We have managed to accomplish a relatively short but productive trip to Taiwan and Hong Kong. We have spent 5 days in each. While Taiwan greatly exceeded our expectations, Hong Kong fell somewhat short food wise. We still enjoyed both locations and recommend them very much for visit.
I will start with the specifics of experience in Taiwan:
From the get go we made a good decision of reserving a food tour of Taipei with a wonderful Taiwanese chef Ivy Chan (https://kitchenivy.com/). Fresh off the plane we met her for a breakfast/ lunch tour. It gave us a fantastic display of all things Taiwan food wise. We were so happy we involved her in our experience!
We started with Taiwanese breakfast at the street counter behind the Shuanglian MRT station 雙連站, exit 2 on the left if you are facing the station. It was shockingly good. I figured it was not a run of the mill place because few Japanese tourists were enjoying their breakfast at this “easy to pass by” place. Chopped and stewed pork belly over rice is a remarkable dish from the south of the island (Tainan?). The side of tofu and boiled egg was nothing special but the pork broth with Taiwanese lily flowers and fermented fish dumplings was probably the best thing I tried during this trip. It was full of rich umami flavor from the fish along with the distinct aroma of the lilies. I can have breakfast like this every day. I immediately bought a bag of dry lily flowers and use it in my home cooking now. Unfortunately I can not reproduce the fermented fish dumpling flavor! We walked along the lines of improvised street markets trying snacks and foods selected for us by Ivy. We have learned a lot about local vegetables and their use. We walked through the very busy part of town towards the historic section buying some oolong tea on the way (my request to Ivy). We ended up trying some other dishes from Southern Taiwan. Ivy is a native of Tainan and had very good insight on where they are served well. Fried mackerel soup was a delight. Eventually we ended up in Du Hsiao Yuen 度小月 in Dihua area, which is the oldest part of town. We tried some fantastic Tainan style noodles there. The rain was picking up and, immensely grateful to Ivy for the experience, we grabbed a cab to the hotel.
By the late evening we found more space in our stomachs to fill and headed to one of the locations of Din Tai Fung. My understanding is that quality wise they all are about the same. I just figured out the closest one map. It was located in the basement of the mall in the middle of the food court. The food court looked like a total clone of one of the Japanese chains (Takashimaya/Mitsukoshi/ Isetan etc). The wait was 40 minutes but we got in within 15 minutes while self entertaining with browsing the food counters. The dumplings were really good. Totally deserve the fame and the wait. We tried the classic ones and the ones with black truffles (!!!). There were real slices of truffles inside!!! Delicious eggplant side and cabbage side. The dumplings were not too big and if we would not have an eventful day we would have more… Highly recommend visiting one of the ubiquitous locations.
As is appropriate for a transpacific traveler we woke up at 4 am the next day. Our hotel was two blocks away from the most famous breakfast establishment in Taipei - FuHang. Arriving 6 am we spent about 35 minutes in line. The line is VERY long but moves rather fast. When we were coming out, the line was double with the majority of people in line being tourists. The place is very interesting, at least for the experience. I have enjoyed watching the line of vendors switching their communication from Chinese to English to Japanese and to Korean depending on their customers preference. As for the food: the salty soy milk was indeed salty. The notorious youtiao(Chinese donut?) was as usually greasy. The onion bun was pretty dry. Everything was up to the expectation, but not life changing.
With our luck, while the weather in Taipei is supposed to be pretty mild this time of the year, we were greeted with a wall or rain. We attempted to climb the Xiangshan mountain, but at a certain point realized that Taipei 101 can not be seen in the mist. Disappointed, we ventured to Longshan temple and continued to wander mostly covered streets. We found it to be a more pleasant experience and loved multiple street markets in the area. Slowly we approached the notorious Lao Shan Dong beef noodle place in Ximen. Beef noodle is something I was not going to like even before I tried it, so my expectations were completely fulfilled. Just not for my taste. The vegetable sides though, which you pick yourself from the glass cabinet, were terrific. Pork dumplings were not good: very thick dough with tasteless filling.
For dinner we made an impromptu decision to go to the restaurant with a self explanatory name - Really good seafood. Although it sounded very touristy the food was solid. You have two options:
-
Pick one of the set menus which vary in price.
-
Pick in season seafood by weight and tell how you want it to be cooked.
We found the set menus to be interesting and enjoyed a terrific multi course meal. The service was exceptional. They were bringing multiple small sides each of which was superb. I was especially impressed by the local version of kimchi without the pepper. Excellent sashimi, shark fin soup, 1/2 lobster, large clams, abalone, ext. All of it was about 100$/ person. A steal by the Manhattan standards! Totally worth it from all the aspects.
More to come.
