Geng is just a disgusting food. How do you come up with such a concoction?
三杯田雞 is the best thing to come out of Taiwan IMHO.
3 Likes
Another example is ‘di gua ye’.
It is what it is.
Mealy
Personally I think Formosa is closer to junk food in that some of the key ingredients arrive bagged and prepared from the Formosa Chang factory. If you watch them carefully with the lurou, the gravy they use to top it, maybe even the whole thing, comes from big plastic bags which they snip open with scissors and empty into saucepans to warm up.
They do entrust the minions in the store to blanch veg, warm up the soup vats, and run the deep frier though. Every protein dish arrives at the restaurant either premade, or is deep fried. Even the mackerel, which looks like a healthy option, is actually deep fried. Also a lot of the accompaniments to the biandangs are all premade and delivered. I think when stuff is productionised to this extent it is closer to fast food.
Off topic but one particularly embarrassing point about Formosa’s, they distribute leaflets to the tables sometimes with employment information, and the salary they pay is actually on the leaflet. From memory it was around 30K NTD/month, with a small bonus if you spoke Korean or English. Who knows, might be me one day. Huanying guangling waiguoren.
5 Likes
Why, I wonder? I thought their thing was the girl yelling your takeout order to the “cooks” in Taiwanese, which I think is very cool by the way. I don’t see many foreigners at these restaurants, but maybe I’m not going to the wrong ones.
Cool fact , Formosa Chang was my first introduction to local food in Taiwan . I just used to look for the ‘beard guy’ cos I couldn’t read or speak any Chinese at the time . God knows how I ordered anything though.
1 Like
add more vinegar.
3 Likes
Me neither, some sort of aspirational tourism friendly brain fart from management I suppose.
I did help a bunch of Koreans at the Family Mart the other day. They were asking the shop attendant for an “Easy Card”. The shop attendant had no idea what an Easy Card was.
I edited that to “I’m not going to the wrong ones” from “I’m not going to the right ones.” Talk about brain farts. I need a drink, I think.
1 Like
Add rice wine. 
It’s one of them.
There’s a lot more than that.
Taiwan rechao restaurants with fresh seafood are unparalleled in my experience. I have tried these kind of places all over Asia and never found any as good as Taiwan. Korea has some good ones (more like throw everything together in seafood soup) but I don’t like eating live animals personally.
Also the goose and duck places are really very good , but you have to like goose and duck. If they were in Shanghai or something they would cover it in some soya sauce or salt but in Taiwan they are super fresh and direct flavours with just ginger and some rice wine usually.
Also hot pot , it’s not for everybody, but it’s very good here indeed and lots of variety. Asians love that stuff .
Dumplings and Chinese Doujiang fresh breakfast and fresh Dofu places , you won’t get better than Taiwan in my book . You can find similar in South East Asia but they are just not as good. Maybe there’s better in some places in China , I would need to travel more there to see.
Taiwan red bean, green bean , dou hua and fruit ice places , simply the best anywhere.
Good point on the goose and duck. Really good meat that.
2 Likes
doujiang is always hot in china… i like it cold.