Monday, June 30, 2008

Unique Taiwan Food

Taiwan is famous for its creative food from their dumplings or yu tiao to newer type of food like the popular bubble tea.

And in fact, apart from the usual delicacies, there are many other unique food from Taiwan which I've tried over my trip in Taiwan. Over in Pingtung & Tainan, our friend & her family members & friends hosted us to a string of lunches & dinners, giving us a glimpse of the local food which may seem ordinary to them, but unique to us.

Here is a compilation of some of the unique food along the way.

1. Pork Knuckles
Yes we have these back home as well, served in a lil sweet dark sauce.



This is actually the specialty of this area somewhere a lil off Pingtung. The whole streets' restaurants serve this, even displaying it in front of their restaurant.



2. More Unique Crabs
In Tainan, we visited a rather crowded restaurant which serves very unique dishes. Just like the previous restaurant, this too serve some food which are close to home.

But there are also some rather unique methods of cooking - like these crabs.



There is also the buns filled with a kind of cream. It's so well cut & placed back, that I didn't know it had some fillings at first!

3. Cream filled buns


What makes this restaurant special is also because they seem to be like a restaurant setting, with proper tables & chairs.



But beside the entrance of the restaurant is actually a take-away counter, similar to that of fast foods. It's quite a contrast seeing the 2 together.


Just look at the queue - apparently this is the best restaurant in this town


We definitely ate at a popular restaurant & can't go wrong.. even Taiwan's famed supermodel Chin Ling dines here!


Now I can say we dined at the same restaurant haha


I'm not going to bore with many other similar local dishes that we have back home. So despite having eaten a lot & tried so many types of dishes, but one last unique food in Taiwan which I must share is non other than this one.

4. Herbal Soup With Balls
We've heard about puppies, but this? Our Taiwanese friends were all so easy on the soup & they said that it can help the complexion!


Would you try this?


Guess that's enough of food for now, and next up other things that make Taiwan special (oh, I just so love the island!) :)

12 comments:

  1. hi it should be YOU TIAO, not YU.

    YU is fish.

    the Cream Filled Buns.. is it called "guan cai ban" in Taiwan?

    i went there 10 years ago. can't remember much nowadays :)

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  2. ew the balls. but the crab looks nice!! the orange part, is it the roe?

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  3. I echo what Xin said, "Ew, the balls." I'll pass.

    Thanks for the food intro, QC.

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  4. If the queue is long, that means the restaurant doesn't serve fast enough...

    Some of the most well known Taiwan food must be beef noodle and dried beef 牛肉干.

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  5. Interesting food, though I won't try the balls! Yuck!

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  6. hi haan
    thank you for the proper pinyin :)

    xin
    yes, its the roe :)

    happysurfer & foongpc
    i guess a lot of us will pass it! haha. seems like the food is kinda weird huh... but sometimes i wonder other ppl think we eat weird food too haha

    khengsiong
    oh yes, did try the dried beef - can be kinda filling. forgot to take any photos of it ooops haha

    on the long queue, its quite a nice point of view you have. tho so far, from my experience taiwan has been rather efficient :)

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  7. i dont understand, error appeared when im about to publish my comment. aaawwwhhh. ill try it again. anyhow,

    any food that is not accustom to our eyes and taste is weird and strange. But if they ate it and nothing happens to them afterawhile, then there’s no harm on trying it I GUESS. Afterall, that is an exciting activity we do when we travel

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  8. hi jez, totally agree. sometimes what we eat are weird as well. just that we are so accustomed heh. i saw a tv documentary on 'weird food' from the western perspective and honestly not all are weird. and interestingly, they also say that actually blue cheese & all are also weird as they are actually bacteria food :)

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  9. Is the pork knuckles like the one in the Taiwanese series, " niang jia" on Astro? :) Anyway, i would try the crabs next time when i go to Tainan.

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  10. Thank you for your nice posting.
    it is really helpful to us.
    such a nice topics.

    Bathmate

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  11. i would try more unique crab place. hopefully they have some interesting crab dishes there.

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  12. I bought a bag full of square chunks of brown stuff in Taiwan, in Jinshan town on the old street. They cut it from big rounds that looked like Dutch cheeses. It has a great taste, kind of a minty cinnamon flavor that is hard to describe. It has an outer crust (on the big rounds) that is somewhat lighter shade of brown with spots all over it. Do you have any idea what it is?

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Oh hey, thank you for commenting! :)