Day 3
We’re still in Taichung and our guide suggested we try one of Taiwan’s top Teppanyaki places called 高林鐵板燒 which is near the National Museum of Natural Science:
We only stopped by for a short lunch and I had scallop, shredded rib eye, vegetables, rice and sweetcorn soup. All for about £15!
It all tasted pretty good although maybe the scallops could have been cooked a shade less. The restaurant also had their own home made chilli sauce and this was nice but a bit too strong on the dried shrimp taste IMHO.
We left Taichung had headed back to Yangmei where there is an abundance of street food, like this guy!
We ordered squid, Taiwanese sausage, spring onions wrapped in pork, chicken thigh, duck heart.
I find 99.9% of British sausages completely inedible and consider them bland, fatty monstrosities; but their taiwanese cousins are sweet and full of flavour. The chicken thighs were cooked with Thai Basil and everything else was quite tasty too.
Day 4
As luck would have it, right next door to the grandparents in Yangmei is a really good street vendor:
I ordered beef noodle soup served with coriander, spring onion and noodles:
It was super tasty and really healthy. The beef was very tender and was something like beef shin cooked for a fair few hours before service.
We also ordered seafood noodle soup, intestines in a rich and sweet sauce, meatballs in broth, tofu with a slightly soft boiled egg:
I’ve tried intestines before and the taste is too strong for me (like tripe) but these tasted mild, although they were very fatty. Everything else was cooked to a very high standard and I’ve no doubt a place like this in some hipster joint in London would make an absolute killing. For Taiwan this standard of food is normal and that’s what’s crazy about the food here: the default is “better than anything in the UK”.
In the evening we were treated to a meal with the family friends at a fairly ‘rustic’ establishment:
And such a night out with relatives usually translates to “lots of food and even more beer”.
Here’s what we had:
A simple soup with stock, coriander, spring onion.
Some kind of angry looking white fish with a sweet tomato sauce.
Braised ham. Tasted like it had been brined.
Another kind of white fish with spooky halloween sauce which was just wasabi and soy. I wasn’t too sure about this one. Needed more sour elements to cut through.
Seafood frittata (or omelette, if you’re not as posh as me).
Some pork and vegetable stir fry. This was quite nice.
And that was that. I left very drunk (‘natch) and very full.
Stay tuned for more updates in the coming days but if you have any burning comments, leave them below!
Another goddam foodblog 