Taipei City - 阜杭豆漿 FuHang Soy Milk

Value for money: 9/10

Cleanliness: 6/10

Service: 9/10

Quality of food: 8/10

Accessibility: 9/10

Overall: 8/10

阜杭豆獎 FuHang Breakfast store is a hugely popular Taiwanese breakfast shop near ShanDao Temple. Right off the bat, I have to be honest with you: you will wait a long time. Sorry, but whatever time of the day and on whatever day you decide to go, you will wait any time up to an hour. Is it worth it? Absolutely! 

This was Saturday morning at 7:45am. It's busy like this up until when it closes at 12:30. However, if you are an extra special early worm, you could always get there for when it opens at 5:30am??

So the restaurant shares a floorspace with other restaurants along the back, but the bonus of coming at this time is that nowhere else has opened yet, so finding a seat is made that tiny bit easier. However, my suggestion would be to queue up until you hit the top of the stairs and then send someone in your party to find a table. It took me around 10mins to wait for a table, by which time the queue had moved and we had already collected our food. But, don't be a table hogger, nobody likes that. One woman was sat at a table with 3 empty seats and whoever she was with was very clearly way down in the line, as she sat there alone fending people off for the duration of our stay.

This is the counter, showing you quite clearly the process for which you have to order. Although it is very fast, it feels well controlled and the staff are clearly very competent. The staff speak a variety of languages, so they may just launch English at you to speed up the process.

This is where the mighty 厚燒餅 hòu shāo bǐng which is the signature thick sesame seed cake (bread). The method is essentially like an Indian tandoor: the sesame seed cake (bread) mixture is slapped onto the inside wall of anvextremely hot kiln/oven where it gets baked at high temperatures to allow a crispy skin but a chewy inside. 

Here is the process on how they make the Taiwanese breakfast staple - 油條 yóu tiáo fried dough stick. This is essentially a bit like a cross between churro and doughnut: the dough is made into a long sausage like shape, flattened down a little, scored with a knife to make the cooking process quicker and then dropped into very hot oil to make it puff up. I think it is safe to say that all of the traditional Taiwanese breakfast stores have these (the ones where they sell home-made soy milk etc, not the ones that do sandwiches). You will see a lot of people ordering just one dough stick and a hot soy milk, wherein they will dunk the dough stick into the soy milk, and have that for their breakfast (not my cup of tea, really).

Here's what we ordered: 

1. 鹹豆漿 xián dòu jiāng Salty soy milk 

2. 厚燒蛋夾油條 hòu shāo dàn jiā yóu tiáo  Thick sesame seed cake with dough stick and egg

3. 甜酥餅 tián sū bǐng Crispy sweet pastry

1. 鹹豆漿 $30

Now, bear with me on this. If you're anything like me when I ate this for the first time, you may need some convincing to eat this salty, almost congealed mixture. 

Inside the bowl we have a salted soy milk which has (as it has cooled) become a little lumpy and congealed. However, if you can get your head around the texture, then I assure you that the taste is very good, indeed. It is salty, as the dish is named so, but I think this is only because the Taiwanese don't really have a word for savoury that is used often in dining. I would term this more as savoury soy milk, as it isn't that salty. As the hot soy milk and egg mixture has cooled, it has blended into one another and created pockets of eggy, soy milk goodness. 

Furtheremore, there are also scallions inside the soy milk (more like a soup) and if you enjoy spice in your breakfast I would recommend adding a dollop of the chili sauce to give the bowl a nice kick. The extra dough stick on top is nice, but I like my dough stick to be crunchy, otherwise it just feels a little stodgy and heavy.



2. 厚燒蛋夾油條 hòu shāo dàn jiā yóu tiáo  Thick sesame seed cake with dough stick and egg $60

Every time you go, this is the absolute must order! 

We ordered it with the 油條 and the 蛋 dàn (egg). I feel like this combination is great! It's more than enough for your breakfast, trust me! 

You can see just how thick the cake (bread) is, when wrapped around the dough stick. The bread is salty around the outside, but not in the middle, so it balances out very nicely. The dough stick isn't very greasy at all (which a lot of them can be) and the egg is cooked with the classic combination of just egg and scallions. I can't recommend it enough. It's definitely one of my favourite breakfast stores in Taipei. I just wish it wasn't so busy all the time, so I could go more...

3. 甜酥餅 $22

This is the kind of breakfast dessert, to compliment the salty soy milk and the salty sesame seed cake (bread). 

Inside, you can see the many layers of the pastry as it has puffed up and created pockets in between the layers. The pastry is wonderfully rich and well balanced. The sugary paste inside the pastry (which you can see sitting on the bottom layer) is great and as you take a bite you get a mouth full of rich and crunchy pastry, mixing with sweet and thick sugar - awesome! 

My advice? save it as a snack and have it for your 11am snack.

Overall, 阜杭豆漿 comes very highly rated, from myself. There are a huge amount of tourists (western, Japanese, Chinese) lining up, so it must be getting some very good publicity in these countries/guidebooks, too. It clearly is doing incredibly as a business and restaurant, and I would strongly advise you to check it out if you live here or if you are travelling and passing through. It is your typical Taiwanese breakfast experience. 

Best dish: 2. 厚燒蛋夾油條 hòu shāo dàn jiā yóu tiáo  Thick sesame seed cake with dough stick and egg - it is a triumph in breakfast dishes and I feel myself craving that salty, thick sesame seed cake (bread) to eat with egg almost every weekend. This could also be made as an incredible western hybrid if you fill it with some bacon and tomato ketchup, too (bold statement!)

Dish I wouldn't order again: I'd order all of them again, twice over.

Eating in Taipei

台北市中正區忠孝東路1段108號2F

2F, No.108, ZhongXiao East Road, Section 1, ZhongZheng District, Taipei City

FuHang Soy Milk on Facebook

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Taipei City - 奪愛印度咖哩 Dazzle Indian Restaurant

*Invited*

From the outside, the restaurant seems a bit confusing: the sign in the bottom picture looks new and quite nice. However, the shop front looks a bit worn and the colour looks washed out. Fortunately, the inside more accurately aligns with the bottom picture, not the top one. So we are in luck!

The restaurant recently (in the last year) had a complete refit. It looks very clean and well kept, with no marks on anything. Really, it looks like it was done yesterday.

The TV on the wall as you come into the restaurant plays a steady stream of Indian music which has become the norm in many restaurants. I am not such a big fan of this, personally, as I tend to feel it is a bit taccy. However, I do understand why it is done: to make you feel like you're in an Indian restaurant. Each to their own, I guess...

(The menu is all in English, hooray!) Here is what we ordered:

1. Chicken Tikka Masala

2. Handi Chicken

3. Chicken Patiala

4. Reshmi Kabab

5. Chicken tikka starter

6. Samosa

7. Coconut rice

8. Nan bread

9. Poori

1. Chicken Tikka Masala

Chicken Tikka Masala is a very popular dish all around the world and has become synonymous with what we feel to be Indian cuisine. The weird part: It is thought (and strongly believed, but remember to not shoot the messenger) to have originated in Glasgow, Scotland - over 7,000 miles away from India itself. 

The main characteristics of the dish are a yogurt and tomato base, tandoor roasted chicken and plenty of onions. It is not, typically, very spicy. However, asking for more heat is always allowed, naturally. This chicken tikka masala was good, albeit without spice. One thing I really like about chicken done in a tikka style, is that it is first cooked on skewers which are dropped into a tandoor (stiflingly hot traditional Indian clay oven), this means that the edges are slightly crispy/burnt but in some miraculous way the meat remains succulent and juicy. This is exactly the process here, too. Cooked up with thick slices of onion and then lavishly coated with a rich tomato and yogurt sauce, the dish is well done: it has balance, it is rich, it is tasty and, most importantly, it has the tang of lemon.

2. Handi Chicken

Handi chicken is called 'Handi' simply because of the method in which it is cooked: the curry and meat is cooked in a large mouthed, deep cooking pot (with the original pots, and the most traditional pots, being made of clay). This Handi chicken was ok, but it didn't blow me away with either flavour, or spice. The sauce was nicely sour and flavorsome, but it didn't leave a memorable taste in my mouth.

3. Chicken Patiala

This wasn't what I was expecting from a chicken patiala. The patiala is a Punjab dish from Northern India. Dried spices, garlic, chili and ginger are all used in the base of the dish to marinate the meat. When the meat has been marinated, it is then wrapped in a tortilla-style wrap (not particularly traditional of this dish) and arranged on the plate, then lathered with wonderful cooking juices. 

I was excited to see this because they have taken a classic in the patiala and then added their own spin on it. The dish was good, and I would recommend it as a solid sharing dish. It is quite filling and I certainly couldn't finish the plate by myself, even without rice or nan. The flavour of the curry was nice and rich with a mild spice. Whereas it looks greasy, it really didn't have a greasy taste at all. 

4. Reshmi Kabab

The reshmi kabab has it's origins in Pakistan. When I have ordered it before, we have done it as like a sharing starter with a yogurt mint dip and some salad. 

The meat inside is chicken and it is cooked wonderfully. The chicken meat is marinated in an array of spices, then slid onto a skewer and dropped into the tandoor (as previously mentioned for the cooking process of the tikka). I really enjoyed the flavours of the dish: sourness, saltiness and a very mild light spice imparting flavours all the way through the chicken meat. The kaba was cooked beautifully remaining tender inside and the meat had that charred crispiness that you should be looking for in tandoor cooked plates. 

As for the foam on top, I really am unsure what it is. However, I can tell you this much: it doesn't add or take anything from the taste of the dish as it is fairly tasteless. It just adds to the dish looking a bit weird, really.

5. Chicken tikka starter

More like a chicken tikka kabab cooked in the same way as the reshmi kabab (tandoor). The meat has clearly been marinated for a long time as it oozes with flavour and juices. The peppers and onions seperating the lightly spiced meat give bursts of sweetness and crunch and, finally, the charred mixed vegetables (charred due to being served on this kind of platter) give smokiness and additional textures to the dish. 

I really enjoyed this and I wouldn't think twice about ordering it again. 

6. Samosa

This is something that I have found near impossible to get hold of in Taipei. And, if you do, they are not good quality. For instance, I tried the ones in DingXi nightmarket and they were greasy, had little flavour and even less filling inside. However, these ones were pretty good and certainly satiated me, at least for a couple of weeks!

Here is the chicken samosa. Generous chunks of marinated chicken are put inside with onion and more spices. The samosa itself is really well cooked and very crunchy. I am not used to eating samosa so crunchy, but this was actually quite nice.

This is the better of the two, in my opinion. This is the vegetarian samosa with potato inside. The potato is light and fluffy and contrasts with the light greasiness of the exterior samosa. It mops up all the flavour and delivers it in several little mouthfuls (or big, depending on what you're going for).

7. Coconut rice

It says coconut rice, but I have eaten this rice many times under the name of Pilau rice. The unique color comes from a mix of spices, but predominantly, turmeric. Whilst turmeric is classed as a spice, it doesn't offer a lot in the spice department, yet offers more to liven the dish with color. The rice is well cooked and the portion size is ample for one person. However, personally, I prefer to have a nan bread with my curry and usually choose to omit the rice. 

8. Nan bread

If you have eaten Indian food before, most likely you have also eaten Nan bread. Nan bread is a flat bread that is stuck to the inside of the tandoor oven to bake quickly. The bread doesn't rise and the texture can range from being quite stodgy to quite crispy. This slots into the latter of those options - crispy. The Nan bread is thin in some places but thicker in others; meaning that sometimes you get a crunch and sometimes you get some bread. 

On a personal level, I prefer my Nan to be slightly thicker as I enjoy mopping up the curry and the meat with the bread (I will often use my hands to eat curry). This was made a little more difficult with this Nan bread having sporadic crunchy bits, but it was still quite good. The flavour was good and because it was thin in places it did remain light and not heavy in any way. 

9. Poori

Poori/Puri is something I have't tried before. Poori is made using wheat flour, salt and water and is deep fried. The bread puffs up to create a crispy outside and a hollow inside. The size of this poori was around the same size as an American football, which is pretty interesting! The bread itself didn't taste greasy and it was remarkably filling (due to the use of wheat flour over white flour). The wheat flour adds a slightly healthier and denser flavour to the bread and is perfect to scoop up any of those leftover curry sauces you have left behind! 

Overall, I was impressed with this place! The inside is very clean and well kept, and the food is quite similar to the Indian cuisine that we get in the UK. I have previously eaten at another Indian restaurant in Taipei and I was so disappointed that for the last few years I have avoided eating it again. However, now I don't need to do that. When I have my craving for Indian food I will definitely be coming by here for the Reshmi Kabab and Chicken Tikka Masala. 

Best dish: 5. Chicken tikka starter and 4. Reshmi Kabab - They were both really great, definitely on my order list for next time.

Dish I wouldn't order again: 8. Nan bread - Nothing to do with the taste, more about personal preference: I prefer thick and doughy Nan bread. 

台北市大安區仁愛路三段84號

Number 84, Section 3, RenAi Road, DaAn District, Taipei City

On Facebook, here

Eating in Taipei

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Taipei City - 萬芳冰室 Man Fong Hong Kong style restaurant

The WanFang Hong Kong style restaurant is based in the 松山區 SongShan District of Taipei City. There a multitude of 香港茶餐廳 Hong Kong Tea restaraunts in Taipei, all specializing in the small plates that Hong Kong has become famous for. Plates such as ShaoMai, Pineapple bread, fried noodles, fried rice with sausage and various other dumpling dishes. 

On in the inside, the restaurant is fairly plane, with nothing particularly setting it aside from other restaurants. A lot of restaurants like to showcase the infamous tins of Hong Kong milk that they use in their tea or coffee. Hong Kong, in fact, is a very popular tea drinking destination and mainly for the milky black/red tea.

The restaurant is bright and there is ample seating, with another little seating part around the corner where we sat. There are also several booths each seating around 4 people. 

Here's what we ordered:

1. 生炸雞腿 shēng zhá jī tuǐ Fried chicken leg

2. 乾炒牛肉河粉 gān chǎo niú ròu hé fěn Dry fried flat noodles with beef

3. 冰火菠蘿包 bīng huǒ bō luó bāo Hong Kong special pineapple bread with butter

4.檸檬茶 níng méng chá Lemon black tea 

1. 生炸雞腿 shēng zhá jī tuǐ Fried chicken leg

The fried chicken leg here was one of the main draws for coming here. Fried to give it a wonderfully crispy skin, but still maintaining great tenderness of meat inside. The skin is seasoned really nice with a light spice and a good saltiness. Chicken skin isn't hugely healthy, so I wouldn't suggest eating more than one of these at any given time. However, it's too good to not eat!  

The fries are just ok, nothing special. This dish would be much, much, much better if the fries were taken care of

2. 乾炒牛肉河粉 gān chǎo niú ròu hé fěn Dry fried flat noodles with beef

Slices of thin beef, flat noodles, green onions and bean sprouts round off this triumph in fried noodle dishes. The sauce was a little salty, but the sweetness of the bean sprouts balanced it out rightly. The green onions also added freshness to the dish. The beef was well seasoned and, like the chicken, was crunchy on the outside and also tender on the inside. 

3. 冰火菠蘿包 bīng huǒ bō luó bāo Hong Kong special pineapple bread with butter

The pineapple bun is as I have said before here: YanJi Hong Kong tea restaurant , fantastic and really a must-order at any Hong Kong tea restaurant such as this. 

The outside of the bun is crunchy and the inside is fluffy and soft. The slice of butter wedged in between the two halves is rich and delicious. However, my main gripe about this is that this pineapple bun is not warmed. Warm pineapple bun is a think to behold and having eaten it before, I cannot settle for anything less. This, unfortunately, was less. The taste was fine and a solid contender for pineapple buns all over, but please please please warm it next time! 

4.檸檬茶 níng méng chá Lemon black tea 

Yep, it's lemon black tea. Nothing to really explain...

All in all, this restaurant is pretty good. However, if I am looking to order Hong Kong style food then I prefer to go here: YanJi Hong Kong tea restaurant . However, that is not to say that if you are in the area then avoid this place, totally not. The fried chicken is pretty decent, just not worth going out of the way for.

Best dish: 2. 乾炒牛肉河粉 gān chǎo niú ròu hé fěn Dry fried flat noodles with beef - tasty, different, good textures and overall a well-rounded dish.

Dish I wouldn't order again: 3. 冰火菠蘿包 bīng huǒ bō luó bāo Hong Kong special pineapple bread with butter - they just need to heat it up so that butter melts a little, please.

台北市松山區南京東路5段6巷12弄16號

No.16, Alley 12, Lane 66, Section 5, NanJing East Road, SongShan District, Taipei City 

ManFong on Facebook

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