Taiwanese Food Is Not Chinese Food
September 11, 2008 Posted by Chris
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Having been in Taiwan for a few weeks now, I must say that the food here is nothing that I could have expected. The US and Europe have a certain taste of chinese food and that's all that I've had my entire life. From what I know, that taste of Chinese food comes from a certain part of china (not taiwan) and it just spread throughout the rest of the world. I laugh at the thought of finding sweet and sour pork in Taiwan, because you won't. One thing I can say with much certainty is that they are not afraid of using a lot of oil while cooking.
The first set of photos are from more westernized types of restaurants. We went to a small 'cook-in-front-of-you' type of place in the Taichung night market. It was actually really good, we got sooo much food. We ordered beef, chicken, mushrooms, pork, squid and shrimp. Each order was cooked right then and there and came with a bowl of rice and side veggies.
Then naturally, Mcdonald's! Except most everything is in Chinese and their menu is fairly degraded from the American menu. I got a Big Mac and quite honestly it was exactly the same as one from the US. The Mcdonalds was open 24 hours which was new to me. Most of the ones in the US close at 10pm and a few in Europe stay open until 1-3am, never 24 hours. The last, kind of random, photo was a chicken pizza sandwich I ordered at the international studies cafe with some jasmine tea. It was good...not great.
The next few pictures are food from a normal Taiwanese restaurant. First the menu...all in Chinese. We ordered rice, veggies (mostly spinach), some pasta (which looked pretty good), pork dumplings, soup &some other beef noodles. I liked the beef noodles the most, but the pasta was pretty good as well. One thing that I've been surprised by is how noodles are more popular than rice. Somehow I thought we'd be eating a lot more white rice than we have.
For my breakfast and lunch snack I've been getting these small sandwiches (seen in the first picture below). They are sold for $0.50 USD each which is pretty cheap and they seem to hit the spot. The small biscuits are actually Taiwanese Mooncakes. The Mooncake festival (also called Mid-autumn festival) is now so it's pretty easy to find them around here. The last photo is the cover of a menu of a bar/club we went to. It was suppose to be some take on a British pub but...it was no where near what a British pub would be like (for starters no Guinness).
These last two photos I snapped rather quickly while shopping at the nearby supermarket. The ones that we go to are called "Carrefour" which is a French supermarket chain that for some reason is all over Taiwan and apparently China as well. I was really surprised to see Skippy Peanut Butter & Chocolate Syrup, but mostly they actually had Nutella!
Posted: September 11, 2008 under Articles
I love many different styles of Chinese food, Such as Cantonese Food , SiChuan Food, Shanghai Food, Hunan Food…
Maybe I was glamoured by LuoDaYou, A famous Taiwan balladeer. He had a song named “Lukang, the Little Town”.
So I only tried Taiwan Food once at the restaurant named Bellagio (Lukang, the Little Town). But I was so disappointed about the taste, And too much oil too.
It is great to have found your site, I haven’t been back to Taiwan for a couple of years now, and it’s nice to read about some of your experiences. I do miss the food very much! I’ve always categories Taiwanese food as one of the style of Chinese food, it’s kind of like dim sum, it’s not your typical Chinese food but it’s Cantonese style food.
Oh and if you look for it, I’m sure you can find sweet and sour pork somewhere in Taiwan, they call it “sugar vinegar pork spare ribs” (糖醋排骨 tang tsu pai guu)
I hope you have a great time there while studying abroad, there’s lots to see, learn and eat!
Thanks Ann! Actually since I wrote this post one of the students here showed me 糖醋排骨 (tang tsu pai guu).
I’ve already tried it, not exactly the same but still very good! Come back to Taiwan soon =D.