They are terrible . Especially after 5 minutes and they cooled. Another low quality food covered up by flavor enhancers 
They’re not bad if you eat them directly out of the fryer. I mean like within 30 seconds. They were much better of course back when they were fried in tallow.
Sure, if you are discussing flavor. Good includes quality amongst other things. Mcdonalds fries are shit through and through, though is recently fried are tasty for some 
Im not sure we can legitimately discuss low quality starch powders being frozen and shipped around then deepfried as being “good food”. Respectfully.
I like cocacola sometimes too. But im not pretending its like water
As an aside. For the price of a large mcdonalds fries, i can make about triple the amount of food at home with asimple 2 toast sized toaster oven and it will taste 100x better and be far healthier. And i save lots of money, even with retail taiwanimported potato prices.
Yes, we are discussing flavor. Unless you want to talk about all that bad-tasting high-quality food. 
Arguably you can have good tasting good qualty. Those fries are like instant noodlea. Youre sodium tingle feels good but is mostly meanigless in regards to virtually everything
You can deep fry dog shit and sprinkle msg on it and it would taste great. Case in point: stinky tofu.
Sorry, had to…
Hehe. You ever seen the production of the blood? Nevermind, no comment 
You guys are really making a mess of the “Best Taiwanese Dishes” thread. I didn’t come here expecting to be impressed, but still… 
Exit, stage left. 
Pursued by @the_bear?
(I’m probably the millionth person to use that line. Oh well.)
I think Taiwanese restaurants are very good in cooking foreign food…
And knowing the short history of Taiwan, I would count Chinese food as Taiwanese too.
But yeah besides breakfast just stick to very popular places or Michelin guide rated restaurants and you get great food for decent prices (with foreign salary).
Yeah Thailand is way better, but overall I really like Taiwan for food, but yeah besides danbing I avoid Taiwanese food with less than 100 years history so to say…
Cong bing is Taiwanese too? That would be another exception then…
How rich are you? I dont think anywhere in the world the average person can call 100~300usd/meal a good price. The food is good sure, but i need like 5 of those meals per day to maintain an easy day. Perhaps an air con office worker only needs 3? Same problem. Extrapolate per month/year i dont think “foreign salary” really matches haha!
If only money wasnt an issue for most of us 
There are plenty Michelin rated restaurants where you can eat for 500-600NTD / person. Some even a bit cheaper.
I think I already said this once - I spend about 1000-1300NTD/day on food as average. But I eat a bit more than the average person - need 4000 calories or so per day in order to not drop weight (average 3000-4000 calories burned per day, but you need to eat 20% more or so to make up losses in digestion). Very cheap days are like 600-700. Expensive may go to 2000 NTD. 50-100 NTD per day are for fruits - that get’s you loads of fruits. Pineapple at my favourite place cost 25ntd / piece, 3 Mugua for 50 NTD. Guava, or whatever is in season and hard to get in Europe adding to it. Don’t need overpriced strawberries or apples here.
Otherwise I only buy nuts at Carrefour or PXMart plus some nutrition for sports (Ikea or Carrefour - gels and so on are expensive in Europe, but ridiculous in Taiwan)
In Europe I spend less, but cook at home mostly - not much less - advantage being I eat mainly organic in Europe while in Taiwan that’s simply not really achievable.
Yeah this year saving on transport. Didn’t buy a scooter so do everything by bike. From Taichung there are very few places you cannot reach in a day. Hualien is a bit asking for it though but yeah on my schedule once temps rise a bit.
So actually living quite cheap this year here, considering I decided to go cheap on rent too.
Well actually when I go by km the road bike may be more expensive than a scooter though…
Here some examples of what I consider great Taiwanese food:
270ntd at a Michelin rated restaurant - their duck is really expensive but stir-fry dishes quite cheap
Guess this counts as Taiwanese too - Mochi on shaved Ice - I think 50NTD at the central night market in Taipei
well a bit more expensive, because it’s in a cafe - 100ntd? But yeah need 3-4 of those portions for breakfast
The famous Cong Bing in Hualien - really nice
Yep that place is on the Michelin guide as well - wait is usually quite long too.
Rather fusion - but I still consider this Taiwanese - at my local breakfast joint - 80NTD. This is the cream version - the Taro version is really Taiwanese
Well and if you fancy cheap western food - this burger would cost you minimum twice in Europe, or three times in US - 21 ounces of meat. Yeah damn I was hungry. Gulped 2.5L of coke zero to get it down. Guess it at 3000 calories (yeah was a dumb idea - my resting heart rate shot up the next two days - just last time I had still been very hungry after the 14 ounce burger…). I think it’s 420ntd or so.
Or this awesome Pizza - 100% made with Italian ingredients in wood oven for just 140 NTD. San Marzano tomatoes, extra virgin olive oil and the flour from Italy…
Goes well together with a buffalo mozarella pizza for 300ntd (yeah, flying in buffalo mozarella is expensive) - but hey this would be more expensive anywhere in the world except Naples.
Ahh ya thats my bad. I just assumed michelin star.
They do look yummy. But hey, lets not pretend all those are good food. Gulping down with 2 liters of coke zero? Back to my point of tasty does not equate good food. The good food is a bigger category, with tasty being one slice of its pie many a night market vendor has tasty food, but i cant think of much i would classify as good food either haha.
The eggplant dish—which shop is that?
Guy
A pickled egg says it’s Three Coins
頂園全鴨坊
Xitun, Taichung. And actually I think I got the price wrong - just looked up the menu in google maps and it says 210 in October 2021. Maybe increased a bit since then. And really big portion. Really love that restaurant. It’s super cheap for the quality (well the duck is really expensive - but the rest is cheap. Especially drinks which seem to be sold nearly at cost).
Thank you—named “Ting Yuan Roast Duck” on their sign.
Their dry fried green beans look tasty too.
Good on you for finding some of the fine things in Taichung!
Guy
Well I have tried all Michelin rated restaurants on the cheaper end. On the upper end only those that I deem good. I’m not a fan of Japanese or Korean food, seems so overpriced to me for what you get.
But yeah spending time to research restaurants on Michelin and google maps takes quite some time. Well for Google maps even more. But basically any restaurant with over 3000 reviews on Google maps I checked out if I think the pictured food looks nice.
And yeah restaurants like le ciel in Taichung are the exception for me too, that’s really too expensive except for a very special day.
One big annoyance with those expensive restaurants is that they don’t tend to use heating, only aircon so right now in winter need to wear a jacket more often than not.
Oh yeah about 2.5l of coke zero (not Coke). I needed to fill up at least 1.5l deficit of water after cycling, so 2.5l went down well