Unabashed gluttony in Taipei
A couple weekends ago, I got the opportunity to do a solo trip to Taipei, which meant that I spent the entire weekend eating. Happily this is extremely acceptable in Taipei, as the entire city revolves around food. It was without a doubt one of the most fun food adventure cities I’ve ever been to. It’s much less about super fancy food and more about street food of all kinds. I ate a LOT of food in two days and below are just a few select samples of some of the best things…
Firstly, there are bakeries EVERYWHERE. So. Many. Bakeries. And because I was myself, I literally went into pretty much every one of them. What a great way to start off the morning…
This is one of the most incredible things I have ever eaten: mango shaved ice. I got this at Ice Monster, a little miracle shop specializing in this stuff. Basically, they take mango jello and pieces of mango and use some amazing machine to heap all these layers of shaved ice on top. It produces a brain freeze and taste sensation in the BEST way.
Perhaps the best place of all to get street food is at one of the many night markets, which consist of lots of clothing stalls, random other goods for sale, and LOTS of all sorts of food. Pictured above is one of the best scallion pancakes I’ve ever had.
Egg and leek buns – light and fluffy on the inside, great crunch on the outside – sooo good
A Taipei-esque version of empanadas – delicious pork buns that had a more pastry-like shell than the typical Asian pork bun
The next day, I checked out some famous places in a food court – this is from Mos Burger, a funny little fast food place that serves burgers, but instead of a bun, you can get rice instead. So weird yet awesome.
The famous soup dumplings (on the left) and some vegetable buns from Din Thai Fung, the extremely famous dumpling place that originated in Taiwan and now has locations all over the place, including Sydney and Hong Kong. Soup dumplings are a spectacular invention so it’s always nice to make them part of your day.
Beef noodles, which are about 1.5 dollars on the street. People stand around slurping them down in the steaming hot weather. The stand where they are sold at is like an assembly line – massive vats of the beef noodles that they are ladling out at a terrific pace.
Such a fun weekend – I can’t pretend I don’t absolutely love eating lots of food by myself. Exploring a new city through food, especially when food is such a big component of the city’s life, is without a doubt one of my favorite things to do in life!
merrifood 