See, this is what I don’t get. Maybe in Taipei you can get good food in a decent variety, but elsewhere? And I don’t know about healthy, either. Far too much oil and salt for my taste, full of preservatives, veggies liberally dosed with (often banned) pesticides, etc. I tend to like the Taiwanese food my wife cooks, but with a very very few exceptions, I can’t stand typical Taiwanese food as served in restaurants. Bland, oily and one-dimensional is how I’d generally describe it.
TAIWAN HATER!
Of course, you are right, but that doesn’t matter.
The food is mostly shite, only edible if washed down with a refreshing beverage.
I agree with Sandman 100 percent. Taipei has some wonderful restaurants and I love my wife’s Taiwanese cooking (very healthy), but I find a lot of the cooking in Taiwan is saturated in oil. My favorite cuisine for healthy eating remains to be Japanese.
Japanese, Chinese, Malaysian, Thai, Indonesian, Indian, Vietnamese, all take utter precedence over Taiwanese food. There’s simply no comparison. And thank heavens all are readily available in Taipei, along with French, Italian, Spanish, you name it.
Outside the capital, though, you’re basically living in a culinary desert with the occasional oasis in some of the other bigger cities.
Oooh, you’re really jumping to conclusions here. You can say a lot of things about Buttercup (that she’s insanely funny, for example), but NOT that she’s suffering from a culture shock. More likely nostalgia for Taiwan.
If I’m not mistaken, the OP is looking for opinions in order to prepare for the worst, I suppose and this is one way of helping him.
I loved, really loved my life in Taiwan, but my boss WAS a source of aggrevation (so much so that 90% of the staff quit on her, including me), I could have used more power for my hairdryer and epilady, but I dealt with it and I stepped out the door daily and had a busy social life and so much fun with both Taiwanese and other foreigners.
I also lived in both a gated community and what you would call real Taiwan. Both were equally rewarding but in different ways. And it’s certainly not true that in a gated community I gated Taiwan out. The Taiwanese people who lived there (I only saw one other foreigner) were real people too and “real Taipei” was just around the corner from me.
I’m sorry, I’m with those who think Taiwanese food is at the bottom of the list of favorite Asian foods, and I love Asian. But that’s a question of taste, not fact.
What IS a question of fact is your statement about the food being healthy. I won’t repeat what sandman already said.
Yes, you certainly CAN eat healthy, but you have to really watch out where and what you eat. It’s a chore to eat healthy. I’m talking about Taipei, and I’m talking about local food, especially street and night-market meals.
Oh golly gee, that’s nonsense. Of course, one has to be discriminating. Of all the eateries in my immediate neighborhood, I’d say about 10% of them are healthy, good, and cheap, but that’s 10% of every other doorstep.
And to all of you folks in Taipei who think that there’s no good food to be had outside your hallowed city, get a life. It seems to me that when those of you who are so used to life in Taipei step outside of the city, it’s like you’re stepping into another world, full of strange food and unusual moddlydops. I’m sure you know enough about Taiwan to realize that every region has it’s special food, and that in fact in every major city, every district has its specialty. I think you haven’t spent enough time outside of Taipei.
Granted, I’m American, and I’m comparing Taiwanese food to American food. Taiwanese food beats American hands down. A healthy American meal? What’s that? Waffle House? McDonald’s? Burger King? Hey, I’m Lovin’ It! The Taiwanese food that is.
I’ve been eating Taiwanese food pretty much exclusively for nearly 20 years, and I eat everything that comes my way. Guo tie, luo bo gao, shui jiao, ma puo dou fu, your street-side bian dang, and any other greasy slimy delicious dish. The last time I had a blood test, last year, my cholesterol and every other test were way, way healthy. And I’m in my 50s! So you can say that you don’t like Taiwanese food, fine. But it IS healthy eating.
Veggies are definitely part of the food in Taiwan and I loved almost everything I ate (restaurant, street vendor, 7-11). I actually miss some of the food there. Remember also, my wife is from Taiwan – she needs her balanced meal and making various Chinese dishes is at least 75% of what we eat.
Oh, please. Many of us have lived in Taiwan for many years and many of us have local wives who come from every corner of Taiwan outside of Taipei. I think quite a few of us are aware of local taiwanese foods.
Not really a fair comparison then, is it?
Guo tie, shui jiao and ma puo dou fu are not examples of Taiwanese cuisine. Those are Chinese foods.
Taste is, as I think Tash has indicated, subjective. If you like greasy slimy food, that’s all well and good. But, don’t call it healthy. Hell, most mothers-in-law here dread knowing that their kids eat that crap from time to time.
Bullshit.
There could be any number of other reasons to account for your good health. But greasy food cooked in less than clean oils is not healthy.
Ah well, baroomba, you’re maybe a year older than me, so you have me beat on the “I’m older than you” thing. And you’ve been here a year longer than me, too, so you have me beat on that score, too.
You’ll notice I did not list “American food” on my list of superior cuisines, though I DID list Chinese food, which you appear to mistakenly describe as Taiwanese and which I like, too.
Your greasy slimy biendangs you can keep, though – I’d rather have venison cutlets with a rocket salad and I can, less than 10 minutes from my office.
As for local specialties, yeah! In fact, I’m thinking of going down to Jiayi for a delicious plateful of plain boiled chicken over plain rice. Mmmm-mmmm! Nothing bland or one-dimensional about THAT, for sure!
I eat at subway a lot and would recommend their tuna salad sandwhich on whole wheat bread, six inch. Add a coke and cookie and that’ll be a tao4 can4, liu cun wei wu de wu gu mian bao, I always go for the bai chiao ke li bin gan. Don’t say mian without the bao or you will get spagehhti, which subway doesn’t have so they have to run down the street for it etc. Oh, and kao the heck out of that thing, you never know about germs around here, nor do you know about germs anywhere else. In either event subway is definitely one of your safer, better dining options in Taiwan whether it be for lunch, brunch, dinner or a late night snack.
So there.
That’s turkey not chicken.
oops! I stand corrected! Mistaking boring bland chicken for boring bland turkey! How COULD I be so stupid?
Still, this thread has beenn good in at least it reminded about Poagao’s Renegade Province piece about the village in Nantou County billing itself as the seafood capital of the world. 
Reminds me of a piece Chris translated about the “natural resources” of Taiwan. Apparently this includes foods found in the forests, which can, as we all know, provide a feast fit for a tribal chief.
But i do think it a bit silly to exclude things like dumplings and other common Chinese foods from the list of Taiwanese dishes. These dishes are thoroughly local. Gong bao ji ding, foe example, may come from Sichuan but it’s done differently here and should qualify as a local dish.
One positive in the last few years is the number of Bunun chiefs working in out of the way hotels. The food they produce is fresh, clean tasting, and delicious. It’s very easy now to get good food in Taiwan. Lots of fresh veggies, chicken, mountain pig, and fruit.
I have to disagree.
Chinese food is ubiquitous in the USA. You’d have a difficult time finding even a tiny town anywhere in the USA that doesn’t have at least one Chinese restaurant. But, that doesn’t make Chinese food “local” in the USA.
The place down off the main Taroko road – forgot the name – they do a very nice meal of aborigine dishes featuring wild pig and veggies. Kind of almost a “fine dining” experience. Very nice.
But yeah, if you’re going to call something like gungbao jiding Taiwanese, you’d have to call cheeseburgers Taiwanese, too.
And yeah, too, of course you can find fine Taiwanese dining – my wife is translating a cookbook by the owner and chef of a very well-known Taiwanese restaurant here. The stuff really is cordon bleu and completely Taiwanese. Thing is, if you wanted food of that standard out in the boonies you’d be whistling Dixie out your arse. I can pretty much count the great Taiwanese food I’ve eaten outside of Taipei on my fingers – wild partridge in Sandimen comes to mind – but the vast majority is bland, oily crap. What really irks me most is that having tasted what it CAN be like, its all the more irritating when you realize just how badly its done most of the time.
But I suppose its too subjective a subject, really, and that some people actually DO like oily, slimy, soggy, lukewarm biendangs. And good for them. Means there’s all the more real food for the likes of me.
The “Chinese” food one gets in most places in North America is very local in its flavor and style so yes I would say it is local. Furthermore, some of the dishes, such as chop suey, are not even Chinese at all but were likely created in America for American tastes. I think it is only the cultural gap between east and west that prevents people from seeing these dishes as local. When the gap is smaller, as with European culture, we don’t have a problem considering dishes that originated from the continent, or at least were inspired by it, as local.
Is spaghetti local in American? I can’t see how it isn’t. What about bread?
I would agree that certain dishes, such as Buddha Jumping Over the Wall, can definitely be considered a Chinese dish. For common foods that have been here in Taiwan for generations, and are served by every restaurtant, and in a good number of homes, I don’t think the distinction between Chinese and Taiwanese is necessary or really holds up to scruntiny.
We’d not consider sphagetti a British dish in the UK. It’s Italian. Even Brit-style curry, which you sure as hell don’t get on the subcontinent and probably never did. We would “go out for Indian.”
Bingo. Regardless of what you call it, the food here IS the food here, and the feller already likes it; so why don’t we all focus on other areas of useful information? 
OK. But, I still disagree.
Have to go to an Italian restaurant if you want pasta, where I come from. Sure, some folks cook it at home, but its still Italian.
We eat pirogies in Pittsburgh, too. But, nobody would call these American cuisine.
I used to make hot and sour soup quite frequently, but I wouldn’t call it American.
I see what you’re saying, but I still disagree… Hot dogs are American. Kielbasa is Polish, even if we do eat a ton of it in our homes in Pittsburgh.