Taiwan food post!
I hope this will be first of many Taiwan food posts. But there won't be one for a little while because tonight i fly to Switzerland for two weeks for a work trip. Then when i'm back i'm quarantining another week before returning back to regular life. Speaking of quarantine, i have to open this collection with a photo of one of the quarantine hotel bentos. Much more under the cut.
I was sequestered in my quarantine hotel for 5 nights (prior to being stuck in the hospital for 3 less fun nights), so getting food was the highlight of the day. Every room had a little table next to the door where they dropped off food in the morning, afternoon and evening. You took your garbage and double-bagged it, then left it in a little tray for the hazmat-suit clad workers to pick up once a day. It was all pretty efficient, although the times when the food arrived were not very consistent. Theoretically the front desk would send a message over LINE (similar to WeChat or WhatsApp) when it was there, but often they'd forget, or only send it after delivering to all the floors, so the food was often cold by the time i poked my head out the door to get it. But it was fine. The bento above is a good example of what i got every day. Three or four little vegetable or salad dishes, a big punnet of black/purple rice with some mushrooms or tofu skin or other proteins on top, plus fresh fruit on the side. This dish only has an apple, but usually the fruit was locally-grown faves like pineapple, guava, papaya, banana and so on. Also, if you only ever ate tofu in North America, get that idea out of your mind. Chinese-style bean curd dishes, especially in Taiwan where many people eat vegetarian, can come in all kind of different shapes and textures and are full of flavor.
Often i'd get some kind of mystery soup too, which you'll see in the next meal. This was a special one, because it wasn't a bento. Instead, it was fried rice. Although i asked for a vegan menu, often i would just get Taiwanese-style vegetarian, which is essentially vegan plus egg. I'm okay with that. This fried rice had some egg in it, and a sort of vege luncheon meat... It was an epic comfort food, kinda like the Yangzhou fried rice you can get in every Chinese restaurant everywhere in the world. But this one was Korea-ified with a bunch of kimchi on the top. Yummy!
When i got out of quarantine, the first thing i did was try to find a local vegetarian restarant to get some fresh, non-bento stuff. In particular i wanted noodles, since i didn't get any in the hospital or the hotel - noodles don't travel well like bentos do. I was still a bit turned around and hadn't found my bearings yet, so ended up in a local health food shop (vegetarianism in Taiwan is associated with religion and healthy lifestyle) where i got 雲吞麵 wonton noodle soup, which i then ate in the park. It was super healthy-flavored. Not much spice. The noodles were green, and the bowl was packed with napa cabbage and bok choy and other veges. The wontons were, i think, filled with chopped water chestnut. It actually didn't hit the spot for me because i wanted junk food, but my body probably needed something nourishing after getting out of hospital.
Next up was my first of many hints that Taiwan is not China. I went to a place where they served 麻辣燙 mala tang, aka numbing and spicy soup, with flavor of Sichuan pepper and dried chilis. In China these little noodle stands are dotted around the place and you can pick all your favorite meats, vegetables and noodles, put them in a basket, then they'll cook it up for you, and if you ask it will 100% blow your head off with the spicy. You can see from the color of the broth here that this is Not Fucking Spicy. In China the broth would be bright red and filled with chili seeds and Sichuan peppercorns. Here they gave me some hot sauce on the side which i could add, which was... kinda spicy but not really. I mean, it might be spicy compared to standard Cantonese or Taiwanese soups, but it was definitely not Sichuan spicy. And - critically - there was no Sichuan pepper, so you didn't get the numbing effect that's literally in the name of the soup. Sigh. It was still good, though. I picked typical instant ramen type for my noodles, 豆乾 dried tofu, 冬瓜 winter melon, 苦瓜 bitter melon, 大白菜 napa cabbage and 杏鮑菇 king oyster mushroom.
Another food that i missed very much from China was 燒烤 BBQ. The thing with 燒烤 is it's not just the method of putting food on a stick and cooking it over an open flame that makes it what it is... It's also the whole ritual of eating it. In Shenzhen, at least, it was common for restaurants to have all outdoor seating where you sat to eat the BBQ. You'd order a bottle of cheap beer and they'd give you little plastic cups so you could gather round with friends and take shots of beer, play dice, and eat BBQ. It could turn into a whole thing, where you just order more booze and order more 串 sticks and it's a great night out. I remember finding a place somewhat like that last time i was in Taiwan, so i was hoping to find it again... But now i remember that the best BBQ places i found in Taiwan were not in Taipei. Taipei is too dense to have a lot of outdoor eating areas. The city is too busy. All the 燒烤 joints are packed out the moment night falls. People line up for restaurants here. God i fucking hate lining up for a restaurant. You make me line up, fuck you, i'd rather eat somewhere else. I'd rather not eat at all. Food should be a pleasure enjoyed at my own pace, not someone else's. But Taiwan is a city of small restaurants and long lines. The trick is finding a restaurant nobody else found yet. Unfortunately this one was immensely popular. I beat the line by getting there early and getting a seat at the bar. Got my bottle of beer and my little cup and sticks of king oyster mushroom, chili pepper, dried tofu, potato, broccoli and thousand layer tofu. It was delicious, but not really the chill experience i was looking for.
When i was walking through the Ximending youth/anime/fashion district, i found a sign for a noodle shop that did 川味涼麵 Sichuan-style cold noodle. By this point i had almost given up on trusting any sign that said "Sichuan" or "mala" because it's all bullshit here. And then this little restaurant proved me wrong. Plastic stools outside in an alleyway. Paper plate. And a fucking cold noodle that properly brought back all those memories of eating the same thing in cities all over China. Julienne carrots and cucumber. Shallots. Peanuts. Vinegar. And real, numbing-and-spicy, honest-to-God chili sauce. 涼麵 cold noodle was my favorite food in China, and it made me so happy to find at least one place in Taiwan where i could find it again.
Something that is very popular in Taiwan is 居酒屋 or izakayas. To be honest they have a big overlap with 燒烤 places in the role they fill, and even many of the dishes they serve. But the difference is 燒烤 joints are usually billed from Xinjiang, which is far western China - culturally and linguistically Central Asia - and izakayas are of course Japanese. In Japan izakayas are apparently where salarymen go after work to get boozed up and eat artfully-grilled nibbles. In Taiwan they are similar, but they cater more to groups than singles, which gives it more of a 燒烤 feeling. You can usually tell when there is an izakaya, because there are paper lanterns hanging outside. It's one of the ways i used to find vegetarian food when i was first traveling in Taiwan years ago, before i could read any Chinese. I'd look for the paper lanterns, and i knew the symbols for bean (豆) and booze (酒) so i'd search the menu and mark down things that hopefully would be beer, tofu and green beans. Next photo is an action shot of one of the dishes that came out while i drank booze from my little cup. This is king oyster mushroom and courgette, scored and cooked in some fancy Japanese style, with a high price to match. It was delicious, and because i chose to eat outside instead of inside with the air conditioning, i got the peaceful vibe that i had missed at the 燒烤 place (ironically just across the road).
Another area where Japanese culture influences Taiwan is curry. Not sure if it's a holdover from the Japanese colonial times or a more recent thing, but in Taiwan it is very easy to find Japanese curry. If you never had it before, it's not really spicy like an Indian curry. It's more like how Brits made curry before any south Asians actually moved to the UK. Yellow curry powder in gravy with potato and carrots and peas on rice. It's totally a comfort food, and i got this one at a vegetarian restaurant for lunch. I also ordered dumplings, but was too busy eating those to take a photo.
Most of the vegetarian restaurants in Taiwan are buffet style. They slop out a bazillion dishes and you just pile your plate up and pay depending on how much you took. The larger canteens actually put your plate on a scale and charge you by weight, but the smaller ones the 老闆 boss just eyeballs it and gives you a price. This huge plate of stuff was something like 80元 or around us$2.50. It's probably the cheapest food you can get in the country, not especially high class, but very filling. On the right is 粥 congee with some crispy fried vegetarian mystery product that tasted like pork crackling. On the left an assortment of dishes including bitter melon, some weird fermented vegetables (perhaps aubergine?), baby bok choy, oyster mushrooms and - yes - 麻婆豆腐 mapo tofu! But, for once, actually numbing and spicy mapo tofu. I was really surprised, because i was expecting another flop-ass fake spicy Taiwan-style offering, but it was the real deal (minus ground pork, obviously). It was awesome.
For the next few dishes, i am going to take you through various Taiwan street noodle. One thing about Taiwan is that most of the noodle dishes are 湯麵 soup noodle, and i fucking hate soup. In China a lot more of the noodle is 乾麵 dry noodle, which is more up my alley. So it's been a challenge for me to find my favorite noodle here - one of Taiwan's national dishes is 牛肉麵 beef noodle soup, and they have tons of 拉麵 ramen due to Japanese influence, Cantonese-style 雲吞麵 wonton noodle etc.
This next dish is probably the most bog-standard dry noodle you can get here - 麻醬麵 sesame sauce noodle. It is similar to 拌麵 mix noodle that you find in 沙縣小吃 Shaxian Snack franchises in China, or perhaps a bit like 武漢熱乾麵 Wuhan hot dry noodle, minus the spicy. The thing i haven't figured yet is why each place does it a bit different. Sometimes it is more of a thick peanut butter (or sesame butter) flavor, other times it is more of a "naked" noodle flavor with sesame oil. This version is 麻醬意麵 sesame sauce "yi" noodle. I asked what is different between 意麵 "yi" noodle and just plain 麵 noodle, and they just said it has a different Q. (Q - the English letter - is used in Taiwan to describe chewiness of a thing. Outside of Taiwan you will see it a lot at bubble tea shops, where they describe some of the bubble teas as Q or QQ to indicate the boba or other jelly-like additions are chewy.) After looking up on wiki i learned 意麵 is the Taiwanese spelling for Cantonese 伊麵 yi mein egg noodle, but these noodles are white so who the fuck knows? In any case, it was delicious. This particular noodle shop just a few blocks from my house serves chili sauce like in China, where it's bright red oil with chili seeds floating in it, which does a much better job spicing up your noodle than limp-ass Sriracha or the overly-salty fermented chili stuff you often get in Taiwanese (and Cantonese) restaurants. They also have what in Taiwan is called 小菜 - little dishes. You can order all kinds of little plates of stuff to go with your noodle. This time i got smoked tofu, marinated in some kind of sweet oyster sauce i think.
Here is another noodle from the noodle cart right by my house. The guy does 炒米粉 fried vermicelli, which gave me happy feelings like i was back in Guangdong, but this is the first photo i took of his stuff and it's something different - 果仔條. I had no idea what this was before i ordered it, but the characters are close to 炒果條 char kway teow, which is a famous fried noodle dish from Singapore/Malaysia, and a very popular lunch when i lived in Australia. Turns out that's pretty much what it is, but instead of being fried, the rice noodle cakes are boiled, which give it a similar texture to 涼皮 liangpi "cool skin", another dish i really enjoyed in China. Here the guy wanted to show off several different 小菜 side dishes because i had asked what different ones he had after spending the last few times just eating 地瓜葉 sweet potato greans. He gave me a little plate with 滷蛋 stewed egg, 海帶 seaweed and 豆乾 dry tofu. It was really good, and as you can see from this action shot of me starting to mix up the noodle, this noodle cart also has the chili oil that adds proper spicy to the dish.
Another type of noodle was this 素食麵綫 vegetarian vermicelli. This is from a small noodle shop near work. There are two stalls next to each other, one sells vegetarian vermicelli and various 糖水 tongsui-like desserts, the other one sells vegetarian 小菜 small dishes. So i got from both, the noodle and the sides. This particular vermicelli has a weird gravy-like soup which i now think is a vegetarian version of famous Taiwanese dish 蚵仔麵線 oyster vermicelli. It has a strange, thick, gooey mouthfeel - you need to eat it with a spoon. It kinda gave me more a feeling of porridge or something than noodles. Reminds me a bit of some of those soups you get at American Chinese restaurants, or maybe something from Hong Kong. It was like a flavor from a memory i once had, but not really something i would order often for myself. But who knows, perhaps i will?
Next up was another experiment. I ordered from a place that had something called 擔仔麵. I know 車仔麵 Cantonese cart noodle and 擔擔麵 Sichuan carrying pole (dan dan) noodle so i figured it must be something similar to those, and it is. Like those two noodle, it's just a plain simple noodle with a small amount of flavor on top. The flavor i got was a tiny bit of ground pork stew, very similar to 炸醬麵 zhajiangmian or fried sauce noodle in China. This is something i remember from last time in Taiwan, when i would walk to the back alleys in real working class local districts, no fancy restaurants nearby, and i would just sit down and ask to eat something by pointing at it. They always wanted to give me a piece of meat, and i tried to say (with very limited Chinese) i didn't want meat. So instead they'd give me this little splash of meat sauce on top of my rice, which i now know is a famous local dish called 滷肉飯 (also spelled 魯肉飯) minced pork rice. This is just the barest, tiniest hint of meat, enough to give some flavor, similar to how it's used in 麻婆豆腐 mapo tofu. Since i am not a super strict vegan, i figure this is an acceptable thing to eat once a week or so. Might save me from having to eat B12 supplements. The flavor of this noodle was fantastic, and the 小菜 small dishes i chose this time were 滷豆腐 stewed tofu and 海帶 seaweed. This noodle was also very Q. One thing about noodles in Taiwan, they are generally much more Q than in China. Thinking back, i feel like in China a lot of places would cook the noodle a touch softer, less al dente. In Taiwan that springy texture feels more important.
Since i opened with a bento (called 便當 here), i'll close with one too. This is a vege bento from a place near work. I think it's more healthy/high class bento than the super cheap noodle places i usually visit. You can see how fresh the veges look, and how carefully cooked they are, with perfect browning. I think it's winter melon, wood ear mushroom, sweet potato green, cabbage, carrot, baby corn, courgette, oyster mushroom. Plus half a boiled egg. But the star of this show was the chili sauce. I'm not sure what kind of chili sauce it was, but it was heavy on the garlic and the chili. Adding it to the dish brought a real 香辣 fresh and spicy punch, which is rare in Taiwan. It was around 150元 which is a bit pricier than i'd hope to pay for lunch, but might be worth putting into the rotation when i get back, just for something a bit fresher.
There are so many other places i visited, vegetarian buffets, noodle places, one fucking Indian restaurant where i walked in and sat down and when i saw how horrendously expensive everything was i embarassingly just ordered a tiny bowl of dal and a roti and left... One of the funniest meals i got was at a cart where i picked a noodle and various veges and they plopped it in bubbling broth to cook, then transfered it all into a plastic bag for me to somehow try to eat out of. I think they call that 滷味 stewed flavor here. Still haven't found one of those places that does a deep fried version of the same thing, which i remember enjoying a few times last time i was in Taiwan. Deep fried potatoes and mushrooms with cayenne pepper and Thai basil was something else man.
There is a pretty good mix of foods here, although it can be a bit disappointing to skip over a lot of restaurants due to them being almost entirely meat-focused. It's still way more affordable and vegan-friendly than anywhere in Canada or the US. And one thing i forgot is how the portion sizes here - like in China - are totally reasonable. You can eat everything on the plate and just feel like you enjoyed a nice meal, instead of stuffed to bursting. It makes the food taste better when you didn't overeat, and it means there's space left for fruit or boba or other nice snacks too.
Next up Switzerland. All i know about the place is fondue and chocolate. My hopes are not high for anything vegan outside of bread, and the only recent report i have is a friend who said that bread costs 7CHF a loaf. Let's see if they can surprise me.
I was sequestered in my quarantine hotel for 5 nights (prior to being stuck in the hospital for 3 less fun nights), so getting food was the highlight of the day. Every room had a little table next to the door where they dropped off food in the morning, afternoon and evening. You took your garbage and double-bagged it, then left it in a little tray for the hazmat-suit clad workers to pick up once a day. It was all pretty efficient, although the times when the food arrived were not very consistent. Theoretically the front desk would send a message over LINE (similar to WeChat or WhatsApp) when it was there, but often they'd forget, or only send it after delivering to all the floors, so the food was often cold by the time i poked my head out the door to get it. But it was fine. The bento above is a good example of what i got every day. Three or four little vegetable or salad dishes, a big punnet of black/purple rice with some mushrooms or tofu skin or other proteins on top, plus fresh fruit on the side. This dish only has an apple, but usually the fruit was locally-grown faves like pineapple, guava, papaya, banana and so on. Also, if you only ever ate tofu in North America, get that idea out of your mind. Chinese-style bean curd dishes, especially in Taiwan where many people eat vegetarian, can come in all kind of different shapes and textures and are full of flavor.
Often i'd get some kind of mystery soup too, which you'll see in the next meal. This was a special one, because it wasn't a bento. Instead, it was fried rice. Although i asked for a vegan menu, often i would just get Taiwanese-style vegetarian, which is essentially vegan plus egg. I'm okay with that. This fried rice had some egg in it, and a sort of vege luncheon meat... It was an epic comfort food, kinda like the Yangzhou fried rice you can get in every Chinese restaurant everywhere in the world. But this one was Korea-ified with a bunch of kimchi on the top. Yummy!
When i got out of quarantine, the first thing i did was try to find a local vegetarian restarant to get some fresh, non-bento stuff. In particular i wanted noodles, since i didn't get any in the hospital or the hotel - noodles don't travel well like bentos do. I was still a bit turned around and hadn't found my bearings yet, so ended up in a local health food shop (vegetarianism in Taiwan is associated with religion and healthy lifestyle) where i got 雲吞麵 wonton noodle soup, which i then ate in the park. It was super healthy-flavored. Not much spice. The noodles were green, and the bowl was packed with napa cabbage and bok choy and other veges. The wontons were, i think, filled with chopped water chestnut. It actually didn't hit the spot for me because i wanted junk food, but my body probably needed something nourishing after getting out of hospital.
Next up was my first of many hints that Taiwan is not China. I went to a place where they served 麻辣燙 mala tang, aka numbing and spicy soup, with flavor of Sichuan pepper and dried chilis. In China these little noodle stands are dotted around the place and you can pick all your favorite meats, vegetables and noodles, put them in a basket, then they'll cook it up for you, and if you ask it will 100% blow your head off with the spicy. You can see from the color of the broth here that this is Not Fucking Spicy. In China the broth would be bright red and filled with chili seeds and Sichuan peppercorns. Here they gave me some hot sauce on the side which i could add, which was... kinda spicy but not really. I mean, it might be spicy compared to standard Cantonese or Taiwanese soups, but it was definitely not Sichuan spicy. And - critically - there was no Sichuan pepper, so you didn't get the numbing effect that's literally in the name of the soup. Sigh. It was still good, though. I picked typical instant ramen type for my noodles, 豆乾 dried tofu, 冬瓜 winter melon, 苦瓜 bitter melon, 大白菜 napa cabbage and 杏鮑菇 king oyster mushroom.
Another food that i missed very much from China was 燒烤 BBQ. The thing with 燒烤 is it's not just the method of putting food on a stick and cooking it over an open flame that makes it what it is... It's also the whole ritual of eating it. In Shenzhen, at least, it was common for restaurants to have all outdoor seating where you sat to eat the BBQ. You'd order a bottle of cheap beer and they'd give you little plastic cups so you could gather round with friends and take shots of beer, play dice, and eat BBQ. It could turn into a whole thing, where you just order more booze and order more 串 sticks and it's a great night out. I remember finding a place somewhat like that last time i was in Taiwan, so i was hoping to find it again... But now i remember that the best BBQ places i found in Taiwan were not in Taipei. Taipei is too dense to have a lot of outdoor eating areas. The city is too busy. All the 燒烤 joints are packed out the moment night falls. People line up for restaurants here. God i fucking hate lining up for a restaurant. You make me line up, fuck you, i'd rather eat somewhere else. I'd rather not eat at all. Food should be a pleasure enjoyed at my own pace, not someone else's. But Taiwan is a city of small restaurants and long lines. The trick is finding a restaurant nobody else found yet. Unfortunately this one was immensely popular. I beat the line by getting there early and getting a seat at the bar. Got my bottle of beer and my little cup and sticks of king oyster mushroom, chili pepper, dried tofu, potato, broccoli and thousand layer tofu. It was delicious, but not really the chill experience i was looking for.
When i was walking through the Ximending youth/anime/fashion district, i found a sign for a noodle shop that did 川味涼麵 Sichuan-style cold noodle. By this point i had almost given up on trusting any sign that said "Sichuan" or "mala" because it's all bullshit here. And then this little restaurant proved me wrong. Plastic stools outside in an alleyway. Paper plate. And a fucking cold noodle that properly brought back all those memories of eating the same thing in cities all over China. Julienne carrots and cucumber. Shallots. Peanuts. Vinegar. And real, numbing-and-spicy, honest-to-God chili sauce. 涼麵 cold noodle was my favorite food in China, and it made me so happy to find at least one place in Taiwan where i could find it again.
Something that is very popular in Taiwan is 居酒屋 or izakayas. To be honest they have a big overlap with 燒烤 places in the role they fill, and even many of the dishes they serve. But the difference is 燒烤 joints are usually billed from Xinjiang, which is far western China - culturally and linguistically Central Asia - and izakayas are of course Japanese. In Japan izakayas are apparently where salarymen go after work to get boozed up and eat artfully-grilled nibbles. In Taiwan they are similar, but they cater more to groups than singles, which gives it more of a 燒烤 feeling. You can usually tell when there is an izakaya, because there are paper lanterns hanging outside. It's one of the ways i used to find vegetarian food when i was first traveling in Taiwan years ago, before i could read any Chinese. I'd look for the paper lanterns, and i knew the symbols for bean (豆) and booze (酒) so i'd search the menu and mark down things that hopefully would be beer, tofu and green beans. Next photo is an action shot of one of the dishes that came out while i drank booze from my little cup. This is king oyster mushroom and courgette, scored and cooked in some fancy Japanese style, with a high price to match. It was delicious, and because i chose to eat outside instead of inside with the air conditioning, i got the peaceful vibe that i had missed at the 燒烤 place (ironically just across the road).
Another area where Japanese culture influences Taiwan is curry. Not sure if it's a holdover from the Japanese colonial times or a more recent thing, but in Taiwan it is very easy to find Japanese curry. If you never had it before, it's not really spicy like an Indian curry. It's more like how Brits made curry before any south Asians actually moved to the UK. Yellow curry powder in gravy with potato and carrots and peas on rice. It's totally a comfort food, and i got this one at a vegetarian restaurant for lunch. I also ordered dumplings, but was too busy eating those to take a photo.
Most of the vegetarian restaurants in Taiwan are buffet style. They slop out a bazillion dishes and you just pile your plate up and pay depending on how much you took. The larger canteens actually put your plate on a scale and charge you by weight, but the smaller ones the 老闆 boss just eyeballs it and gives you a price. This huge plate of stuff was something like 80元 or around us$2.50. It's probably the cheapest food you can get in the country, not especially high class, but very filling. On the right is 粥 congee with some crispy fried vegetarian mystery product that tasted like pork crackling. On the left an assortment of dishes including bitter melon, some weird fermented vegetables (perhaps aubergine?), baby bok choy, oyster mushrooms and - yes - 麻婆豆腐 mapo tofu! But, for once, actually numbing and spicy mapo tofu. I was really surprised, because i was expecting another flop-ass fake spicy Taiwan-style offering, but it was the real deal (minus ground pork, obviously). It was awesome.
For the next few dishes, i am going to take you through various Taiwan street noodle. One thing about Taiwan is that most of the noodle dishes are 湯麵 soup noodle, and i fucking hate soup. In China a lot more of the noodle is 乾麵 dry noodle, which is more up my alley. So it's been a challenge for me to find my favorite noodle here - one of Taiwan's national dishes is 牛肉麵 beef noodle soup, and they have tons of 拉麵 ramen due to Japanese influence, Cantonese-style 雲吞麵 wonton noodle etc.
This next dish is probably the most bog-standard dry noodle you can get here - 麻醬麵 sesame sauce noodle. It is similar to 拌麵 mix noodle that you find in 沙縣小吃 Shaxian Snack franchises in China, or perhaps a bit like 武漢熱乾麵 Wuhan hot dry noodle, minus the spicy. The thing i haven't figured yet is why each place does it a bit different. Sometimes it is more of a thick peanut butter (or sesame butter) flavor, other times it is more of a "naked" noodle flavor with sesame oil. This version is 麻醬意麵 sesame sauce "yi" noodle. I asked what is different between 意麵 "yi" noodle and just plain 麵 noodle, and they just said it has a different Q. (Q - the English letter - is used in Taiwan to describe chewiness of a thing. Outside of Taiwan you will see it a lot at bubble tea shops, where they describe some of the bubble teas as Q or QQ to indicate the boba or other jelly-like additions are chewy.) After looking up on wiki i learned 意麵 is the Taiwanese spelling for Cantonese 伊麵 yi mein egg noodle, but these noodles are white so who the fuck knows? In any case, it was delicious. This particular noodle shop just a few blocks from my house serves chili sauce like in China, where it's bright red oil with chili seeds floating in it, which does a much better job spicing up your noodle than limp-ass Sriracha or the overly-salty fermented chili stuff you often get in Taiwanese (and Cantonese) restaurants. They also have what in Taiwan is called 小菜 - little dishes. You can order all kinds of little plates of stuff to go with your noodle. This time i got smoked tofu, marinated in some kind of sweet oyster sauce i think.
Here is another noodle from the noodle cart right by my house. The guy does 炒米粉 fried vermicelli, which gave me happy feelings like i was back in Guangdong, but this is the first photo i took of his stuff and it's something different - 果仔條. I had no idea what this was before i ordered it, but the characters are close to 炒果條 char kway teow, which is a famous fried noodle dish from Singapore/Malaysia, and a very popular lunch when i lived in Australia. Turns out that's pretty much what it is, but instead of being fried, the rice noodle cakes are boiled, which give it a similar texture to 涼皮 liangpi "cool skin", another dish i really enjoyed in China. Here the guy wanted to show off several different 小菜 side dishes because i had asked what different ones he had after spending the last few times just eating 地瓜葉 sweet potato greans. He gave me a little plate with 滷蛋 stewed egg, 海帶 seaweed and 豆乾 dry tofu. It was really good, and as you can see from this action shot of me starting to mix up the noodle, this noodle cart also has the chili oil that adds proper spicy to the dish.
Another type of noodle was this 素食麵綫 vegetarian vermicelli. This is from a small noodle shop near work. There are two stalls next to each other, one sells vegetarian vermicelli and various 糖水 tongsui-like desserts, the other one sells vegetarian 小菜 small dishes. So i got from both, the noodle and the sides. This particular vermicelli has a weird gravy-like soup which i now think is a vegetarian version of famous Taiwanese dish 蚵仔麵線 oyster vermicelli. It has a strange, thick, gooey mouthfeel - you need to eat it with a spoon. It kinda gave me more a feeling of porridge or something than noodles. Reminds me a bit of some of those soups you get at American Chinese restaurants, or maybe something from Hong Kong. It was like a flavor from a memory i once had, but not really something i would order often for myself. But who knows, perhaps i will?
Next up was another experiment. I ordered from a place that had something called 擔仔麵. I know 車仔麵 Cantonese cart noodle and 擔擔麵 Sichuan carrying pole (dan dan) noodle so i figured it must be something similar to those, and it is. Like those two noodle, it's just a plain simple noodle with a small amount of flavor on top. The flavor i got was a tiny bit of ground pork stew, very similar to 炸醬麵 zhajiangmian or fried sauce noodle in China. This is something i remember from last time in Taiwan, when i would walk to the back alleys in real working class local districts, no fancy restaurants nearby, and i would just sit down and ask to eat something by pointing at it. They always wanted to give me a piece of meat, and i tried to say (with very limited Chinese) i didn't want meat. So instead they'd give me this little splash of meat sauce on top of my rice, which i now know is a famous local dish called 滷肉飯 (also spelled 魯肉飯) minced pork rice. This is just the barest, tiniest hint of meat, enough to give some flavor, similar to how it's used in 麻婆豆腐 mapo tofu. Since i am not a super strict vegan, i figure this is an acceptable thing to eat once a week or so. Might save me from having to eat B12 supplements. The flavor of this noodle was fantastic, and the 小菜 small dishes i chose this time were 滷豆腐 stewed tofu and 海帶 seaweed. This noodle was also very Q. One thing about noodles in Taiwan, they are generally much more Q than in China. Thinking back, i feel like in China a lot of places would cook the noodle a touch softer, less al dente. In Taiwan that springy texture feels more important.
Since i opened with a bento (called 便當 here), i'll close with one too. This is a vege bento from a place near work. I think it's more healthy/high class bento than the super cheap noodle places i usually visit. You can see how fresh the veges look, and how carefully cooked they are, with perfect browning. I think it's winter melon, wood ear mushroom, sweet potato green, cabbage, carrot, baby corn, courgette, oyster mushroom. Plus half a boiled egg. But the star of this show was the chili sauce. I'm not sure what kind of chili sauce it was, but it was heavy on the garlic and the chili. Adding it to the dish brought a real 香辣 fresh and spicy punch, which is rare in Taiwan. It was around 150元 which is a bit pricier than i'd hope to pay for lunch, but might be worth putting into the rotation when i get back, just for something a bit fresher.
There are so many other places i visited, vegetarian buffets, noodle places, one fucking Indian restaurant where i walked in and sat down and when i saw how horrendously expensive everything was i embarassingly just ordered a tiny bowl of dal and a roti and left... One of the funniest meals i got was at a cart where i picked a noodle and various veges and they plopped it in bubbling broth to cook, then transfered it all into a plastic bag for me to somehow try to eat out of. I think they call that 滷味 stewed flavor here. Still haven't found one of those places that does a deep fried version of the same thing, which i remember enjoying a few times last time i was in Taiwan. Deep fried potatoes and mushrooms with cayenne pepper and Thai basil was something else man.
There is a pretty good mix of foods here, although it can be a bit disappointing to skip over a lot of restaurants due to them being almost entirely meat-focused. It's still way more affordable and vegan-friendly than anywhere in Canada or the US. And one thing i forgot is how the portion sizes here - like in China - are totally reasonable. You can eat everything on the plate and just feel like you enjoyed a nice meal, instead of stuffed to bursting. It makes the food taste better when you didn't overeat, and it means there's space left for fruit or boba or other nice snacks too.
Next up Switzerland. All i know about the place is fondue and chocolate. My hopes are not high for anything vegan outside of bread, and the only recent report i have is a friend who said that bread costs 7CHF a loaf. Let's see if they can surprise me.