It’s official:
U.S. State Department Confirms, Taiwanese food is amazingly good. Debate over.
Taiwan is a top U.S. trading partner, whose microprocessors power our most advanced technology, and whose cooks transform U.S. agricultural products into one of the world’s most delicious cuisines.
Probably just being “diplomatic.” 
It really is official. I want to eat Ho Foods Beef Noodles in Taiwan looks awesome. Come on guys open a place in Taipei and give me a couple of free bowls for a review lol.
Fat Fook!!!
None of these even do ‘Re Chao’ my favourite style of dining and eating in Taiwan!
Not fresh, not clean, not climate controlled to maintain freshness. Open heavily polluted air. This is more standard in Taiwan than freshness and cleanliness.
There is a xiaochi near me where they boil the soup in a vat out on the street, then during the day periodically transfer batches of it into the bainmaries in the shop using an old plastic bucket.
It is just a hunch, but guessing the plastic is not food grade…
Everything in the picture is kind of dirty, the scooter, the plastic tubs etc. I would say from a long time living here that not all Taiwanese food is made like that, but yeah honestly speaking it’s not an uncommon sight. Best time to see that kind of thing is around 4pm. People like that need to be exposed so less people eat at their “establishments”
At least if you can see it you can make your own choice to avoid it.
The food in Taiwan is awesome. Anyone who disagrees is one of those god-awful picky eaters… I hate picky eaters.
I’ve been here for 17 years and eat out about 70%+ of my meals. In the rotation are awesome local eats like beef noodles (although the beef noodle shops in Taipei are way better than what I’ve found down here in Taichung), bawan (rouyuan), fried rice (there’s a great place nearby that makes excellent kim-chi fried rice), kuai chao (congbao niurou huifan! yummy…), stinky tofu (fried and soup form are both excellent), dumplings and potstickers, etc.
Add those local foods to imports like fried pork chops over rice with curry, ramen, excellent Hong Kong BBQ lunchboxes, fantastic sushi and sashimi, decent Vietnamese pho shops, etc.
There’s so much good affordable food here. If you aren’t happy with the food in Taiwan, you’re doing it wrong.
Honestly, everytime I go back home to Missouri for a couple of weeks, I’m super excited to eat the food there for about a week… Then I start craving the options available in Taiwan.
I guess I’m one of those picky eaters. If I ever leave Taiwan, it’ll be because of two reasons: the hot, humid weather and the “cuisine.” But if you like bawan, I’d say that makes you the exact opposite of picky. 
Things like this are what make Taiwan livable for me from a culinary perspective, along with some pretty decent Chinese food…basically anything that keeps me from having to eat Taiwanese food.
Ah, it’s all starting to make sense now.
That is one of the great dangers of forcing anything underground I agree. I’m not even sure if the Taiwan authorities do random kitchen inspections with the power to close unhygienic places down ?
What’s not to like about bawan? I can down 3 or 4 of those things in a sitting.
If I want to eat a starch and grease bomb, I think fries just taste better. And that pink radioactive sauce they put on it? 
Haha I can eat and enjoy almost all local foods but ba wan is one I just could never get into, at all!
A-gei is another genuine local food that mystifies me a bit 
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My boss would stop off in central and southern Tatiana to eat ‘famous bawan’…funny memories.
Yeah the pink sauce is the biggest turn off for me but nothing says southern Taiwan more than the pink sauce.
I’ve lived in Taichung and Taipei, Taipei definitely has better food all round. In Taichung a lot of the restaurants seemed to be newish and have little skill in cooking.
That stuff is truly disgusting. It has the taste of boiled gym socks and the texture of…well, the texture is completely beyond description. Some kind of alien fungus?
Lol - certainly a creative description of the uniqueness of a-gei. Was it created for fishermen to eat when stuck out at sea ? Who was the ‘genius’ that came up with A-gei and how did it become popular ?
yeah, not one of my favourite items. I can’t imagine it was invented as convenience food for fishermen because it’d be pretty messy to store and eat. Plus it’d be stinking after a few hours in the sun.
After a few hours in the sun?
I’m glad to hear I’m not the only one turned off by bawan and that pink sauce 
I liken Taiwanese street food to Taco Bell. Sure, it’s not authentic Mexican food, and you might experience bathroom emergencies afterwards, but sometimes you just crave it.
Higher end Taiwanese restaurants usually have flavorful dishes, at a higher price of course, and sometimes you’ll luck out with an amazingly delicious mom-and-pop shop. A lot of the cheap stall food basically “fills your belly” as my Arkansas friend used to say.
I find that home cooked Taiwanese food is usually much better. A few years ago a student gifted a bilingual Taiwanese cookbook to me. It’s become one of my most prized possessions. I’m not bragging, but Taiwan style dishes that I make myself are usually much better tasting than a lot of stall food I’ve tried.
You guys must have run into some bad bawan… I could never find good bawan in Taipei. There are some real good ones here in Taichung. The good ones don’t usually have such a bright pink sauce. It’s redder and heartier.
Looks like you’ve mastered the art of Taiwanese cooking there, your dishes are predominantly brown and grey, just like the local ones. And coarsely chopped green spring onion garnish to boot!
