With Taiwan now having so many awesome micro breweries and craft beers, I wouldn’t get close to Taiwan beer anymore
Interesting to see that the conversation has been touching on Hunan food. It’s one of the places that I have repeatedly spent time in. I didn’t encounter too much to write home about in Changsha or Zhangjiajie, although I was just passing through Changsha each time, so would have just eaten briefly at whatever place was convenient there. Zhangjiajie from what I saw was mostly food for tourists rather than locals.Without beating around the bush too much: the food in rural southern Hunan was I think the best food I have ever had in my life. Part of the reason is that everything was fresh and locally produced: like non industrialised food. The general variety of food was high, and people were a little like the French in their attitude to food: continually snacking and talking about food. I was literally constantly having something to eat pushed at me with some discussion about what it was. One the bus, on the road, in the house, wherever there is always a guy passing a bag of some bizarre eating treats around.
1 Like
- Classic Taiwan beer is a perfectly decent industrial beer sold at a very attractive price. Especially by the case. Not all of us can afford to drink the excellent craft beers all the time.
- It has always come in brown bottles with complete disregard for fashion or marketing.
- It tastes pretty good over ice.
- Lots of memories and emotional associations.
- Cool design. Both bottle and can.
- Returnability
- Not sweet like Gold Medal
- Has its own fridge at SimpleMart
- Very popular
- An anchor in a changing world. Long history.
It’s a Taiwanese institution. I have my suspicions about what the contempt for Taiwan beer really is. Why do you have to compare it to dogshit?
I was waiting for someone to make this point! 
Guy
I didn’t compare it directly to dogshit, but I appreciate how my post might have read that way. It’s closer to piss, which I am 100% confident you are taking now.
1 Like
Working sense of taste
Taiwanese beer sucks! thread incoming?
Shortest thread ever. Yes, it does.
You people clearly have never tried in poured on ice. 
Guy
1 Like
Why would you water down already flavorless beer? Just drink water.
Funny saying this as the guy who prefers to drink Bar beer.
I think it is infinitely better than Taiwan Beer, yes. Mostly I’m drinking Kirin these days, which I find similar to Bar but slightly better.
Indeed, pretty much any drink can be chilled down to drinkable.
1 Like
It’s the toughest thread in town. I didn’t start it.
My experience with Hunan food is not limited to Zhangjiajie since as you should know you can find it anywhere in China. I’ve had very high end Hunanese in Shanghai to mom and pops all over the country.
I agree that in rural areas food is better. I spent months living in rural Sichuan and the food was fantastic albeit taxing on the intestines. 
But what I cannot agree on is writing off an entire country for food. I can find something good to eat pretty much every where I go. I can’t think of any country that I’ve been to where I’d say I don’t like any of the food.
There are some fantastic Taiwanese dishes and some crap ones. I find the bickering back and forth over this a bit silly.
1 Like
Precisely
1 Like
These words of wisdom remind me of the long lost forumosan @Deucedropper who underlined that life in Taiwan is like a buffet: take what you want from it, and don’t take the things you don’t want! He’d say if you’re eating crap food you’re eating in the wrong places. I get that there may be exceptions here (example: maybe some businesses serve crap lunch boxes for all workers or some similar arrangement), but as a general rule it’s one I try to follow.
Guy
Care to recommend any non-seafood Taiwanese restaurants in Kaohsiung?
Then stop bickering
Maybe he could have told me where this good food is. I read so much about the “great Taiwanese food” before I came here, it was one of the reasons I chose this country. And it has just been so disappointing.
People who think the food is great can’t tell me where to go get this great food. If they’re that full of shit no wonder the local cuisine is better by comparison
I think you should be fair here.
When you have free time, you are NOT seeking out the very best Indigenous restaurants in the region. You have other interests, which is completely fair, but it does mean you’re not like some kind of laser beam finding the culinary gems in southern Taiwan.
I personally think that finding those gems takes some focus and some work. And if you don’t want to spend your time in that way, that’s totally cool, but then acknowledge that point and stop stating that these places don’t exist.
Guy
Yup, yet another non-recommendation that somehow blames me for not knowing where this mysterious great food is hiding. If these places are so far and few, they are exceptions that prove the rule.