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Taipei travel diary 2006


Nishla

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I LOVE sea cucumber, but I'm too frightened to make it at home.

Cooking sea cucumbers are quite easy. Usually the markets have them re-constituted and cleaned. I probably have 2 pictorial recipies featuring sea cucumbers.

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Shumai. I couldn't make room for one of these  :sad:

How interesting! Taiwanese serve siu mai as part of the dinner banquet?

I'll definitely have to try your sea cucumber recipes sometime soon!

Also, I think our banquet was considered to be more Cantonese style than Taiwanese style, if that makes any difference...

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Day 4

We were all still insanely full the next morning. Keith and I walked to Taipei 101 to meet up with Sheri and her boyfriend. One thing to note is that many shops and restaurants (including Taipei101) don't open until 11am. I think bakeries ane breakfast places open pretty early.

We got some coffee and a slice of cake while waiting, then we took the MRT over to the main Taipei station. First, we stopped at Mister Donut for a snack:

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At first, I couldn't figure out what was going on. Every single Mister Donut in Taipei has a line out the door at all times. Believing that Chinese people generally don't like super sweet desserts, I couldn't understand why all these people were clamoring for donuts. It turns out that Mister Donut makes a type of donut (which they call "pon de ring"), that are made with glutinous rice flour, and much less sweet than a normal american donut. These donuts have this particular shape, and are slightly sticky and chewy. Really really good, if you're not expecting a "normal" donut. We got honey glazed and chocolate glazed pon de rings.

For lunch, we got beef noodle soup again. Once again, the version with tendon was especially tasty.

After lunch, we shopped for a while, and stopped at BeardPapa for a snack (in one of the underground malls at the Taipei main station):

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We got one cream puff with regular custard, and one with green tea custard.

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Thanks Nishla. Your words and pictures recall some of my food adventures in the '90s when I traveled to Taiwan extensively on business. Unfortunately, I mostly ate alone so I did not get to sample the varieties of food that you were so fortunate to experience, (excepting the many banquets, of course).

Taiwan is ranked very high on my favourite places list.

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By Day 8, I just might have to accept the many invites from my former Taiwanese students to visit and eat!

All the food and pictures have been amazing, Nishla. Now, I assume you've been collecting recipes from all the banquets, food stalls, etc, and we can expect to see them pictorialized in the Chinese Eats thread very soon! :rolleyes::laugh:

Dejah

www.hillmanweb.com

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Day 4 (cont.)

For dinner, one of my dad's colleagues took us to dinner near GongGuan station. It was a small store tucked away on one of the side streets. I didn't get a photo of the front of the restaurant, but here's one of their takeout menus:

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I didn't take too many pictures since we were being invited out, and I didn't want to be rude. The restaurant specializes in dimsum type items, but they have some larger plates too.

Here is most of what we ate:

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Clockwise from top:

Roast pork filled pastries--so good and flaky

Rice noodle stuffed with crab and garlic--usually my favorite dim sum item, in the US you get these with shrimp or beef. This crab version was amazing.

Lettuce, plus shimp with water chestnuts, garlic and crumbled fried dough (to be wrapped in the lettuce leaves)--this was also incredibly good.

Drunken chicken--very thinly sliced, great flavor

Some kind of vegetable in the fern family, stir fried with tiny dried fish and some peppers.

Dry fried beef chow foon.

Close-up of the shrimp and pork pastry:

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Crispy roll stuffed with shrimp, pineapple and mayo, topped with sliced almonds:

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We also had traditional dim sum shrimp dumplings, turnip cake and shumai, and finished with almond tofu for dessert. It was probably the best almond tofu I've ever had. I think this won favorite meal of the trip for Keith and me. Every single item was perfectly cooked, and extremely finely made. I used to think dim sum in the US was pretty good, but now I know what I've been missing!

Edited by Nishla (log)
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Nishla, I would suggest that you visit Hong Kong or Shanghai next. I lived in Hong Kong/Shenzhen for 6 months and I enjoyed every day eating and dining out.

Doddie aka Domestic Goddess

"Nobody loves pork more than a Filipino"

eGFoodblog: Adobo and Fried Chicken in Korea

The dark side... my own blog: A Box of Jalapenos

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Oh my god, it all looks so good. I'm dyin' here.

Dunkin' Donuts in Korea made rice donuts as well, which my gluten-allergic friend loved.

Your seafood feast reminds me of one I had here.

I was away with my co-workers on a company holiday to Quan Lan Island, an island on the outer-rim of Halong Bay. It's completely undeveloped, and besides the few bungalows we were staying on the beach, there was nothing - just a small fishing village. No other tourists, no touts - beaches like this in South East Asia are hard to find if you stick to the tourist trail. Anyway, the food made by the bungalow management was one step up from dire, and the cashews we'd brought to cut the massive amounts of gin tonics we were drinking (warm, as there was no ice), were gone. We spotted a bungalow about 500 m down the beach, so a group of us set out to get to it. The sun was burning overhead, and we had to walk in the water, because the sand was so hot it burned through our sandals. When we finally got there, we found a shaded deck, and an ice cooler full of beer. Hurrah! We asked the father running the place if he could make us lunch. He said he didn't think it would be possible, since he'd have to go down to the village to get supplies to do so. When he went into the small hut next to the deck, we heard his wife giving him a bollocking, and he came back out sheepishly a minute later and said it would be possible, after all, if we didn't mind waiting, and if it was okay, it would have to be seafood.

Of course, we had three vegetarians who also hated seafood (why did you people come to South East Asia? What were you thinking?!), who screwed up their faces, but the rest of us shouted our agreement. An hour later, plate after plate of amazing food started coming out of the hut. Baby clams with pineapple; Scallops fried in butter; Squid fried with vegetables; whole fish, steamed with herbs; peanuts; rice; and fried morning glory, all washed down with the only cold beer on the island. It was magnificent!

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Domestic Goddess, I would love to go to Hong Kong or Shanghai. I wish it weren't so tough to find enough vacation time to make the Asia trip!

Nakji, that's an awesome story. By the way, I forgot to mention that there at least two Costcos in Taipei, which have a lot of western goods. See below.

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Day 5

Does this place look familiar to anyone? :biggrin:

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A lot of items are the same as in the US, but there are quite a lot of asian things too.

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Various dried mushrooms

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Tea

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Watermelon seeds

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Squid, sea cucumber, and tiny white fish

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Sliced pork jowl, and skin on pork belly!

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Frozen prepared foods. They were giving samples of the beef stew on the right, and it was SPICY!

They also have lots of chinese vegetables, asian fruits, really great fresh fish, etc.

Edited by Nishla (log)
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Nakji, that's an awesome story. By the way, I forgot to mention that there at least two Costcos in Taipei, which have a lot of western goods. See below.

Do you know the Chinese name translation for "Costco"?

Great! Now we will buy 10 pound of sea cucumbers at a time. And five pound of tea leaves in canisters. No more free green onions... :wink:

It does remind me of seeing David Faber's special on CNBC about Walmart setting up stores in Mainland China. They even sell live animals in Walmarts...

W.K. Leung ("Ah Leung") aka "hzrt8w"
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Cool! They have Costco in Seoul as well. Best slice of pizza in town, second only to the USFK mess at Panmunjeom. They used to have Wal-mart, but it actually failed, and had to shut down operations, if you can believe that.

So nobody gets the wrong impression, I wouldn't eat Western food all the time! I'm a serious fan of all cuisines! However, I do find availability of imported foods a mark of a culture's ability to accept and integrate other cultures into their own, which is a serious consideration if you're going to live somewhere as a non-native. (Of course there are other factors at play affecting availability of foreign goods- whether the country is developing; colonisation, etc.)

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Day 5 (cont.)

After costco, we went for a late lunch. One of the items on our to-do list was huoguo (hot pot). The night before, we passed by one place with a huge crowd waiting outside, so we figured it must be good. :smile: In fact, there are multiple hotpot restaurants on this street, and this was the one with the biggest line.

The restaurant is the second sign in white and red, and is called FeiTianMaLa. Underneath the sign, it says "chi dao bao" (all you can eat).

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You can choose from a number of different broths for your hotpot. We got ma-la (spicy, flavored with pig blood and hot oil) and a clear broth with onions. The other options were curry, pickled cabbage, or shacha broths.

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The ma-la was quite spicy. I'm glad we also got the clear broth for some relief :wink:

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You can choose from six kinds of meat, which they slice to order. We asked for all six. Shown here are two kinds of pork (belly and another cut), two kinds of beef (fatty and lean) and lamb. We also got chicken. My favorite were the lamb and fatty beef. Yummy.

There was a huge case of veggies, seafood, tripe, mushrooms, fish balls, fish cake, wontons, and more:

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The fish was very good, as were most of the veggies. We ate a TON.

Also, on the side they had fried dough, ramen noodles, and a variety of sauces, garlic, cilantro, leeks, etc. for making your own dipping sauce. You could drink as much soda as you wanted, and finally there were two cases of fresh fruit and ice cream for dessert. The most ridiculous part is that all this was NT$330 (~US$10) per person :shock:

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Day 5 (cont.)

On our way home from lunch, we stopped by the bakery to pick up some stuff for breakfast the next morning. I managed to get some photos this time:

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There's a mix of sweet and savory items. Some of the breads are stuffed with meat or scallion, some have custard or cream.

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The hotpot looks fabulous. We often had mushroom hotpot in Korea, with fatty beef. It's one of my husband's favourites. All you can eat sounds better though! How do you find the prices overall there? For example, what's the average cost of a quick lunch, and dinnre?

I notice some of the bread appears to be stuffed with hotdogs. We got those in Korea as well, although they were usually covered in cheese, ketchup, and corn as well!

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... The most ridiculous part is that all this was NT$330 (~US$10) per person  :shock:

It is very ridiculous! :biggrin:

In both No and SoCal there are similar Taiwanese-run hotpot all-you-can-eat restaurants. They charge a similar price, around US$9 for lunch and $13 or so for dinner, something like that. Weekend's higher. The MaLa broth would cost $2 extra per head.

The ones that are done in California: actually they have a grilling pan too, so you can boil your ingredients in broth or grill them. You mix your own dipping sauces from some of the 20+ sauces they offer (e.g. SaCha, soy sauce, sesame oil, sesame paste, ground peanuts, HoiSin, etc..). I love it but just couldn't have it too often. (They haven't made it to Sacramento yet.)

W.K. Leung ("Ah Leung") aka "hzrt8w"
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Nakji, I thought the prices for food were quite low compared to the US, but I think generally salaries are lower in Taiwan too. Many of the street items are around US$1 or less, and you can easily get a full meal for under US$5. In the more touristy areas (especially around Taipei 101), the restaurants have prices closer to those in the US. The price for a particular item can vary greatly, depending on the atmosphere of the restaurant/shop. For example, fruit at a street market can be 1/4 the price of the same quality fruit at a supermarket.

Ah Leung, now I have another excuse to visit CA!

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Day 6

We started Saturday morning with a roll stuffed with dried shredded pork that we got at the bakery the night before.

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The plan for the morning was to do a bit of a walking tour, since my mom wanted to show us her old high school and elementary school. We also stopped by the Chiang Kai-Shek memorial since it was on the way:

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We were originally going to go to a restaurant near one of the schools, but we were running late and didn't get there until 2pm. Many restaurants close for a while in the afternoon, mostly from 2-5pm :sad:

Instead, we decided to head over to YongKangJie, which is a street full of eateries. We figured SOMTHING would be open there! The famous soup dumpling place, DinTaiFung, is in that area, but there was a 30+ minute wait. I was too hungry, so we went to another restaurant around the corner called KaoQui. They also make xiaolongbao, which were quite tasty.

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The skin was quite thin, and the filling had a great soup/meat ratio. We got the regular pork xiaolongbao, and one variety that had pork and sigua (luffa squash). The other items on the table are raw shanyao (a type of potato) with sweet plum sauce (too sweet) and wild fern. We also had pastries stuffed with shredded turnip (very tasty) and scallion (too doughy).

We didn't want to eat too much at lunch, since there was a famous shaved ice place down the street. I had read about Ice Monster on eGullet, and several people told my mom to go for the mango ice.

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Keith in front of the store

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Mixed fruit ice with condensed milk and mango sorbet. Unfortunately, mango is out of season in the winter, but the strawberries and kiwi were delicious.

That night, we had a very simple dinner of wonton soup with bean leaf:

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Both the wontons and veggies were from Costco. :wink: The vegetables were extremely tender and fresh, and the wontons were very good.

Edited by Nishla (log)
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Day 7 (New Year's Eve)

This day wasn't too exciting, and I wasn't feeling that great most of the day. :sad: We were supposed to meet another of my dad's colleagues for lunch at DinTaiFung, but since it was a holiday the wait was over 2 hours. Grrrrr...foiled again! We ended up back at KaoQui for more soup dumplings, and also tried a number of other items. There was a cold taro side dish (very flavorful), fried tofu cubes (almost like custard), soup with mushrooms and ham, and stir fried asparagus.

After lunch, we walked back to the apartment, and passed Wisteria House on the way. We didn't go in this time, but they have a nice little patio area. Seems like it would be a nice place for tea or lunch.

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My mom wanted to get shaved ice again, so we stopped at a small place along the way.

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This was not nearly as good as Ice Monster the day before...way too much sweetened condensed milk.

We also stopped in a department store to pick up a few things. I got some photos of their snack counter:

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Lots of dried and preserved fruits, olives, meat, tofu and candy

For dinner, we went back to DaSiXi and got some takeout. A few pan fried pork buns, porridge, and steamed dumplings with pork and pickled cabbage (below).

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We also cooked a bit that night since there were two fish in the fridge that needed to be used. We removed the fillets, marinated with some soy sauce, sugar and rice vinegar, then cooked them with ginger and scallions.

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The gas burners there are so much hotter than I'm used to at home!

Sauteed bean leaf:

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I fell asleep right after dinner, but woke up in time to see the midnight fireworks on the Taipei101 building. Unfortunately, my camera isn't designed for this type of photo, so it just looks like the building is exploding :wink:

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One thing I've forgotten to mention is that there are basically no bars in Taipei. You can buy beer and liquor at just about any convenience store, but I think people mostly drink at home or at banquets. Most alcohol commercials are for whiskey or brandy. We hadn't had a drink the whole week, but since it was new year's eve, we grabbed a giant can of Sapporo from the corner store :smile:

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The hotpot looks fabulous. We often had mushroom hotpot in Korea, with fatty beef. It's one of my husband's favourites. , although they were usually covered in cheese, ketchup, and corn as well!

Sorry to hijack this thread but Nakji, how do you go about ordering mushroom hotpot? Where do you usually go for it? I wanna try it!

Doddie aka Domestic Goddess

"Nobody loves pork more than a Filipino"

eGFoodblog: Adobo and Fried Chicken in Korea

The dark side... my own blog: A Box of Jalapenos

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Both the wontons and veggies were from Costco.  :wink:  The vegetables were extremely tender and fresh, and the wontons were very good.

They sell the wontons as frozen in Costco? Or freshly wrapped?

W.K. Leung ("Ah Leung") aka "hzrt8w"
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We also stopped in a department store to pick up a few things. I got some photos of their snack counter:

gallery_45959_4070_16613.jpg

I can see the price (e.g. 8, 10, 12) label. Are the per kg, per ???

One thing I've forgotten to mention is that there are basically no bars in Taipei. You can buy beer and liquor at just about any convenience store, but I think people mostly drink at home or at banquets. Most alcohol commercials are for whiskey or brandy. We hadn't had a drink the whole week, but since it was new year's eve, we grabbed a giant can of Sapporo from the corner store  :smile:

Would it be that they have bars only in certain areas of Taipei? I remember back in Hong Kong, you can't find a bar unless you are in the areas crowded by westerners (e.g. TsimShaTsui, WanChai, Central and Stanley). This is more a Western culture than Chinese.

W.K. Leung ("Ah Leung") aka "hzrt8w"
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This was not nearly as good as Ice Monster the day before...way too much sweetened condensed milk.

I can't imagine how this could have been a problem. :biggrin:

No bars?! I think my plans to move to Taipei just came to a screeching halt. We used to drink at the convenience stores in Korea, too, though. It had a certain charm.

Glad to hear the eats are so cheap, all of the food looks really delicious.

Take care of yourself - there's a cold going around!

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You know....I was tossed between going to Taiwan or China this year and I was almost ready to toss in the towel on China. However, your posts made me reopen this match and think things over again.

So many good eats and so little time...sigh....

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Both the wontons and veggies were from Costco.  :wink:  The vegetables were extremely tender and fresh, and the wontons were very good.

They sell the wontons as frozen in Costco? Or freshly wrapped?

The wontons were refrigerated, so probably better than frozen. The skins were very thin.

We also stopped in a department store to pick up a few things. I got some photos of their snack counter:

gallery_45959_4070_16613.jpg

I can see the price (e.g. 8, 10, 12) label. Are the per kg, per ???

One thing I've forgotten to mention is that there are basically no bars in Taipei. You can buy beer and liquor at just about any convenience store, but I think people mostly drink at home or at banquets. Most alcohol commercials are for whiskey or brandy. We hadn't had a drink the whole week, but since it was new year's eve, we grabbed a giant can of Sapporo from the corner store  :smile:

Would it be that they have bars only in certain areas of Taipei? I remember back in Hong Kong, you can't find a bar unless you are in the areas crowded by westerners (e.g. TsimShaTsui, WanChai, Central and Stanley). This is more a Western culture than Chinese.

I wasn't sure that the price on the candy/snacks were. I don't think it can possibly be per kg, since that would be way too cheap.

I should probably clarify my statement about bars in Taiwan. There were a few around the Taipei101 area, and I'm sure they exist elsewhere too. I was just very surprised by how few we saw. In other cities I've visited in North America and Europe, if you walk around for 20 minutes you'll run across a bar/pub/restaurant with a bar/cafe where you can pop in, grab a drink and hang out for a while. It just doesn't seem like part of the Taipei culture.

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