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Food, glorious food!

What can I say? If any country can be said to have a national pastime then Taiwan's national pastime must surely be eating. And why shouldn't it be when there are so many different places to eat so many different types of food. And when food is so cheap here, why shouldn't people eat out so much of the time?

Walk along your average street and you will find food stalls or shops. Most of them have seating areas, and nearly all of them have the food being cooked in full view of the paying customer. It makes a change from the UK where the kitchen is usually hidden away from prying eyes so as not to disturb the 'dining experience'. Why should that matter here in Taiwan when all you are doing is eating a bowl of beef soup with noodles?

The food in Taiwan is great. You can eat noodles with anything, or rice with anything. If you prefer fried chicken then it's easy to find. If you want a burger you can sample all kinds from shops such as Mos Burger (speciality - riceburgers) to the ever-present McDonald's. There's pizza and pasta, steak and seafood, Thai and Japanese. The world is being served up on a plate, and it's available everyday right here on my doorstep.

The 'MOS' of Mos Burger stands for 'Mountain, Ocean, Sun' and they pride themselves on only using only natural, healthy (even the fries?) ingredients.

Before I left to fly out to Taiwan my mum said that she was concerned that I wouldn't like the food and that I wouldn't eat properly. If anything, the opposite is true. There is so much great food to choose from that I could be in danger of gaining weight if I don't watch what I eat.

Fried chicken with a hot paprika coating. Now that makes you go "Mmm!"

Here's a photo of a standard buffet restaurant/take away. You can fill a whole carton with delicious food and walk away with a meal for around £2 (UK).

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My philosophy... try everything once

I made a pledge to Richard that, whatever food he offered me, I would try anything once (as long as he was willing to eat it too!). So far I have stuck steadfastly to that pledge. Hey, it's not easy to give a convincing "Mmm, yum yum!" when being offered duck tongues for the first time. Richard keeps threatening to give me a duck's head to try, or snake soup.

This stall is just around the corner from where I live, and it's not for the squeemish.

Go on. Take a closer look...

See what I mean? I have no idea what some of the foods are that are available for purchase (and eventual consumption), although I have since found out what other items are and have ended up wishing I'd never asked!

January 2005

I said I'd try anything once, and so far I've managed to...

So meet Mr Duck. This particular one is Mr Mallard Duck, Esq.

Many a childhood weekend afternoon I spent in Liverpool's Calderstones Park feeding the ducks on the lake. Oh, how they loved that soft, white bread. Oh, how they dived to be first to each soggy scrap. Oh, how they flapped their wings and quacked with joy!

So imagine my feelings when I found out that one of Richard's favourite snacks was duck tongue. Now, maybe I've just had a sheltered upbringing, but I never knew that people ate duck tongues. It must be a cultural thing. Anyway, I tried one (I was so proud of myself!) and as I chewed I had a picture in my head of a poor duck somewhere in Taiwan running round a farm yard going "_______" instead of "Quack". In fact, after looking at the rest of the tongues in the bag the mental picture turned into a whole flock of silent ducks all crying "_______" as they run round the yard... Poor things.

A (spicy) duck tongue ready to eat! "_______"

But wait, there's more. Not only do people in Taiwan eat the duck's tongue they also eat the rest of the head. There's a stall near where I live which has them on display, and every time we passed it Richard would ask me if I wanted a duck head and would remind me that I said I'd try anything once. My answer was always something along the lines of "Maybe some other time... in the future..."

So there we were the other week sitting at our favourite duck hotpot place (see Hotpot below) when, on investigating the contents of the pot, I discovered that one of the duck parts was a head. And all of a sudden I was faced with an inevitability. Unlike the duck heads on the local stall I couldn't just walk past this one: it refused to be ignored. The future in 'maybe some other time in the future' had become 'the present' - right now. So I reached in and fished out the duck head and ate it. Well, ate some of it anyway. Yum, yum! (The inside, so I'm told, is the best bit. "There's a best bit?" I asked?) And as I chewed, the picture in my head of tongue-less ducks morphed into a picture of tongue-less, head-less ducks all running round the farm yard, all crying "_______" but this time all bumping into each other because they can't see where they're going...

So when I return to the UK I plan to go on a pilgrimage to Calderstones Park and feed the ducks there a whole loaf of bread, soft and white. And as I stand there throwing pieces of bread into the water I'll shed a secret, silent tear for those ducks elsewhere in the world who are not as fortunate...

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Breakfast

I don't really want to give the impression that everything about food here in Taiwan is perfect for my (un)refined British tastes. As far as breakfast is concerned I am a cereal man. No I don't mean that you can read about me every week in a glossy magazine. I mean that I like a bowl of cereal for breakfast. I have tried the local alternative (a sort of sweet, doughy bread, washed down with soya milk) but I can't say I like it enough to eat it every day. So I went down to the local supermarket and bought myself a cereal bowl, a spoon, and a packet of muesli. At least it said it was muesli on the side of the packet... Obviously a different interpretation of 'muesli'. At least my local Carrefour supermarket sells Kellogg's Corn Flakes, and Jason's supermarket (at Taipei 101) sells proper muesli (such as Alpen, and Dorset Deluxe). Ah, the Englishman abroad!

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Hotpot

OK, I must admit when I was first told that one of the best-loved meals here in Taiwan was 'hotpot' I had visions of Betty in the Rovers Return (Coronation Street - UK soap opera) serving the 'specialité de la maison' to the Weatherfield clientele. As it turns out, hotpot Taiwanse-style doesn't involve an oven-stewed mix of meat, potatoes and vegetables but is rather different.

The idea behind hotpot is pretty simple. Take a cooking pot with heat source, fill it with stock, then provide the particular ingredients that the customer has chosen. The customer then adds the ingredients to the pot, cooks them, and eats them. Beef, chicken, shrimp, tofu, vegetables. In fact, almost anything can be added to a hotpot. And the added bonus is that the combined ingredients being cooked create a wonderful soup over the duration of the meal.

This photo is of me doing hotpot Taiwanese style in Richard's favourite hotpot restaurant in Taichung. Notice how adept I have become using chopsticks!

October 2004

Winter's on the way, and what better way to warm your cockles (the cockles of your heart, that is) than with a delicious spicy duck hotpot? This place is right next to Shipai station on the MRT red line, and with the cooler weather it's become extremely popular. So much so that it has tables spread out along the pavement even in front of other restaurants!

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Barbecue

Another favourite here in Taiwan is the barbecue. As for hotpot (see above) I also had visions of the typical British barbecue with charcoal that takes three hours to get hot enough to cook on, weather more suited to hotpot and a log fire, and food sacraficially cremated and offered on a platter/skewer/paper plate to the Roman God of Food Poisoning. Barbecue in Taiwan is much more civilised, and far less likely to cause violent stomach cramps.

Just like the idea behind the hotpot, the idea behind barbecue is pretty simple too. Take a cooking pan with heat source, then provide the particular ingredients that the customer has chosen. The customer then adds the ingredients to the large pan, cooks them, and eats them. Beef, chicken, shrimp, vegetables. In fact, almost anything can be added to a barbecue.

This used to be my favourite* barbecue restaurant. It's in the Shilin district of Taipei, and has an 'all you can eat' menu. Simply help yourself and cook the food you want. As you can see from the photo there's a hotpot as well, so everyone ends up happy! Other barbecue restaurants take different approaches, with some providing a heat-proof container with hot coals inside and a mesh grill on the top, and others going for the 'gas-fired-flame-underneath-a-mesh-grill' method.

*to find out why it's no longer my favourite read the note at the end of this section.

Back to my (former) favourite* barbecue restaurant... and once you have finished with the barbecuing you can move on to the ice cream. I was somewhat skeptical when I was told that they 'fry' ice cream at this restaurant until I saw it with my own eyes.

*to find out why it's my former favourite read the note at the end of this section.

Liquid ice cream is poured into the cooking pan and fried. Don't worry, I haven't gone totally bonkers (not yet, at least). The secret is that as well as having a heat source under the cooking pan there is also a super-fast cooler which brings the temperature of the pan down to below freezing. As long as you keep the ice cream moving, and don't let it stick, you will end up with ice cream. On my first visit I plucked up the courage to ask that age-old question - "Why?" The answer seems to be - "It's fun, so why not?". I can't really argue with that.

So here I am eating freshly fried ice cream. And you know, it's quite nice too!

October 2004
OK, so here's the rub. This is no longer my favourite barbecue restaurant. On our last visit the front section of the restaurant was busy so we were seated in the back room where we could see into the kitchen where the food is stored and prepared for the hotpot and barbecue. Towards the end of our meal I looked up and glanced to my side only to see a half-dead cockroach in the doorway into the kitchen. I told Richard and when he looked he saw a large rat run across the open doorway. Needless to say we both quickly lost our appetites and left just as hastily.

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Barmy about Bakeries and Crazy over Cheesecake

I know that in the UK most towns and cities will have a fair selection of bakeries. In Liverpool the main two are Greggs and Sayers (anyone remember Cousins?). Here in Taipei there are lots and lots of bakeries. Not quite as many as there are convenience stores, but there are still a lot. There are three in my immediate neighbourhood, each of them open until almost midnight!

However, unlike UK bakeries they don't sell pasties, meat pies, sarnies, or steak slices. What they do sell are cakes, buns, bread (pre-sliced and curiously named 'toast'), danish-style pastries, and all manner of strange and wonderful baked products, both sweet and savoury.

I saw this advert for a bakery in Kaohsiung and just had to take a photo!

But for some reason (unknown and unfathomable to the likes of me) the Taiwanese have a particular penchant for the 'umble cheesecake. Not only can you order one from Napoli to be delivered with your pizza and fried chicken, you can also buy them from the likes of Amo.

This is Amo, and Amo sells cheesecake, cheesecake and cheesecake. That's right, it only sells cheesecake. There's a display counter inside displaying cheesecake, and an easel board outside proudly showing an artistic photograph of cheescake. It kinda reminds me of a Monty Python sketch...

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Page created 4 Aug 04 - updated 5 Sept 05
Copyright Graham Holland © 2004

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