The old Ziqiang night market in Hualien has to be my favorite. It has since been moved to Dongdamen, but I haven’t been back to Huanlien.
Dalin night market in Jiayi is huge, and it has one of the best fruit juice stand.
Ruifeng is my favorite night market in Kaohsiung.
Wusheng, Dadong, and Huayuan are all pretty great in Tainan, but they are only open on specific weekdays, so you have to look up the time table before you go.
If one has to pick from Taipei, I like Raohe the best.
It was pretty dead throughout the pandemic, but on recent weekends it has returned to being super crowded again. Tons of food AND trash shops, as always. The empty places are filling back up.
I quite preferred the dead version, but for the sake of shop owners I’m glad the mindless drives are back.
My favorite is Taipei’s Ningxia Night Market (寧夏夜市) both for food and for their effort a few years ago to promote English. Over the years both the food and the English have gone up and down but still my favorite. Only drawback is it is way too narrow so slow to stroll the vendors on a popular night.
jilong stands out for one of the coolest ones around Taipei. Within Taipei i usually go to nan ji chang, its quite underrated.
Feng jia in Taichung is probably the coolest one i’ve been to in Taiwan as its so huge.
My apartment wasn’t far from that night market when I was living in Hualian. As a student on a budget, I often ate there. However, that was the first place I ever tried coffin bread (棺材板) and I thought it was disgusting–way too greasy and runny.
I thought all shao xiancao (燒仙草) was the same until I tried it at Ningxia but, wow, they had the best I ever tasted.
Gongguan Night Market, I love the scallion pancakes besides the blue building here after grabbing that you can go to river side grab a drink. Weekends are always a party time. Open space, people dancing and just good vibe for sure.
I’m not sure I’d describe the Gongguan Riverside as a “night market.” But yes it can be reached by walking from the Gongguan night market area, where yes that green onion pancake vendor (located in the alley immediately south of Shuiyuan Public Market, the blue building named above) does some decent work. I wouldn’t describe their green onion pancakes as life-changing, but given how lousy the Chinese food has become in that part of Taipei I’ll take it—solid is certainly better than terrible!
While we’re on the subject of the Gongguan night market: I wonder if any forumosans have visited the French guy’s stall lately? It was discussed in another thread here: