君悅排骨 敦化店 (大安區)

The spare rib with no bone at all and is more probably just a piece of pork chop, are deep fried with black pepper sprinkled on the surface, the batter is not crispy and indeed soft, no taste of pork or meat at all, even my home made Brazilian frozen pork chop with marinade tastes much better. The noodle is the cheapest of the cheap thing, over-cooked, soft and mushy in your mouth, the soup of the noodle reeks of artificial favouring, so mind your health. The vegetable is better, simply because it is vegetable that comes with its own taste, and so nothing or little left for criticizing. A total waste of time and money on this guidebook favourite, after all, mind your credibility dear guidebook writers.

正宗老天祿食品 (萬華區)

Lau Tian Lu is a shop selling pot-stewed items, pot-stewed foods are traditional Chinese cuisine with meats, tofu and veggies marinated using a sauce consists of Sichuan pepper corns and aniseeds to give a special refreshing savoury favour. Lau Tian Lu and its pot-stewed foods are perennial favourite of all Taiwanese, and of course people coming to Taiwan too. The shop that I’ve patronized is in the tourist Ximending district, and so unavoidably a queue is something to be expected. I’ve tried their chicken wing, duck wing, green bean, and MiXueGao米血糕which is a black cake made of glutinous rice and duck blood. The meat they use no matter chicken or duck are invariably very fresh, so the meat is still very tender ever after prolonged steeping and stewing with the marinade, better still, the fragrance of the marinade will not drown out the fresh and distinctivetastes of the chicken and duck meat. They are really onto something with their pot-stewed items, something you couldn’t find in Hong Kong, which more often than not are too salty rather than the refreshing taste of the ingredientsin the marinade.

福州世祖胡椒餅 (松山區)

福州世祖胡椒餅 Delicious Black Pepper Cake with Pork Filling This Black Pepper Cake bakery shown in the photos is very famous in the Raohe street night market(饒河街夜市), so be prepared to line up patiently for a while before you can buy the pepper cake. I waited for 15 minutes that night, but just for your information I’ve also seen a branch of the same bakery near Taipei Railway Station, with much less people there. Each pepper cake is just a little bit smaller than the size of a tennis ball, with white sesame seeds on its top, very hot out the oven when you buy it with mouthwatering fragrance of meat and pepper upon giving it a bite. The skin of the pepper cake is quite chewy and there is great taste of flour from it. The meat filling is savoury, and a rather coarse texture with roughly chopped up pork meat andtendon mixing up withgreen onion, a wonderful blend of tastes. Don’t miss it when you are in Taipei, to see what this little humble pepper cake can do to your taste buds, and I guess you won’t be disappointed.

鼎泰豐 101店 (信義區)

There has been Din Tai Fung in Hong Kong for many years, but under the hegemony of property tycoons, for every meal you spend, a significant portion of it will become rental for the shop in tourist districts such as TsimShaTsui or Central, which has seen rentals ratcheting up in multiples in recent years. There is Din Tai Fung in China too, but for the reason of food safety and hygiene, I can do nothing but dismiss it out of hand. I think Din Tai Fung in Taiwan has taken a more humble way of doing business, 5 pieces of their chef d'oeuvre Pork XiaoLongBao in a take-away paper box cost just around HK$20, think of what you could have with HK$20 in a Hong Kong restaurant? That said, it is no longer just a matter of food, poor governance of a place by the authority will actually result in deprivation of the hoi polloi in many aspects of life, good food might just be the tip of an iceberg! Each Pork XiaoLongBao is like a piece of art work, the immaculate 18 folding on the top, the translucent wrapper through which you can see the meat and the hot soup settled down at the bottom, all so delicate and meticulously integrated. Put one in your mouth, wow! It’s heaven, so savoury with intense taste of fresh pork. The meat are grinded with a fine rather than chewy texture, you haven’t lived till you have tasted that! I’ve also tried the Steam Shrimp and Pork Dumplings with the same price as the Pork XiaoLongBao, it is also a top order thing by any standard but still nothing to compare with the Pork XiaoLongBao. A cup of tea for every take-away customer (the queue of people waiting may put you off joining them), great services by friendly, helpful and enthusiastic waitresses.

阿宗麵線 (萬華區)

This rice noodle eatery in Ximending tourist district has actually become my place for breakfast in the past few days. A famous eatery don’t even need opulent décor or comfortable seats as the food itself is the best enticement for new and old customer, such that holding a bowl sitting or standing here and there near the entrance has become something to marvel at for new comers to Taipei like me. Very very special indeed, I must confess I’ve taken nothing like this as a bowl of noodle before, the soup in brown is very thick, flows slowly with rice noodles of varied thickness, and a kind of brown, thin veggie that gives you the feeling of chewing tiny shredded meat in your mouth. A few pieces of pig intestine are used which are quite crunchy and would not be too oily. You could help yourselves anytime with the 3 different sauces as seasoning, namely Chili, Garlie, and Vinegar, though I would suggest using none of them as the noodles with its soup taste already great enough by itself. The rice noodles is not the chewy type you would expect with ramen, garnish with corianda when it is served, this rice noodles inclines to a bland palate, very much my kind of thing.