Happy early Thanksgiving all! Hope everyone is getting stoked for the eating and the family time and the loose pants :) I, personally, am taking this day to mentally and physically prepare for the food party (explosion) that will be starting tomorrow afternoon and continuing until Sunday night. There will be no pauses. There will be no in-betweens. It's going to be food food food, and I cannot wait.
How to mentally prepare for such a feast, you ask? Easy -- look at delicious food pictures! Which I do on a daily basis anyway...but...no, for such an intense eating experience, you have to get HUNGRY. And the one thing that will get me in a state of all-caps-hunger is looking at pictures of Taiwanese food. Otherwise known as that delicious stuff I can only eat (DEVOUR) once a year at most. Nothing I've had in the States even comes close, except maybe my mother's braised pork belly over rice, because, well, it's my mother and she literally has made it once. My family doesn't ever schedules things to do in Taiwan when we go, we schedule what we have to eat. There are never just 3 meals a day in Taiwan. Never.
So let's get to it. Some of my favorite eats in Taiwan! These are not in order, because, well....they're all number 1 in my heart.
1. Ding Tai Fung
I could just say I miss soup dumplings, but let's be real. Who eats soup dumplings anywhere else? Yes, Ding Tai Fung always have some sort of wait. But it's always worth it. Best food and best service. Everything you order here is good! Those noodles! Those veggies! Those taro buns!!!
2. Mister Donut
Similarly to above, I don't miss donuts in Taiwan. I miss Mister Donut. Which is so much better than just a regular donut. Though to be fair, it was started in Japan. Listen, I don't know what they put in their donuts - crack? - but they have this amazing chewy texture and they're not too sweet, and basically sometimes my stomach physically hurts whenever I think about them because I am so sad these are a once a year treat.
3. Braised Pork Rice - 滷肉飯
OK, maybe I can say this is my favorite Taiwanese food, if we consider it in terms of volume eaten. Braised Pork over Rice is like my fuel, my energy. I can list off a couple of different meals that are must-haves for me mainly due to the inclusion of really amazing lo-bah-png. Those $4 department store food court meals? Oh my tummy.
4. Oyster Omelette - 蚵仔煎
Chewy, eggy, oystery, savory...delicious. And that's really all there is to say about the oyster omelette.
5. Other Street Food
There's no way to numerically go through this and list off all the things I like. Just off the top of my head...Sausage wrapped in rice sausage, Taiwanese spring rolls, thick intestine/oyster soup, black pepper buns (plural, always), fish ball soup, kumquat juice. Cuttlefish!
6. Shaved Ice - 剉冰
Pretty much the best summer dessert ever. Condensed milk. Chewy little balls of goodness. Mango. Fruit. Syrups. Red Bean. More condensed milk. You really can't go wrong.
7. Tea Shops/Stands
If I lived in Taiwan, I'm pretty sure I would just turn into one huge human Boba. I love that bubble tea is so inexpensive and so readily available, though my siblings and I have to drink it on the down low now after the whole thing about it containing chemicals and causing cancer came out and my dad got worried -- though, I would like to point out that nobody has said anything about oyster sauce, soo.... But also, I am a huge fan of the coffee shops there, since they have great mango and green tea drinks.
8. 7-Eleven.....
....is my heaven. To the point that I get really excited seeing them in the States for like 2 seconds before I remember that they do not sell the almond milk, Supau Supau, or salmon onigiri that is essentially my snack food when on the go.
9. Beef Noodle Soup - 牛肉麵
Isn't it an everlasting quest to find the best beef noodle soup? It's a competition that everybody wins, because I haven't had a beef noodle soup in Taiwan that I didn't like (though there was that time I mistakenly ordered one that came WITHOUT beef...and that came pretty close).
10. Stinky Tofu - 臭豆腐
Oh man. The first time I visited, I literally thought TW must be the dirtiest place, since I couldn't escape the sewage smell at night. What? That's not human waste? That's, in fact, the smell of something that people consume? It took me a while to warm up to stinky tofu, and even now, I can only handle the fried kind.
11. Japanese Food
Sit down restaurants, conveyor belt sushi. This might sound silly, but I do, I do miss Japanese food in Taiwan. Everything is so cheap, so plentiful, and so fresh!
12. Family Meals
Nothing beats hanging out with family in TW and sitting around the lazy susan. And the more people there are, the more dishes you can try!
Maybe I was a little insane to think I'd be able to fit in all the foods I like in one post. This is definitely a condensed version. But I am now sufficiently hungry, and I hope you are, too. So happy eats, all! And...I'll be needing to plan a trip to Taiwan pretty much ASAP.
I leave you with, not something I miss from Taiwan, but definitely one of the funniest meals I've had...
Curry at the Toilet Restaurant!
