I can’t get enough of the Dried flavored Tofu (dou4 gan1). Never cared for the Swallow eggs…nor the ‘BBQ squid on-a-stick’.
I love the squid on a stick from some places… also the roasted corn on a stick (best I’ve had was in Haulien) and also from the Hualien night market those beef-stuffed bread sandwiches that are dipped in egg stuff and grilled… good stuff, hard on the arteries. The sad thing was the last time I was back I tried to show a friend the night marked there the only thing we could locate was a parking lot with a bunch of older men in it playing some kind of gambling video games…
Be careful of that squid-on-a-stick. I had some in Danshui once and a couple hours later I got violently ill, I mean projectile vomiting… Haven’t touched it since. Makes me gag just typing about it.
http://absent.org/~dangrmous/LingLingBBQ.jpeg
It’s me at the Hualien night market! Note squid in foreground center… Yum yum!
The only time I ever got sick in all my Asian travels was at that pizza joint in Kenting!
Be careful of that squid-on-a-stick. I had some in Danshui once and a couple hours later I got violently ill,
Too late … but I didn’t get sick.
But I got a food poisoning last time from those egg-oyster omlettes, came out at both ends and put me down for two days. Yuk.
Ah yes, many happy evenings were spent with friends who sold numerous and sundry boiled/fried animal parts til the wee hours. No health department inspections on that turf…
How about picking out those little snails, soaking them in chili sauce and sloshing them down with a hearty Taiwan beer?
love those snails but heard from a lot of people that they’re not too safe so i stay away now.
only time i got really sick was from cold noodles one time, out for a day.
reminds me, if you’re in shimending hit the cold noodle place in the basement next to the down escalator, the best!
Don’t forget to wash it all down with the Cobra’s blood/bile/venom chaser!
What I like to eat a night markets in Taibei are the fried crickets with a sliced sweet potato stuck inside (tastes like a potato chip when washed down with beer, highly recommended for both men and women) – the fried black ants spread on an egg omlette – also very good – and the fried bumble bees with peanuts on the side, also very good.
One place in Kenting serves, I kid you not, fried silkworms, called chan bao bao, for NT$10 a piece, very good when washed down with Taiwan Bijo.
But maybe the best dish I had in Shihlin Night City was the stewed rat meat, called Lao Su Ro San Bei, sometimes called Tien Su Ro San Bei, tasted like chicken, really good. It’s not a mouse, but a huge fat field rat that eats sugar cane all winter, they catch 'em in south taiwan and then ship them up here. Try it one day, if you really want to taste Taiwan cooking …
The worst case of food poisoning I ever had here was from a xiang tsang hot dog I had bought at 7-11. I was violently sick for 3 days. Death-bed kind of sick.
My favorite night market food is tienpura - both the round kind on a stick and the cut kind in a sack, fried do gan on a stick, chicken ass on a stick…well, just about anything on a stick I guess. Here in Hsinchu we got a corn lady who parks next to Nepal. Best grilled corn ever, I kid you not. She must lace the kernals with opium or something.
FB
Fuzzball: what would you say are the special dishes in Hsinchu, in terms of both for tourists from Taibei and for local people. Are there any famous Hsinchi snacks popular islandwide? I heard that some kind of thin noodle is popular there, mi-fuun? And some kind of fish ball soup? Can you ID these? thanks
M
Mergatroid,
Hsinchu’s famous dish is indeed the thin rice-noodle called mi fun (“bee hwoon!” with the typical taiwanese accent you find down here) and gong wang tang, which is a pork meat ball soup. Mbah wan (rou yuan, I think in Mandarin, just everyone here calls it mbah wan) is also somewhat famous, as I understand it, and is quite excellent - its a pasty rice dumpling stuffed with meat, onion and a savory red sauce. I remember when I lived in Taipei one of my friends took me to the most famous mbah wan place on the island (so she said) but honestly I think Hsinchu’s are better
FB
thanks Fuzzball. Hsinchu seems to have its own special dishes. Just for fun, can any posters tell me what other dishes are peculiar or special to other cites around the island? Like Keelung? Like Kenting? Like Tainan, I heard something called coffin bread? HUH? and all other cities.let’s make a long list of each city, if people know. and what about TAIBEI do we have a special dish here, other than McDs?
Every little bloody small town has it’s own specialities. Xinzhu’s are probably a bit different because of the Hakka (Ke Jia Ren) influence. I don’t eat meat, so I don’t pay a lot of attention to speciality dishes, but here’s a few I can remember off the top of my head:
Yong He: Dou Jiang
Shen Kang: Chou Doufu
Taizhong: Taiyang Bing
Xin Zhu: Lei Cha
Jiufen: Oi Ee (sorry about spelling of Taiwanese)
Can’t think of any others right away, but there’s hundreds and hundreds.
bri
Fill me on on the others:
special food dishes of:
Taoyuan
Ilan
Suao
Taitung
Hualien
Kenting
Kaohsiung
Tainan
Chiayi
Dorio
Changhwa
Nantou
Alishan
Amping
Lukang
Chungli
Pali
Keelung
Etc.
Jiayi is famous for “Jirou Fan”, a dish so utterly simple that being famous for it is like being famous for having toast.
Ilan’s famous for pressed smoked duck. Heart attack food, but delicious.
Hengchun (just north of Kenting) is where you shouldn’t miss out on BBQ songbirds-on-a-stick. Crunch 'em up bones and all. Yum!
Lukang? Stodgy square pineapple cakes.
Tashi? Vegetarian jerky, dougan, etc.
quote:
Hengchun (just north of Kenting) is where you shouldn't miss out on BBQ songbirds-on-a-stick. Crunch 'em up bones and all. Yum!
Used to get those in Taipei night markets, but I haven’t seen them in years. But yummmmmmmy!
Hey Geng, eat geng! I am surprised you didn’t say you can’t get enough of geng at the night markets.
I remember having some really good niu she bing 牛舌餅 in Lugang, though I don’t know whether that it their specialty or not.