comfortable on the day of my visit.

Not great delicacy, but worth a try especially taking the price into consideration for some budget backpackers to fill their stomachs in Tainan. 

The close vicinity of the Anping Castle is no doubt a cauldron of traditional Tainan snacks and delicacies, among them is one with the red-brick wall of the Anping Castle just outside its entrance in a narrow and buzzy street of the tourist district.  

This eatery is yet another famous site for a great variety of Tainan seafood, like milkfish, oyster, shrimps and fish balls.  I waited for 5 minutes to get a seat and I ordered an Oyster Soup and a Fish Ball Soup, it was hot as furnace when it arrived a few minutes later.  

The Oyster Soup is drizzled with a tiny bit of sesame seed oil, there are shredded pickled cabbage and ginger slices inside, the oysters are in no doubt of freshness, they all have a sturdy and gleaming outlook, the taste to some extent resembles that of the French Gillardeau (relative of the Tainan oyster) but only at a fraction of the price.  

Tainan fish balls are incorrigibly perverted by artificial favouring, and possess the same monotonous texture, with this in mind, I'm blunted with my interest to give them further comment.

A new day in Tainan teeming heavily throughout the whole morning, I actually started at too early an hour that many of the shops and restaurants near the famous tourist site Chikan Tower had not yet been opened.  Actually beforehand I had never had schedule to visit this noodle eatery, it was by sheer chance when my umbrella didn’t seem quite capable of keeping away all the splashes that I stumbled across this eatery in the street corner, and the sudden thought sprang up to my mind that it is a rather famous one selling the tradition Tainan Tan-Tsai Noodle.  

A lot of people were eating there and worse still they were not willing to leave even after their meal as the weather outside was still appalling.  When I finally could manage a seat sharing a table with some other tourists, I ordered only a small size Tan-Tsai Noodle, simply because I couldn't anticipate with people standing all around me with their dripping umbrellas I could relish slowing reading my newspaper for a bowl of noodle.  

It is not a large bowl of things with a fish ball, a soy braised egg, 4 small fresh shrimps, and some fermented black bean favoured meat paste as the main contents. Garnishing includes coriander, green onion, and mung bean sprouts atop the noodle.

The noodle is not the chewy type and is delicate and soft, the soup while not special by itself accentuates the deliciousness of the noodle.   The fish balls all over Tainan are the same incorrigible artificially favoured, monotonous texture type.  The soy braised egg’s egg-white after prolonged steeping in marinade evinces a hard instead of the usual elastic texture, one may say it is special but it doesn’t impress me.  It is the orchestration of different textures, and freshness of the garnishing things that give the uniqueness and scrumptiousness of this famous Tainan tradition cuisine.  

Worth it, and I could relish it, even in the rain.  Shouldn't I have ordered a large bowl instead!

With rain still pouring my next stop was this 2 floors eatery selling the Tainan traditional snack Rice Cake.  I took some photos of the special decoration hanging on the wall showing rice cake bowls with celebrity signatures, ranging from the president Ma Ying-Jeou, to the brother of the renowned Ang Lee, who is also a film director himself.   

After a short while my take away rice cake was ready, I ate the rice cake standing at the entrance looking at the glass pane nearly all covered up with photos of the shop owners taken with film stars, pop singers, politicians.......foreign or local.  

The texture of the rice cake is very velvet, with a few dices of marinated pork and salted duck egg-yolk. 

A snack with a bland palate, not a delicacy, no sumptuous thing, it is the old memory of traditional food that we treasure.

Rain changed into sporadic at last when I roamed my way through the tourist district of the Chikan Tower, and finally reached this eatery famous for its Duck Meat Thick Soup.   Surprisingly there were only a few customers with a lot of empty tables, I took my seat and ordered a bowl of this Duck Meat Thick Soup. 

Thick soup is just starched soup to make the texture more gloopy, the duck meat they use is cut into thin slices, I think thin slicing facilitates fast cooking to keep the tenderness and succulence of the meat, they achieve this, with the duck meat easily dissolve in your mouth while the soup is discernibly getting in the taste of the duck meat too.  The pieces of radish in the soup are very fresh and tasty, while garnishing they use some shredded ginger, the soup is drizzled with some brown vinegar.  

Yet another gem of the marvelous Tainan cuisine, don’t miss it!

This meat dumpling stall is near to the temple with which it gets its name.  A long queue of umbrellas in a downpour outside the stall attests the quality of this Meat Dumpling, which is sold at NTD$50 per 3 pieces, not ordinary but very large pieces I promise.  

The wrapper of the Meat Dumpling is extraordinarily thick, so three pieces are enough to fill a big man's stomach.  The wrapper gets a nice fragrance of rice with a chewy, velvet and elastic texture.  There is no soup inside the dumpling like that of the Xiaolongbao's.  The big round brown meat ball inside is very special, the meat tastes hot spicy, and the texture is coarse because meat fillets instead of minced meat are used, what an unorthodox improvisation and management of textures!   

The chili paste as the condiment to the meat dumplings is as refreshing as mint, albeit a bit too salty.  

A thing you wouldn't ubiquitously found in the street of Taiwan or anywhere else, a marvelous snack.  

A modern style shop in the main street of the Chikan Tower district specializing in pot-stewed and smoked items, such as chicken and duck parts, tofu, and a whole raft of many other things.  

As I was near the end of this culinary journey, what would be better than getting some snacks to be enjoyed on my way back to HK?  I came out of the shop with a package each of Smoked Tofu, and Spicy Duck Wings.  

The Smoked Tofu is so unique in taste, the special fragrance penetrates deep into the center and resembles that of meat, so you get the illusion of eating chicken frank instead of tofu! 

The pot-stewed duck wing is very special too, the taste is a bit light and on the sweet side, and the meat is rather dry and not tender enough.  

Time to say goodbye, closing this journey means preparation for the next will begin,  Japan, Thailand, Europe……?  Until then, goodbye and good luck.  

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.

More inclined to the youngster’s palate, if you are used to Cantonese style SiuMei you will find the taste of the ordinary soya sauce chicken a reproach to this Hot Star Fried-Chicken.  Not a very auspicious start in Taipei to tell the truth though definitely I won't give up and see what's coming on tomorrow.

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!