Taiwan Day One

Looks like the only excuses I need to write about food these days are A: when a new variety of cat food comes out or B: when I go travelling abroad.

Seeing as my GF is Taiwanese and hasn’t seen her folks in nearly two years a trip to Taiwan was planned and this is the first of what will be many food travelogueablogs or blaveralallels or blogetraveloparallelograms.

Let’s start shall we？

First day in Yangmei and we’re in a cafe having breakfast at 6AM where this lady is rolling dumplings.

We, on the other hand, opted for pork and cabbage pot stickers (gyoza) and a crepe-omelette type deal. They were both very tasty.

On the other hand…

Gloopy soup with intestines and ‘garnish’. If you haven’t tried intestines before let me save you the trouble; a sinister chemical flavour mixes with strong offal taste and an accent of poo to produce a truly unpleasant experience. 2/10 would not try again.

After wandering around the neighbourhood GF opted for a ‘Lunchbox’. Think bentobox with added ‘I Don’t Give a Fuck’.

Underneath: rice, pickle; overneath: brined pork (left) and grilled chicken. The latter was really nice and tender and a great antidote to my intestinal problems earlier in the day.

After the afternoon spent playing pool (GFs parents have a massive pool table at home, yay!) we were off to a famous night market.

Obviously there was lots to see and do and all kinds of delectable foods to sample.

Like these incredible gay dogs!

Obviously I’m joking, right? They weren’t really gay.

These are sugar lollipops and although I didn’t try them I did like their shape, hence the picture.

This is a snake in a cage. I did not try this.

This is grilled chicken with spring onion, sweet sauce and seasoning.

Jellied pig blood lollipop. Sounds awful but was actually quite bland; in, I guess, only the way a pig blood lollipop can be.

Anyway, here’s a picture of some PISSED OFF snakes in a cage:

Maybe there could be a film about them? Things take a tragic turn for the worse when an internationally world famous food blogger goes one step too far and messes with Snakes In A Cage! Casting Morgan Freeman as Zordax, head of the Snakelings and Nicholas Cage as leader of a crack squad of Delta Force elite operatives who must stop Zordax and his Snakelings before they conquer Earth and turn it into The Union Of The Snake.

Jetlag is a hell of a drug. Moving swiftly on.

This is an uber hotdog. Very smokey and almost Bavarian in style; made from pork, it was tasty but was a tad too fatty for me and GF.

Grilled sweetcorn lollipop with spicy coating. Really tasty and fcking hot. I would recommend this a hundred times over.

This is fermented bean curd with sweet sauce, salad and corriander. I didn’t enjoy much as the taste of the bean curd reminded me a bit of the intestines from breakfast.

And that was the end of our trip round the night market and before we went home we stopped off at a grilled meat joint where GF ordered something quite remarkable.

Noodles, fried egg, heart attack, beef. Beef was lovely and so was the sauce but I couldn’t manage much as I was stuffed.

And so it was time for home.

I’m really enjoying Taiwan and the food is awesome; many more posts to come and – as always – I’d love to hear your thoughts on Twitter or in the comments!