Taiwan is a place which we haven't been in a long time, almost 15 years for Chillin boy and close to 7 years for myself. But we must say that Taipei still lived up to it's name as the city of street food, even Hong Kong tourists were there in hoards chomping down at every night market we went to.
As we went to multiple places in Taiwan, including a short detour to Kao Hsiung we decided that it might be easier to cover by areas instead of in chronological order. Here are the places we'll cover:
Taipei - Shi Lin night market
Taipei - Raohe night market
Taipei - Ning Xia night market
Taipei - Shida night market
Taipei - Ximending
Taipei - Dan Shui and Fisherman's Wharf
Ruifang - Pingxi/Shifen-Jiufen-Kee Lung
Kao Hsiung - Foguangshan Buddha, Dream Mall, Cijin island and Rui Feng night market
Let's start with Shi Lin night market, probably one of the most popular and well known night market amongst Singaporeans. Easy to get to as well, just take the mrt to Jian Tan station and cross the road you will be welcomed by streets and streets of food, games and clothes. As some of you might know, a lot of the food stalls have been relocated to the underground basement so you'll just have to find either of the 2 entrances to get there. Although the good side now is it's air-conditioned but you'll end up smelling of the food afterwards, and some stalls have also become very aggressive as its rather touristy now.
This is the first dish we had after we popped downstairs to the basement, from one of the stalls to the left (if you enter by the entrance with escalators). Coffin board or what is known in Chinese as 棺材板. This is one of my long time favourite Taiwanese street food but it's not common in all night markets so I'm quite happy to find this once again =)
And we also ordered stinky beancurd and duck blood soup. I know that there are many people who are grossed out by pig/duck blood and also because it's been banned in Singapore over 20 years ago. I used to think the same way, but after trying it once in a Hong Kong steamboat I realised that the texture is actually very nice and yummy. So we decided we'll not spare any chance to savour this. Will cover stinky beancurd in another post as our favourite is from another night market.
And after making one round, we ended up ordering another soup from this zichar-like stall. Pig kidney soup was so-so. Below the soup it's another version of pig kidney we had which is much yummier, it's fried kidney in sesame oil. This dish is very hard to find in Singapore, firstly the only stalls I've come across selling pig kidney is bak kut teh or steamboat places and usually cooked in soup. This is the first time I've had it fried and the sesame oil gave it a very intense fragrance, the kidney pieces were tender, not overcooked and didn't have any 'piggy' smell. Very tasty and highly recommended if you like pig kidneys! Will definitely revisit this if we are back again.
After exploring the basement, we went to the streets to walk around and although we were already quite full it was a bit weird to come to Shi Lin and not have Haoda XXL Chicken cutlet (豪大大鸡排). But honestly maybe it is because the chain is already in Singapore, the chicken cutlet is no longer that fascinating to us. And we felt it didn't taste that different in Taiwan either.
Then, Chillin boy discovered a long-lost childhood favourite - the Bing Tang Hulu (冰糖葫芦).
Bing tang hulu doesn't usually catch my eye because those I recall are those in China which are made of plums, not really my kind of fruit. But here, they are made of strawberries and cherries coated with a thick hard layer of sugar and somehow the last fruit on the stick is always a tomato not sure what's the reason. But this is certainly a great way to finish off a meal.
Will be back with more on the other places of interest!
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