An innovative Taiwanese beer with a twist: 18 Days Taiwan Fresh Beer. With a shelf life of only 18 days, it boasts a creamy, mild flavor with minimal bitterness. It offers a distinctly different taste from the sharpness and bitterness of Japanese beer, giving a foreign feel to the experience. Taiwan’s compact geography and efficient distribution system must be key.
A 50-year dedication to grass jelly. What a tempting phrase! The black jelly was refreshingly cool and perfectly balanced with a bittersweet taste, never tiring my palate. The shopkeeper holding my 20 NTD must have known it was a brilliant business move.
Taiwanese sausage (xiangchang) is sweet, but don’t underestimate it. The crispy texture and coarse, juicy meat were so sweet and delicious! Eating it with the provided raw garlic drastically changed the flavor, creating an addictive interplay of sweetness and garlic's spiciness. I crave it just thinking about it.
Overseas, surprising price differences can be found. In Taiwan, eel is cheap and delicious. At a night market, I discovered "Wolfberry and Eel Soup," with fried eel soaking up the sweet wolfberry soup, creating an unknown yet delightful flavor. At 80 NTD (about 365 yen), the cost-performance is fantastic!
Sometimes you need to vent, and sometimes you need to drink poison. I don't get the latter, but I did it! At a Taiwanese turtle and snake specialty restaurant, I ordered a set of snake meat, blood, liver, and venom. The snake meat tasted like white fish, the blood was easy to drink with alcohol, the liver was bitter like medicine, and the venom was refreshingly invigorating.
What syrup do you put on shaved ice? Melon? No, black sugar is the only choice! Enamored with the black sugar syrup on the towering shaved ice at "Hei Yan Hei Tang Bao Bing," with six delightful toppings for just 90 NTD (408 yen). Taiwan truly is the best!
Sometimes, food is so delicious it makes you vocalize. Apparently, this is a human instinct to share with others. Jokes aside, I want to share the fantastic experience at "Acheng Goose Meat" in Taiwan. The aromatic smoked goose meat had me hyperventilating, with perfectly balanced meat and fat. The goose oil rice is a repeat-worthy dish.
Exploring Taiwan's equivalent of Akihabara, I was surprised when a shopkeeper asked if I was Japanese. He had studied in Osaka and spoke fluent Japanese. I decided to try the pan-fried soup dumplings, which were filled with plenty of chives, shrimp vermicelli, and tofu. Delicious and hearty, I didn't bother with a formal taste review. 😎
Among the 73 varieties, I was recommended the mango ice cream at "Xue Wang Ice Cream." Made from Taiwanese green mango, this simple-looking ice cream deceived me. On my tongue, it felt like pure mango fruit, so dense and fiber-rich that it seemed as if I was eating the fruit itself. The craftsmanship was evident, making the high price worth it.
The reason behind the birth of strange gourmet dishes: Seeking quirky ice cream in Taiwan led me to "Xue Wang Ice Cream." Faced with an array of mysterious flavors, I dared to try minced meat ice cream. The quality ice cream mixed with the chewy and salty minced meat created a mystical sweet-salty balance. It turns out these unusual flavors were developed so people with diabetes could still enjoy ice cream—how thoughtful!
