Food Intelligence

One of the specialty dishes along the Danshui boardwalk is Age, pronounced Ah-gay (not eye-gay, they may look at you funny, …or not!). Some signs will say Arcade. Because it is like an arcade in your mouth when you eat it. We stopped by this stall for lunch, and had to come back here for dinner because the kids and parents both loved it.

Let’s see, how to describe it. It’s a fried tofu with the insides taken out and substituted with vermicelli noodles and topped with a ground meat/poultry topping. It’s amazing. And cheap. Only thing is, if you get there right when a batch is ready, you’re lucky–especially if there are any left for you. Most likely you’ll need to wait, and it takes about 10-15 minutes for these to cook all the way through. But it’s well worth the wait. Plus you can walk around and order some of the other stuff around, like stinky tofu. Which I think is just a couple stalls down.

Right after you eat Age and before you go eat it again, you can stop by for some candy coated strawberries-and-tomato (Bev says the tomato is gross…not sure why there’s a tomato at the end). And the black dou-hua is nearby as well. Again, limitless possibilities, and if the second floor is open, sit up there because the view is beautiful. Just remember to bring bug spray or you’ll get bit on the face like poor Careese.

Sorry the posts are getting more and more brief. I KNOW if I don’t get through this Taiwan set of pictures that you may not see me post again until next year! Plus, I’m sure I’ll be frequenting these places again this year, so as I refresh myself with the food details, I will add more details to the posts!

Meet Fresh, or Xian Yu Xian, is a dessert chain in Taiwan that I think has cropped up only in the past few years, or maybe it just finally made it up to Taipei lately. Their specialties are taro balls, grass jelly, and dou-hua (bean flower). Teas are also their specialty but I don’t drink so I can’t speak on those. Everything else there is amazing, though. I have tried different combinations, with beans, with yam balls, with tapioca, with a couple scoops of ice cream, with ice, with condensed milk, with various jellies. ALL GOOD.

When you see the menu, there are endless possibilities. Dizzifying. I should have tried a more systematic approach to tackling the entire menu, because I’ve ordered some repeats, but they were good repeats nonetheless. It does, however, set me back on conquering their menu. They have seasonal specials as well. There’s one just across the Westin Taipei, so it’s convenient!

Their site here.

I must blog about this place. Master Hong’s Beef Noodle Soup. Mr. Huang brought me here my first night in Taipei in 2009, and it was an instant hit. First of all, come on, the signs all over the store saying which soups they have won awards for during the Beef Noodle Soup Festivals?! That makes it easy for a first-timer in deciding what to order. And if you didn’t see it all over the walls, they put it on the ordering checklist next to the item in parenthesis. Of course you’ll need to read Chinese. If you don’t, just look for the parenthesis or just point to what’s on the wall.

I can’t seem to recall for the life of me what makes these dumplings green…spinach? Nah, too obvious. I’ll have to ask next time I’m over there. But they were pretty good. The noodles are their specialty here, of course. If you’re into dao-xiao noodles, which are thick noodles, this place will not disappoint. They have thin noodles here as well, but I’m a big noodle fan myself.

Yeah there’s beef tripe in there too. You can get it with just brisket only. I grew up on tripe so it was cool to see it in BNS…usually only see it in Pho. The soup isn’t too oily, and it wasn’t overly crowded. The one we were at had a main level and a basement. Can’t remember which one it was (maybe Zhonghsiao? It was close to my hotel I think!). They have four locations, three in Taipei, one in Keelung.

But wait, there’s more! This place also has the BEST beef jerky known to man. My HAFE buddy Adrian can attest to this as we had some at the top of Mt. Fuji.

American beef jerky is dry and salty. It’s good, don’t get me wrong. Chinese beef jerky is moist. Plenty of flavor. I’m going to have to grab a piece after I’m done with this post. Good thing my mother picked up a few bags for me when she came to visit! Pictured is the Mexico flavor. Ever wonder what Mexico tasted like? Much more amazing than you think…especially if you think Tijuana or Nogales

Look – they even have a website here complete with directions, products, and an order form!!  Order today!  Send one my way as well please.

While conversing with my mother, reminiscing over all the wonderful food we’ve had over the years in Taiwan (and what we can’t eat too much of now…yet still do), she mentioned that the infamous Ice Monster at Yong Kang Street in Taipei had closed. I couldn’t believe it. I had just set this picture aside to write all about how awesome Ice Monster is–really. The store owner saw my pregnant wife and pregnant cousin-in-law (not pregnant by me, by my cousin, sheesh!  Who, I might add, has a beautiful little boy similar age to Ellee here) getting into the long long line, and quickly flagged them to a table, cleared out whoever was waiting there, sat us all down and took our order before everyone else. So that’s a lesson learned for next time you go. Bring someone pregnant. Anyway. Yes. Closed. Because the owners had a divorce, now, Mr. Lo, left to run the store AND pay alimony to his ex-wife, had no other choice but to close shop because he couldn’t do both. He would have had to pay half the store’s revenues to his ex-wife. Ouch.

This was just in the last couple weeks too. Right before Chinese New Year. I’m sure there will be many a disappointed tourists. The owner is thinking of relocating to another place within a few months. Hopefully it will be reopen by summer when I go again! But get this — according to a recent press release (yes, this is big news in Taiwan; Ice Monster is “iconic”), “Realtors have speculated the failure to reopen the Yong Kang location will have a huge impact on local real estate, likely sending property values on YongKang into a downward spiral.” (Emphasis added) Really? One ice shop affecting the whole area? My mother did say that businesses around the area are already suffering due to the Ice Monster closure though. Makes sense. People get to Ice Monster, realize they need to eat something first, so they find a noodle shop around the area, which Yong Kang Street is famous for, or Din Tai Fung (overpriced but the Japanese love it!). I loved the area because it’s right outside the Taipei LDS Temple. Ice Monster was a tangible blessing for temple attendance.

Full English article here.  Chinese press release here.

I knew I should’ve bought an overpriced T-shirt.  But for that price you could’ve bought 3-4 of those desserts up there.  So I did that instead.

Let’s hope the one in Singapore is still open.  Not the same, but come on, there ain’t much left!  We’ll find out next week.

One of my favorite fruits I’ve only found in great abundance in Taiwan. Lian Wu. English term is wax apple. Does have a waxy coat to it, and the crunchiness is almost like celery, but the taste is subtly sweet.

Bev is a mango, papaya, and mangosteen fan. Mango and papaya are amazing in Taiwan. Mango especially at Ice Monster. MMM. But sorry, Lian Wu is my personal favorite. Bev doesn’t agree. Which is fine. More for me. More mango/papaya for her.

And there was peace in the land.

Another snapshot of the large fried chicken for size reference. This one has chili powder. Are there chickens this big? Boneless. I don’t want to see what this chicken looked like alive.

I need to share with you some of my staple foods that I absolutely must get every time I go to Taiwan. My mom grew up in Shihlin, so after she moved to the states and had us there, every time we went back to Taipei, there were a few certain places we would always frequent in the area.

Ah-liang’s noodles has the best “o-ah mee-sua” around. Don’t listen to what everyone else says – they’ll tell you to go to Ximending to try a famous place there. But this place here is a classic. Easy to find. You find the temple within the Shihlin Night Market, it’s set up right in front. You tell them what you want, which, really you just say large or small, drop the money on the counter, grab your own change if necessary, and the food comes out to you. Cheap. Delicious. Sign says they’ve been around for 35 years. I guess I’ve been alive for 30 of it. Plus, if it’s not good, I think you’re only out about $1.50 or so. This is the magic of night markets. If by chance you find something that tastes bad, you can go try something else the next stall over, and you’re not out a whole lotta money. Unlike if you walk into a bad restaurant, there goes your night and your karaoke money.

Pao Pao Bing. This is somewhere in between gelato and shaved ice. It mixes shaved ice with thick stuff like peanut butter or…can’t think of any others because that’s what I get all the time. Peanut butter with red beans. Again. Amazing. The old location was actually further outside the “main” night market, but within the last decade, they made a huge food pavilion to house a lot of the food stalls, so this is one store that opened there. It’s convenient since it’s just outside the Jiantan MRT station. The original store is probably still there, just haven’t gone in a while.

The Pao Pao Bing place is also right next to the fried chicken place. How convenient. This place is amazing. The lines get long, so don’t be surprised if you need to wait 15, 20, maybe even 30 minutes. Go with a friend and have him/her grab other food from other stalls while you’re waiting in line. There is so much to try. This fried chicken is the size of a 8.5″ x 11″ paper – folded in half (yeah, sorry to lead you on!). It’s huge. That’s all these guys sell. You can get it with or without chili pepper powder. That’s the only option. Go there early while the oil is “fresh”.

And don’t tell Mr. Huang I sent you. Or that I visited that place.

You know it’s bad when you’ve had so many beef noodle soups that you can’t remember where or what you had. This was one image I cannot remember ANY details for. I’ll have to ask Mr. Huang, my trusty friend and Taiwan food guide. Unless any of you have any idea? It was good enough to take a picture!

Another Chinese specialty (I can’t really say it’s just Taiwan here, because Hong Kong and Singapore do just as good of a job in this department) is dessert. Some of you may be thinking, tofu and beans for dessert? Yes. When you know how to prepare tofu, it can be amazing.  Bean flower is the literal translation for this dessert (dou-hua/dao-hui).  I think I was introduced to this by Bev.  Her dad makes a mean dou-hua.  It’s just fresh tofu in a sweet syrup with some ginger, nothing else.  But it is heaven.  Previous to this experience, I think I only heard about dao-hui when we were on a family trip in Alishan and there was a guy on his loudspeaker touting his “heh-jia dao-hui”, or great tasting bean flower.  Never tried it then.  Now I crave it. 

This dessert dish on the right, you get to choose what to put in there.  I think I just asked for “ba-bao”, or eight treasures, a mix of peanuts, grass jelly, various other jellies and tapiocas, beans, etc.  You can put these treasures on top of ice too, which is what I traditionally do.  But I was indoors, at the Taipei Main Station, so I was cool enough.  I’ll have to look up the name of this place, although I think there’s only one place that sells this stuff AND has a large crowd.  There’s another place that’s better than this up in Dan-shui (Tamshui) – they have black tofu – sounds cool, but it’s black (brown) sugar tofu.  Not really black tofu.  I know, I was kinda bummed too when I found that out.

Forgot to mention, one downside to the Taipei Main Station’s food court – it closes “early” – 10pm.  Back in my college days, we didn’t go out to play until well after midnight, when the sun was down and it was relatively cooler, bowling was half price and karaoke was heavily discounted as well.  So we were eating at 1am, 3am, 5am, etc.  And there were many popular places that stayed open that late as well.  Which meant they didn’t open until like 5pm the next day!  So beware you night owls.

Update – so the food court is called Breeze and the place is called Xiao Nan Men or Little South Gate.  Found the info here.  I frequent this blog when I run out of places to go–she seems to have a good pulse on the types of food I like, and doesn’t even know me!

Update 2 – here’s another shot at some of their dessert selections. I took Bev there as well, stopped by there before hopping on/off the THSR. Pulled it off the DSLR. Other was from the iPhone.

Taipei Main Station definitely pales in comparison with some of the larger hubs in Asia, but their food court upstairs is a nice, clean, cool getaway from the summer heat and humidity. And there’s one particular section that I never have enough time to go through here – the Beef Noodle Soup showdown area. There are probably about eight popular BNS places in this little area, all with differing tastes, all claiming to have won some BNS competition during some year for one of their soups.

Er Dong is was one of my favorites. I came here last year with some friends and thought it was better that time around. This time around it seemed a little too oily and not as flavorful. Oh well. That’s why there are yearly BNS festivals–so the weak can improve! When I’m traveling around Taipei alone, I try to hit up a BNS shack at least once a day. This is something that is truly a Taiwan specialty. Cantonese, Northern/Southern Chinese, Japanese, even Overseas Taiwanese can’t get it right. There are a lot of these gems that can only be found in Taiwan – and not anywhere within Taiwan – there are certain specific markets to get certain specific foods. Some will try to mass market it, but it’s not the same. I’ll try to direct you to some of the don’t miss spots in future posts.

For now, try one or eight of these places at the train station. It’s clean, not crowded, air conditioned, and convenient if you’re catching the THSR somewhere or need to connect from the blue to the red lines. Comes with a price, but it’s not a bad tradeoff. If you want the real experience, though, you’ll need to find a less clean, crowded, out of the way hole in the wall. Which I will also post about soon!