Taipei City - XiHu Market 西湖市場

XiHu Market (西湖市場) is in the North of Taipei, and the market is connected to XiHu MRT station, inbetween JiaNan Road Station and NeiHu Station on the Brown Line. This place is perfectly convenient for a stroll around Northern Taipei, and maybe over to Miramar/The NeiHu Wheel for the afternoon. Inside XiHu market, you can find a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, meats and clothing stands within the market. On the second floor of the market, there is a large restaurant area with a variety of different vendors offering a variety of different cuisines. You can have Indian curry, Italian style pasta, Japanese noodles or a range of classic Taiwanese meals. 

This Japanese RaMen noodle place offers a variety of different dishes, but their signature dish is the one in the picture below. LaMien (拉麵) is a very popular style of Japanese cooking in Taiwan. This place is a perfect example of good quality at a good price. $150 for a bowl of this is absolutely worth it!

On top, you can see a thin slice of nice, fatty pork. The pork is served, cold, on top of the warm noodles in soup. This allows the meat to warm up quite quickly and remain delicate. Beside the pork you can see some dried onion flakes, green onions and also jew's ear. Beneath this, within the beautifully rich broth, sits a bowl of fine, but not too fine, Ramen noodles. These are cooked al dente, and continue to cook from the moment they're served in the broth. For anyone who has had Ramen Noodles before, I challenge you to describe the broth. For me, its almost like a rich, buttery taste. There's an acidic element in there, there's definitely some onion and garlic running through and its also quite salty. I have heard that in some Ramen Noodle dishes, the broth should not be consumed as it is too salty. With this, I would definitely recommend getting a few spoonfuls in, but maybe not consuming it all! 

Here, we have something similair to the bibimbap dish well-known in Korea. 

The rice underneath, is cooked and then fried inside this stove top pan in which it's served. Sat atop the rice is a helping of pickled cabbage, other pickled vegetables, half an egg, 1/4 of a sausage and a generous helping of barbecued chicken. It's fantastic, really. I am, unlike many people, a real fan of that rice that is stuck, almost burnt, to the side of the pan. It crunches in your mouth and has a burnt flavour to it, love it. The barbecued chicken here is also a triumph. On the outside there is a salty, sweet skin with an impossibly moist chicken on the inside. Taiwanese sausage, let me address my issue with it: It's sweet. I'm not used to sweet sausage. Coming from the UK, places such as Lancashire and Cumberland are famed for their sausages. But they are in no way sweet. Often peppery and salty, in fact. This sausage is sweet, but it does actually help with the sourness of the pickled cabbage and also the saltiness of the barbecued chicken. Served with a rather stock standard Miso Soup, this dish is a real winner, all for $100! 

This place - wow. It's amazing. Any of you familiar with 'Paul' bakery in Taipei will know that there are definitely some places where you can rely on their pastries to blow every other Taiwanese bakery out of the water. For me, this place definitely competes with Paul. 

This pattiserie is located on the second floor, just outside one of the doors connected to the main food restaurant area. It's in a tiny shop, with only take-out options available. We went for the Custard tart, Macadamia and Red Bean Macaroon, Milky Coffee and, of course, the Canale. They were all absolutely French < that's a top compliment, not only from an Englishman, but also for any pastry in the world. 

The Canale (top right corner), is a caremlised shell of almost burnt perfection, within which sits an almost gooey inner; sweet, rich, crunchy, soft. I cannot recommend this enough. 

Bottom right we have the Macaroon. For Macaroons, there is a lot that can go wrong and, quite frankly, often does go wrong. Most places where I've eaten macaroons, I shall not be returning to. However, this is not one of those. The macadamia flavour on the outside of the macaroon is wonderfully nutty and decadent, whilst on the inside, the nice flavour of the red bean contrasts well. A good macaroon shouldn't be over sweet - and this wasn't. 

Top left we have the, simply phenomenal, custard tart. As you can see, the inside solid custard has visible vanilla seeds, just bursting with flavour on each mouthful. It is quite simply, awesome. The outer pastry is crunchy, yet a little soft. The flavour is perfect, not too sweet but also not too savoury. As you can see, on top of the solidified custard, there is a thin, caremelised skin. 

For well priced foods, and a fun atmosphere, this is a good place. People next to us were drinking beers, you can get some Taiwanese goodies at the market beneath you, and by the early evening you can be getting on the NeiHu wheel to see Taipei at dusk.

西湖市場, 內湖區, 台北市

XiHu Market, NeiHu District, Taipei City 

Happy Eating!

Taipei City - April Trip Breakfast

Down a back alley in DanShui, this may have just be a good place to go and get a delicious sandwich, a nice coffee and a comfortable atmosphere to awake your day. The decor inside is quirky and fun, mostly comprising of American brand stickers, fun musical instruments, book cases full of books and magazines, and also white boards including white board pens available for use. 

The Menu is all in Chinese, so I will help you to pick out something you may like. Here is what we ordered:

Anyone familair with Taiwanese breakfast should be well acquainted with the fried egg pancake (dan4bing3蛋餅). Inside the pancake, there were nice thick chunks of chicken breast, chunky tomato salsa, fried egg and copious amounts of cheese. Taiwanese cheese is not particularly known for its quality, however, this fried egg pancake did step up to the mark. 

This is the bacon, onion ring omelette burger with peanut butter (hua1sheng1pei2gen1quan1quan1ou1mu3dan4bao3 花生培根圈圈歐姆蛋堡 ;-) and the hash brown shu3bing3 薯餅good luck!) Now this was a special breakfast sandwich. Sat within the two burger buns, were two strips of streaky bacon, 2 onion rings and an omelette. On the inside of the burger bun was a generous smear of peanut butter. I chose to have the burger with a hash brown. The bread was nice and soft, the omelette was cooked very nicely, the onion rings were a good addition and also the few lettuce leaves helped to give it that healthy early morning kick. My only reservation would be the hash brown - it was kid of greasy. I don't mind this every now and then, but if you're not a fan of grease in the morning, I wouldn't suggest the hash brown. 

Here is the sweet potato and pork sandwich (di4gua1xian1sheng1zong3hui4san1ming2zhi4 - guo3xiang1zhu1pai2 地瓜先生總匯三明治 - 果香豬排) The sandwich was good, not as good as the omelette burger, but good. Three layers of bread formed the basis of the sandwich, with (from the bottom) first slice of bread, mashed sweet potato, middle slice of bread, pork and lettuce and finally the final piece of bread. The sandwich was filling, especially when teamed up with the cereal (xi3rui4er2zong4he2gu3pian4niu2nai3 喜瑞兒綜合穀片牛奶). Now, Taiwan isn't known for its milk quality. You can probably just type it into google and find out the many issues. However, the milk used here is fresh whole milk. I won't sugar coat it, it was cereal. There was a wide variety of cereal in the portion, and it was a good bit of nostalgia.

If you're in DanShui and you want to get some good breakfast in a relaxed, yet fun environment, then this could be the place to go. Its not too far away from the MRT station and its actually right next to a morning market which is quite fun to walk around. This place gets a solid recommendation from me if you're in that area come morning. 

新北市淡水區水源街一段122巷33號

No.33, lane 122, shuiyuan street, section 1, DanShui, New Taipei City. 

Happy Eating!

Taipei City - TianMu's PuLi Restaurant 埔里小吃

This place was one hell of a find! This restaurant is dedicated to the cuisine made famous in PuLi Town, NanTou county, in the centre of Taiwan. PuLi is known for its amazing vegetables and also their sugar cane. PuLi has a large buddhist community, so there is a huge abundance of vegetarian restaurants for you to try, should you wish to make the trip. First, I'd recommend you get a taste for it by visiting this place in TianMu.

The Menu is vast, it's all in Chinese, and there are no pictures. However, I would encourage you to order a variety of the things with the little thumbs up sign! If you want rice, look for 飯 if you want noodles, look for 麵. If you see this character 炒 this means fried (thumbs up!). First off, this place gets an immediate smile from me when the complimentary tea they bring us contains actual loose tea leaves inside the teapot - not just the teabags in most places who provide tea. The tea was Oolong (being a tea lover, I can tell you this for sure) and it was delicious. It was a great way to start the meal. 

Following the arrival of the tea, we ordered a selection of dishes. We ordered the Pork Knuckle (upon recommendation), fish belly, rice noodles and fresh fried Taiwanese Greens.

Now, I know that this dish can be a little unnerving for the less adventurous foodies out there, however, hang on before dismissing it. This is pork knuckle (su1gu3zhu1jiao3 酥骨豬腳), however, this is not just your ordinary pork knuckle. This is a cut from the lower leg, and this particular pork knuckle is cooked for an incredibly long time at a low temperature. You can tell this by the way the meat just drops off the bone. You can also confirm this by the fact you can actually eat the bone (it's true! But I wouldn't recommend you eat the bone, however, I would recommend you to eat the marrow from the inside of the bone). The pork meat was amazing, you could see tiny layers of a meat, fat, meat, fat, meat, fat sandwich within the meat itself. It melted in your mouth and the flavour was outstanding. The skin on the outside of the knuckle was equally tasty, and imparted the flavour of the cooking broth into the meat enough to give it some of the flavour, but without making the flavour too strong. This is the best pork knuckle I've had and this, alone, is enough to make me want to keep going back to this restaurant. 

The fish belly (yin4gua1shi1mu4yu2du4 蔭瓜虱目魚肚) was just as impressive as the pork knuckle. You can see the nice clear broth in the plate and the chilli pickle combo sat atop the fish. This fish was steamed to perfection, allowing each mouthful to flake apart but still remain meaty enough for you to bite. The flavour of the fish itself was a fresh, almost milky, slightly earthy yet still yielded a clean taste. It was fantastic.

This is the house special fried rice noodles (pu3li3chao3mi3fen3 埔里炒米粉). If you haven't eaten rice noodles yet, then you should. If you've eaten them already, then you know why I ordered them. Rice noodles are a great alternative to a bowl of white rice, and when they are fried (chao3 炒) they are even better. These rice noodles were fried together with thick slices of (what I think were re-hydrated) mushrooms, carrots, green onions, garlic and some simple soy sauce. Much like the premise behind Italian cookery - sometimes the less ingredients, the better. All of the ingredients were good quality, and they made these rice noodles really shine. The dish had a nice salty note of soy sauce undercutting the garlic and onion. 

Being as we were in a PuLi restaurant, and being as though PuLi is famed for its vegetables, we had to order the stir-fried house vegetables (kong1xin1cai4 空心菜). If you haven't found it already, you soon will: Taiwanese love garlic! If you ever order stir fried vegetables at a restaurant, you will find out that they are often cooked with around 3-4 garlic cloves in each pan. It may seem excessive, but the taste is not overpowering and, oftentimes, the garlic is nice and sweet. In this case, the vegetables they gave us were a Taiwanese staple. I don't actually know the exact name but you will come across them again and again. However, usually when they are fried they continue to exude lots and lots of moisture even when on the plate - these ones didn't. They tasted very fresh, with a rich iron taste (not too dissimilar to spinach) and a good crunch.

 The inside of the restaurant is rather nondescript. There are some photos of the PuLi countryside, big writings of Chinese characters and very little else. But that's OK. Not everywhere needs to be visually exciting, and this is one of those places that doesn't need to be. The food does the talking, and that's enough for me. Other recommendations I have been given are: fried tofu (su1zha2dou4fu3 酥炸豆腐), roast salted pork (kao3xian2zhu1rou4 烤鹹豬肉), meatball soup (yan4wan2tang1 燕丸湯). 

I can't recommend this place enough. It is totally worth heading up to TianMu to check it out, maybe on the way to BeiTou hot springs or YangMingShan to see the amazing scenery. Either way, you won't be disappointed! 

台北市士林區天母東路8巷65號

No.65, lane 8, TianMu East Road, ShiLin District, Taipei City. 

Happy Eating!

Taipei City - Honey Pig Restaurant

Honey Pig Restaurant is a new 24hr Korean BBQ place right in the centre of Taipei. Windows wrap around this corner restaurant, allowing you to see other peoples' tables to determine what looks good and what doesn't look to your liking. An even better aspect of Honey Pig? The menu has English on it! For a look at the menu, click on the link >> Honey Pig Menu

On the inside, you're seated on your own table with an extractor fan above each table to whip away that smokey BBQ odour. In the centre of each table there is a hot plate, with which you will shortly be able to BBQ on.

Each table is graced with these small selections of Korean style snacks to compliment your meal. You have two plates of crunchy seaweed, one plate of kimchi (absolutely mandatory for any Korean food excursion) and one plate of a strange candied potato. These were just OK, nothing ground-breaking.

OK, so we went for the pork bulgogi and baby octopus, spicy pork belly, steamed egg and also the fried rice. The pork bulgogi was spicy, but definitely manageable for someone with a moderate spice tolerance. The pork was minced and put into a tomato and chili based sauce. This was probably the star of the meal. The pork bulgogi included 8 baby octopi. Each baby octopus was presented whole, with quite a plain taste, truth be told. But when barbecued they did have a nice crunch and added some texture to the pork mince. 

As for the spicy pork belly, it was simply thin strips of pork belly, in what seemed to be a similar sauce to that of the bulgogi. The pork belly was ok, but it wasn't too dissimilar to what I could buy in the supermarket just down the road. However, being able to BBQ it on the hot plate meant I could get a nice caramelisation on the pork fat.

The steamed egg was nice. It was, as it said in the menu, just steamed egg. It was light, fluffy and it had a good taste. It was seasoned well, and I don't really have any complaints about this. 

The fried rice came around 10minutes after we had actually finished the entire meal. Which was rather strange. It turns out (through spying on other tables) that they had actually just forgotten about our fried rice (consequently spelled fired rice in the menu) until we had to remind them about it. In the end, I would have preferred if they had just not brought it to the table at all. The rice was overcooked, meaning that when it went onto the hot plate it just kind of went into a sticky mush. Within the rice there was a little kimchi, some bean sprouts and also some pepper. The overall taste was tolerable, however, the fact that the rice was overcooked and it arrived after the meal made me think it wasn't worth ordering in the first place.

We came at a busy time, and actually had to line up for around an hour. Maybe, now that it is 24hrs and they have been up and running for a little while, they are into the swing of things and that the service and the quality has improved (somehow). I'm in no rush to return to Honey Pig, but I do like the idea of a 24hr Korean BBQ in the centre of Taipei! 

415號之3, Section 4, Xinyi Road, 信義區台北市110

Xinyi/Keelung Road intersection, Taipei City

Happy Eating!

Taipei City - 金春發牛肉店 Jin Chun Fa Beef Restaurant

We actually stumbled across this restaurant around Chinese New Year as we were walking towards DiHua street (迪化街). This place is really close to YuanShan MRT station, maybe less than 5mins walk. The smell from this place is enough to lure any unsuspecting passer-by inside, salivating as they do. Yet, from the outside the shop looks fairly typical of any Beef Noodle Shop in Taipei. 

I'll be honest, the menu is quite daunting. But that's part of the fun of not speaking or reading Chinese, right? You can choose a few things and see what you get. It's exciting. However, speaking Chinese does have its advantages; we ordered the beef offal soup (niu2za2tang1牛雜湯) and the slices of beef in soup (sheng1tang4niu2rou4tang1生燙牛肉湯). If you're not a fan of offal then that's ok because, as you can see, the menu is vast. If this is the case, then it's best to avoid 肚，肝，or 腦.

The beef offal soup was fantastic. Slices of intestine and stomach interspersed with some fresh ginger made for a beautifully delicate broth. I am a big advocate of the clear soup, they tend to taste a little more fresh and light. This soup was packed with offal, all nicely cooked but still retaining a healthy bite. 

This beef soup is made famous in TaiNan (Southern Taiwan). With a lot of Taiwanese Beef Noodle soups, oftentimes the beef is frozen into a roll and then when the order comes in the chefs will cut a slice off the roll and cook it like that. However, this is done slightly differently: the meat is kept fresh, and slices are cut off and added into the hot soup at the last moment whilst in the bowl (not on the heat). So the thin slices of beef cook in the soup, itself. This makes for a deliciously tender meat. Again, the added ginger gives the soup a slight spice, but remains light and fresh. 

We weren't particularly hungry at the time we stumbled across this place. However, I will be returning, as the taste of the two dishes we had was enough to 'star' it onto my 'google maps'. Having since spoken to friends, they have recommended me the curry (chao3ga1li3niu2rou4fan4 炒咖哩牛肉飯) and I think I would also be extremely intrigued about the bull testicles (niu2rou4dan4牛肉蛋) . This place comes with high recommendations from me: its easily accessible, inexpensive, big enough that you shouldn't need to line up and the taste is really quite special. 

台北市大同區天水路20號

No. 20, Tianshui Rd., Datong District, Taipei City

Happy Eating!