Thursday, June 4, 2009

City of snacks | 9:24 PM

One thing that you will love about Taiwan is that it has a wide variety of food and snacks. You can just forgo those typical rice and noodle , and replace your dinner with 5 or 6 snacks while walking down their night markets.

Here are my top 10 personal preferences.

Number 10

As you can see from the signboard, this is a shop that sells mainly fried prawn delights in Tainan. If you never been here before, you cannot say that you ever come to Tainan! (according to my friend in Tainan)

Those fried shrimp rolls make you just wanna grab the second one!

look at the queue in the stall. It's really that good! Do come and pay a visit if you ever come to Tainan. By the way, Tainan is named the city of snacks in Taiwan. Most of the food in Taiwan origniated from Tainan and the good food stuffs are all here.

Number 9

Dont worry, this isnt some rice with mealworms on it. though it appears to look like mealworms. It is called "Ru Rou fan". Mainly braised pork with sauce plus the rice. I ate this quite a lot here and it tasted delicious. But one qualm anyone might have is that this rice comes with lots of fatty part of the pork. For those health conscious ppl, you can request for less fatty meat if you ever wanna try.

Number 8

Come to Taiwan, how can we ever forget about their bubble Tea. SweetTalk in Singapore is far from the bubble Tea in Taiwan! Taiwanese bubble tea is so much better , typically a common drink here to quench thirst as it is easily available in the night market. They even have 4 different level of sweetness (ranging from no sweet, low sweet, medium sweetness and Very sweet), certainly cater to the needs of different people whom wanna different level of sweetness.

For me, I have low tolerance for sweet stuffs. usually I go for low sweet or at most medium sweetness. If you are those who mixed ribena (90%) and water (10%), you can try the very sweet and "tian" until ants come to you!

Number 7

As the name said, this pancake looks alike to our Singapore version of Roti Prata. But now you dont eat with curry or sugar. Instead, with the same kind of roti prata, you have spring onion and egg inside. It is usually wrapped with other ingredients like chicken ,pork etc to make it even tastier. One qualm about it, its extremely oily for some of the stall and you can end up with whole mouth of oil. But its NICE!

Number 6

"Chua" bing!
this gigantic fruitty ice shavings is a must try in Taiwan!
Especially if you go Kao Xiong, you must go and see the extreme version of "chua chua " bing!
the above ice shaving you see is only 3 times, it can go as big as 20 times !

The bowl is enough to wash your face in the basin. Can "chua" si ni!
The actual one will be filled to the brim.

Number 5

Forget about the "ji-pa" in Shilin in bukit panjang plaza or any shopping malls in spore. Taichung offers a even juicy and meaty "ji-pa" for the meat lovers. Especially this stall , eating the whole piece can be considered dinner for me. Less skin but more chicken!!!

Number 4

"Oh ah jian" or fried omelette with oyster. Definitely different from the one you can find in Singapore. This version is surely better and tastier! Shilin night market in Taipei offers lots of good ones. If you dont like oyster, you can also try "xia-ren jian"(prawn) or "hua-zi jian(squid). Equally shiok!!!

Number 3

No, i am not eating a coffin. This snack is called "Guan Cai ban" or some people might call it coffin bread. It is grilled toasted bread with a deep hollow in the centre, filled with corn soup with meat fillings. As the hollow resembles like a tomb while the fillings are like a coffin, so people here call it" Guan cai ban". I ate the revised version, with chicket cutlet in the hollow. Equally nice. Definitely worth trying when you come to Taiwan. But the BEST orignal version can only be found in Tainan.

Number 2

Finally reaching number 2. This snacks are not commonly found in some night market. I tried one at shilin and another at feng jia. Feng Jia @ taichung is still the best I ever had. It is like a gluttinous sausage (Da-chang) with fillings such as taiwanese sausage (xiao-chang) ,peanut powder, veggie and other small combination of ingredients that make it an all time favourite in Taiwan.

Finally, the number 1 position

Ah Zong mian Xian!!!!!!!!!

I think those whom have tried it before @ Ximending in Taipei will agree with me. It just too SUPERB to describe with words :)

Other snacks worth considered:

Banana Ice ( Found @ fengjia night market), Ru-wei ( found everywhere) and MUST mention, for those sweet potato lovers, you must not miss the "di-gua qiu". Nice and QQ feeling

Stay away snacks

Ta bu le Tahan!!!!!