Post interesting, unusual Taiwan food finds and vote: Delicious or Revolting
I’ll start
Found this today…
- Delicious! I’d eat it.
- Revolting! Get that away from me!
- Meh. Too boring bring on something crazier!
0 voters
1 Like
Can we have an indifferent (meh) option on the poll?
2 Likes
Done. Is that meh ok?
2 Likes
Thanks!
That’s odd. It erased previous votes and won’t let me vote again.
Try pressing hide results and then voting
The “boba pizza“ I’ve been hearing about is a lot more disturbing to me than this. Although I imagine both are texture hell.
Pictures and poll it!
I tried, I survived, won’t be venturing that way again.
Just a complete soggy mess
1 Like
I did try the Bubble Milk Tea Cake and it was not bad in fact!
who’s tried the boba gao liang? i heard its lit.
1 Like
Definitely on the “delicious” side of the ledger for me is shuilian (水蓮), the thin and slightly crunchy green veggie often stir-fried in Hakka restaurants in Taiwan. The center of Taiwan’s shuilian production is Meinong in what used to be Kaohsiung County, where reportedly 90% of this vegetable is grown. And what is happening in that community is very interesting indeed.
As this report from Commonwealth Magazine tells us, it’s now women from southeast Asia, especially Vietnam, who are driving the production and sales of this vegetable:
Chung Ching-hui, secretary general of the Meinong Farmers’ Association, has noticed that virtually all so-called “millionaire farmers”, meaning those with an annual revenue of more than NT$1 million (US$32,000), are immigrants from Southeast Asia. “If it wasn’t for these hard-working new immigrants, farming, especially water snowflake [i.e. shuilian], would hardly be feasible.”
Fascinating stuff about how Taiwan continues to change.
Source: https://english.cw.com.tw/article/article.action?id=3450
Guy
7 Likes
Thank you for this information! Shuilian has become one of my favorite veggies here and I assumed it was produced in the north as it rains the most up here. I’m glad the farmers are getting paid well!
I don’t have any idea if the farmers are indeed paid well—or if middlemen grab a big chunk of the sales, as they do with many agricultural goods in Taiwan. But like you I’m a huge fan of the veggie, especially when cooked properly with ginger. It’s delicious!
Guy
1 Like
Great post! I order shuilian (水蓮) whenever I see it on a menu.
Another delicious choice - binglanghua (檳榔花). Stir-fried with other veg or with pork or beef. It has to be fresh and the cook needs to know how to prepare it so it is a good test of the quality of the restaurant.
2 Likes
I agree this dish can also be tasty, though I know some friends who object to ordering it as it indirectly supports the planting of betelnut trees, with all their attendant problems, mostly connected to safety and mudslides along slopes.
Guy
I thought if you eat the flowers you don’t get the nuts and that pushes the price up a bit. but I may have miss understood.
I think it’s the whole planting of those trees as a cash crop that my friend objected to, on environmental grounds.
Guy
one of my favorites as well! that with garlic is like heaven!
cant say 100%, but there are (probably) no mountain plantations for betel nut flower. the numbers are far too out of whack for that cheap harvest (flower) to make sense. It is either completely, or almost completely ) from home gardens, old farms, or random crappy trees on a nut producing farm or the random trees flowering out of sync with the field 
I wouldnt be too concerned about mountain slopes being raped for the flower, truly that’s for the nuts.
1 Like
Well I would not use that language, especially the “r” word, in this context. But I do hope you are correct about the envronmental impact of growing betelnut flower being smaller than I had been told, as indeed it’s pretty nice when cooked well.
Guy