626 Asian Night Market Disappoints

"The Chinese have an expression “人山人海”， which literally means “mountains and seas of people” – the entire setting is either obscured or literally composed of millions upon millions of bodies so much so that not even an ounce of landscape can be seen among the bodies of people.

Seas of people all right. Perhaps those unfamiliar with the saying are best left with this picture to imagine the scene. Imagine the insane lines at the Disneyland Theme Park on steroids times three. The sight is a familiar phenomenon for those who frequent night markets in Asia, but at the first 626 Night Market in Pasadena the scene was the only thing that was comparable to the Asian Markets it was trying so hard to emulate..."

To read the rest of my blog post go here. 

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!