Good Bye Taiwan! The Last Supper(s)

Thanks to 888 reader M, I am happy to report that "frog eggs" are not actually frog eggs. After I read her helpful comment, I went to confront my mother on why she didn't correct me when I told her I was drinking frog eggs with boba, she just laughed. Turns out my whole family sucks and thinks it funny to toy with my emotions when it comes to frogs when they KNOW it's a senstive subject for me after my sister screwed me over many years ago. Asses. Props to me for actually trying it though. in my defense there were minuate things of frogs all over this place. I thought that the milk was made with frog eggs and they just added boba. Boba does NOT look like frog eggs, weirdos.

Yum... same rule of the night markets applied to random street carts. The longer the line means get in line! Quick! Here's some freshly steamed yummy pork and cabbage buns! I love street food! Too bad right after we got to the front of the line and finished eating our bun, it was already time for dinner. Wow, eating so much is really a hard job I tell you!

We went to Dou Xiang Cun for dinner, best known for their old school hot pots that still use coal. (It was super hot that night so we didn't get that though) Instead we got the cold noodles on the left and the beef pancake thing on the right.

Their ong choy was pretty good but their spicy pork was bleh. Pity cause that's one of my favorite dishes.

And we finished our last meal with real sweet & sour soup. Panda got nothing on this! One word- LEGIT.

This was our last meal in Taiwan, or so we thought. We were awakened really early the next morning by a phone call for us to grab lunch with a family friend. The mother and I weren't planning on eating that morning until we got to the airport since EVA Airline's lounge in Taipei has the best food. Freshly steamed yam, buns, cakes, etc. But... how could I turn down just one more meal right? I mean so what if I happened to miss our flight? Right?

This is the very well known Lao Deng. It may be a small shack with a very limited menu, but this place is delicious. You also have to be able to eat spicy to come here. The food is not for the weak! Even their side dishes were spicy!

2 different flavors of spicy rice baked to perfection and spicy enough to burn your tongue off! It was like a happy meal. There was surprise yam at the bottom!

Left is some spicy dan dan noodles, a Taiwan speciality and must try! Right is some hong you chao shou aka basically spicy wontons.

And for dessert, we had some doufu hua aka tofu pudding.

And with that our last supper finally came to an end. It was a nice time being back in Taiwan after so long. Can't wait to come back. If you are going to be in Taipei, I have a list of helpful tips you should look over to better allocate your time.

• Skip the Ding Tai Fung craze and go for some place with better food and no waits. I recommend going with 點水樓 or with or Kao Chi.
• Make sure to go to at least 2 different night markets to check out what each place sells. Every night market is different. I liked shilin and Tongyuan.
• Do make sure to allocate at least one entire meal to eating on the street. That's where the best food is.
• Do go visit Dongque fenyuan for their amazing boba and go 3 doors down to check out the most amazing buns you will ever have. See this post for details.
• Do try real Taiwanese fruit tea. It's amazing.
• Do try Two Peck and the most amazing crispy chicken you will ever have. Here
• Skip Mr. Donut. I don't care how famous it is.
• Do try Taiwan's famous pepper pork buns and their shallot drabing aka just go eat in the street and you will find a stand.
• Do try real Stinky Tofu, fried or steamed!
• Skip the malls. The brand names are all the same and just head to the street!
• And last tip, try to take EVA Air. They have this class called Deluxe class where you get more space and leg room than economy. You also get to go into their amazing VIP lounge area! It's a Taiwanese airline so they are really good especially in Taiwan.

Oh yeah so I did not take pictures of the VIP room food I stuffed down my stomach because I didn't have time since we were way behind and late since we decided to grab lunch before we left. But!!!! Good news is that we got upgraded to Business Class on the ride back to L.A. which meant... MORE FOOD!

Pate, salad, Ding Tai Fung's Beef Noodle Soup, Steak, etc. They even had abalone! Not bad as a return to the States present to me!

Happy Eatings! See you again soon Taiwan!

Back To Taiwan. The Best Food is From a Dirty Cart!

So once we touched down to Taipei, the mother and I were ready to make the most of our time remaining since no we didn't have to censor our eating habits with Grandma gone! Whoot! By the way, I can't wait til my recaps in Taipei are over so I can get onto the adventures I've been having back in L.A.! Don't want to ruin it for you-but my friends and I got the most amazing Hawaiian shaved ice last night from a... TRUCK! Awesome.

We literally just got off the plane and headed to this place. That is all tea that you see. This place specializes in flower tea! I bought so much to bring home. So far, I've tried blueberry, strawberry, & apple tea!

Night 1: Shilin Night Market!!! Night market=Food!!!! The rule of the night was to look for whatever cart had the most lines and just get in line! Doesn't matter what it is!

Check out our Shallot drabing! However, while some things looked super delicious...

Others did not. Wow, frog eggs. (see sign above) Wow, indeed. Plus, there was no line in front of them but I don't think I would have tried them anyways even if they did due to my fear of frogs.

But some things did look deliciously intriguing like the man making squid hot dogs. Sure it was kinda weird that the sausage was black, but that was the fun of it!

Ooh but look! A humungous line and even a newspaper article on them? Get in line!!! Baked/Fried Chicken! It was delicious. The batter was so good you could eat it by yourself! Apparently my mom hates stinky tofu so she wasn't willing to share one with me. =[

Left is sugar cane being grilled on a stove and right is the boba I got. Rainbow colored boba! It was calling to me. I had to get it! By the way, I wish they had tables or something at the night markets. It's really hard to eat and hold onto a gazillion things at one time. Plus, Taiwan literally has like one trash can every 3 streets. Stupid idea. Where the hell are people supposed to put their trash?

Here's our order of pepper buns! Delicious! Freshly made pork buns filled with loads of cabbage and pepper! Yum! Wish they had that in the U.S.!

Day 2: More food! So apparently my mom went to the "IT" high school. All her ex-classmates are all now rich and famous. I really don't get why she doesn't try and get some freebies or nice hookups from them. It's getting ridiculous! Grrr Mother! So anyways my mom, mom's friend, and I went to get lunch at Shanghai Shanghai in Sogo aka 紅豆食府. This place is like THE place to go in Taiwan. You're typical overpriced Chinese food that you treat people out to. So apparently my mom's classmate's sister open it. WTH? Why are we standing in line? Why are we paying?

Left is our order of scallion panckes. Right is our river shrimp stir fried. It may look like Mac & Cheese but this baby was delish! Mini little shrimps!

Here is our red kernels with cubed chinese ham and our crab sauteed with fermented soy beann paste with rice cakes. Basically the first is an order of mini peas. So small and tasty. Imagine your usual pea size and divide that by 1/2 or more!

Red dates stuffed with sticky rice! Yummy yummy!

And of course in typical fashion, my mother decided to use none of her connections to get our bill paid. Not even try for 10% off. She seriously sucks. But at least it was then time for more food in Sogo!

So this is Mr. Donut. They are the shit in Taiwan. It's actually a Japanese company but you know them Taiwanese love anything Japanese. Their most popular donut is the one we bought on the right. They changed your typical chewy donut recipe to fit for Asian taste buds that don't want a heart attack. I thought they would just add less sugar but no... their donuts tasted like mochi. NOT COOL. Please don't ruin my donut experience. But at least I can say I tried it. So yeah I tried it.

My mom's friend wanted to take us to a historical place while we were in Taiwan. *Yawn* Seriously do people not get that we don't care about history? I want food! The white building in the first picture was taken at the Sun Yat Sen Music Hall. So yay cool... let's move on. So the most historically important place that I had to hit while I was in Taiwan, was the original 85C! Duh! Not as amazing as Irvine it pains me to admit- but they have better fruit tea than we do!

My Taiwan adventures will commence in my next post. How exciting! See how I ended my trip next time! Happy Eatings! Here's a spoiler.... it is entirely possible that during my last day in Taiwan I had some bizarre foods. *Gasps* Possibly something I have a fear of...

The Party Don't Start 'Til I Walk In...[the Night Markets!]

Here's some of the awesome stuff I bought at the night market. There's Chinese New Year boxers, fobby pencil bags, & little cartoon god figurines.

I'm entirely convinced that ding tai fung isn't that great and it just has good feng shui or something because there's a ton of places that have the same if not better food... but minus their horrendous 3 hour wait. Take Kao Chi for example-located right across from Sogo. Good location. No lines. Good food!

Left is an order of yummy pork. Right is some xiao long bao. Yummy.

Left was our delicious order of panfried pork & veggie buns and right was more veggie dumpllings!

BBQ pork and fried rice

Taiwanese speciality honey ham with bread again!

Kao Chi was delicious! Way better than Ding Tai Fung. Onto our next stop... Remember 點水樓? Well Grandma really wanted to try it after I was raving about it. So we went back to it and ordered the same stuff we did last time but with 3 new additional dishes!

Left is our minced tofu bowl. Middle is steamed stinky tofu!!! I loved it! And right is the veggie fried rice Grandma wanted. Unfortunately that was Grandma's last meal before she left for Hong Kong. At the same time, fortunately it was Grandma's last meal before she left for HK-because now it meant it was time to party!!!!! Finally get to eat what I wanted to eat! Ooh the excitement.

Here's how my pre-party to the Night Market started.

Baker's Boy is a bakery located near the train station. It has THE best coffee bread that is made fresh every morning. My mom's friend insisted we had to try it. The skin flakes and crumbles into your mouth. It's amazing. In fact, I think I can safely say this coffee bread alone was better than any of 85C Bakery's Bread. Yeah... I know. That's how effin good it was!

This is a pretty well known shallot drabing place. So shallot bread that melts in your mouth. The guy makes it fresh in an oven the size of a table and that's the size of his entire "shop." You can add additional ingredients like egg, veggies, bacon, cheese, etc. We went with Shallot drabing with extra egg and some veggies. Yum, yum, yum! Did I mention this is still part of the pre-party?

This is Yongkang Restaurant. It is dirty, small, and authentic so obivously I loved it! Left was this steamed BBQ pork concoction that was soooo spicy. Underneath all that deliciousness was some bits of steamed yam. Right was our soup version of hongyaochaosiu

And look how awesome their toppings were. Yes the pickled veggies were just in a bowl like that. I don't know how many days it's been like that but it was delicious. So was the chili sauce!

And finally here was their beef noodles, which is what they are most known for there.

Now it's finally time for the party. Where's the party at? Tongyuen night market! Let's start! Get ready to drool!

Taiwan night markets are way more exciting than the ones in Hong Kong. Love, love, love it! This is the Tonghua Night Market.

Momma got a basil seed drink.

Two Peck has stores all over Taiwan and I love them! They have the best crispy chicken you will ever have in your life with a touch of pepper! Instead of the ones you get at boba shops where the popcorn chicken is all batter and no meat, this place is all meat with the most crispy and awesome skin!! A must try!!!!

Next was my favorite-fruit tea! I got their apple fruit tea. Btw, fruit tea is a speciality in Taiwan.

And even though I was seriouly about to pop out of my pants by now... I couldn't resist picking something delicious from the bingtanghuolu cart. I ended up getting the sugared pears!

We randomly were walking towards the end of Tonghua Street and saw a dessert stand. Of course we HAD to get in line. We kinda of regretted it later when we had to roll ourselves back home. Above is lemograss desserts with a combination of tapoica balls.

Hope you are drooling now because that was a lot of food. More to come before I'm done with my recaping! Happy Eatings!

Taiwan Trip Continued... Back to Taipei from Taichung

(Old School grinder and door)

So at this point we were back in Taipei meaning that Grandma could finally have her "real" Taiwanese food. Whatever that actually means. SO we pull up to eat her favorite Chi Chia Chuang. Our car door opens and literally the people inside run out and yell/greet my Grandma by name. Seriously... I guess Grandma left them with a really good impression or something cause the last time she was there was over 10 years ago.

Left is sweet potato porridge and right is the 3 different types of chicken. You can't see the black chicken from this angle. Darn.

Left is another order of veggies with those little fish thingys. You should all know by now how Grandma take her veggies seriously. Right is my favorite fried pork intestine. yay

Left is what sweet and sour pork is actually supposed to look like. Take note Panda Express! And right is our yummy order of eggplant. Delicious!

And of course Grandma needed more veggies. Left is digua ye & right is some pork leg.

And to end off our meal... ta da!!!! Flan. The mother was raving about how this place had amazing flan. Yeah... it was good flan for a Taiwanese place but has she never had bomb Vietnamese/French Flan? Orange County or Vietnam will also do the trick.

So after this delicious meal... we had an amazing dinner at a very expensive and authentic Japanese restaurant that is very close to Taipei 101 called Peony aka 牡丹園. Food has such an amazing power. Have you ever had to sit through a 2 hour dinner with tons of people you didn't like? Well... I can say the food at Peony was almost good enough to make up for bad company. Almost. But food was amazing though. Let's start!

Omg... how amazing does this look? Our table was of 10 and each person got individual dishes served to them. No family style crap. Thank god cause I was not willing to share! Here's our sashimi. The little glass cup had dry ice making it smoke. It was sea urchin. Yum. 10 points for presentation & yumminess. Bonus points for my mom and grandma passing me some of their food as well!

Here's fried rice with sea urchin. Yum!

Japanese shark's fin. Came in a little individual clay pot too!

All mine! Order of pork. =)

Fried Blowfish! It tasted like chicken. I was definitely bummed that it was fried. Trying raw blowfish has always been one of those things on my bucket list to do especially after I've heard how awesome it is from someone else that's tried it. Death by blowfish or death by boba choking are always the 2 ways of dying for me that I think would be totally worth it. The latter would just be hilarious since it would give my friends somethings to laugh at during my funeral.

Some very tasty soup.

Somewhere during the night, the restaurant owner came in to suck up to our table and threw in free dessert for us. She even exchanged business cards with some douche at the table I was sitting with. She was hardcore sucking up. She told Grandma how beautiful and young she was (which btw is totally true) and told the "businessmen" at the table how great they were. The lady was hot. Obviously had some sugar daddy buy the joint for her. Whatever woman... just give me my dessert. Thanks! Left was our amazing pumpkin dessert. It was baked with flaky crumble-like crust. Yum. Right is my order of green milk tea. It was super bitter but I liked it and I also had some regular tea as well.

Happy Eatings! More from Taipei & Singapore to come!