Widely beloved family dishes are simple yet profound. I finally met the much-rumored "Lu Rou Fan" (braised pork rice). The sweet-salty stewed pork was irresistible, making the rice flow like tea in an ochazuke. Apparently, it’s easy to make at home. Well, I don't have a home, so I'll just have to go back to Taiwan!
When you want a filling dessert, Taiwanese douhua (tofu pudding) is a top recommendation! The silky tofu is rich in protein and filling yet healthy. One of the toppings, white fungus, is low in calories and packed with vitamins D and fiber, offering the best of mushrooms’ nutrients. You can eat as much as you want guilt-free!
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. 😎
