Our Indulgences in Taiwan - Part 2 Raohe Night Market

In this post, the market that we'll cover is Raohe night market. Although much smaller than Shilin, this is also a very popular night market as it does have some good food and it's also very near the clothes wholesale market (Wufenpu) that girls love to shop at. We made our way to Raohe after visiting the Taipei 101 because they are just 2 mrt stops away, from Taipei City Hall to Houshanpi station. Take the west exit and head towards Wufenpu. Note that this is at least a 15 minutes walk as you will have to cut through Wufenpu, cross the road and past the Song Shan railway station before you see a brightly lit signboard that says 饒河街觀光夜市. This night market is not fully sheltered so if you are here during rainy season be prepared with umbrellas or you'll have to dodge in and out of the shop houses by the side to avoid getting wet. 

The first food stall that greeted us was this crowded pepper biscuit (胡椒餅) stall manned by at least 8 people, and usually a snaking queue forms all the way to the night market entrance. Luckily we were there relatively early at about 6pm so we queued for 15 minutes and got 2 piping hot pepper biscuits! They are really hot when first served, so we highly suggest digging into it only after letting it cool down a little. 

Here's how the pepper biscuit looks inside after biting into it, the skin is crispy and chewy at the same time and the filling is slightly spicy due to the pepper and there's lots of spring onions mixed in as well. Worth a 15 minute queue, not any longer though. So be there early if you want to try this!

Along the way we also bought some meat skewers and fried pork ribs to snack on, they were honestly just so-so. Then we chanced upon this stall selling fried taro and sweet potato balls so we decided to try the Taro ball with egg yolk, sounds very interesting and tasted the same as well. See close up photo below, there's actually half-melted egg yolk within the taro ball and oozes out as you bite on it. Reminds me a bit of the custard bun (流沙包).

The night market is a straight street, and it's not a huge night market like Shilin so one can probably finish walking in about 20-30 minutes. At the end of the street there are some game stalls and we spotted this old school machine! About 20 years ago this type of 'vertical merry-go-round' rides were very popular in shopping malls or neighbourhood shops and I remember always pestering my parents to let me play on it. Very nostalgic indeed.

Of course, we never complete our meal without some sort of dessert and also we were very tired from walking so a place to sit down and eat was a bliss. This ice dessert shop seems popular, it's located on the left side of the street if you come in by the pepper biscuit stall direction. Looking at the menu, we were spoilt for choice but eventually decided to have the macha ice with red bean. This tastes similar to the Taiwan-imported shaved ice dessert shops in Singapore, but have to say they are really generous with the red bean and condensed milk. Thankfully the ice neutralized the sweetness a bit. 

So this is Raohe night market for us, our favourite snack here is the Taro ball but we definitely would have enjoyed it more if not for the temperamental rain when we were there. Stay tuned for our next night market post!