Taiwan - Food

Taiwan like most international cities has a wonderful diverse selection of foods to chose from. During our trip there we ate in Korean restaurants, Japanese restaurants, Chinese restaurants and most importantly, food from street vendors. I say 'most importantly' because street food vendors were everywhere. It's amazing the diversity of foods you can get off those small carts. Most of the foods you buy are portable. 'Food on a stick' is the easiest way to describe it.

Fishballs (on a stick) and fruit stands.

Interested in some meat? This vendor had every species of animal on a stick you could possibly ever want. I opted for the tofu and squid selections (on a stick of course!).

After you chose your selection this guy starts BBQing your meat. After a couple of minutes on the grill your snack is ready - piping hot!

Meat on a stick isn't enough? This lady is selling corn ... on a stick.

More stick food. What I found interesting about the street food vendors in Taipei is although you can find them everywhere, it's actually against the law to sell street food. While we were eating our meat on a stick we noticed large groups of street food carts were quickly rushing in our direction. Suddenly the guy we bought our food from grabbed his cart and started pushing it quickly in the direction all the other street food vendors were going. Some of the vendors continued to cook while their carts were being pushed. Think of it as a massive caravan of food carts racing down the street! At the end of this caravan there was one police office on a motorbike forcing the food vendors to leave. We stood and watched this interesting site (occasionally biting into some meat on a stick) until all the vendors were so far in the distance we couldn't see them anymore. Five minutes went by and then I noticed the carts were all coming back! They came back, parked their carts at the same location as before, opened up shop, and started cooking again. Another five minutes went by and the police officer came back! Same as before, the caravan of food vendors grabbed their carts and started rushing away. Guess what? Once again they came back, set up shop, and continued to cook food.
I found out later that although it's illegal to sell street food the vendors never get punished. There's no tickets ever written or jail time ever served. The most the police ever do is chase the vendors away knowing full well they will be back. I guess the police know that these carts, for most of the vendors, are the only income they have. If you take that away they have nothing. So everyday there's this cat and mouse game played. The police come to chase them away but the food always gets cooked and eaten!

This shop was selling various snacky food in front of their store. The huge mound of yellow stuff is actually dried squid.

We stopped off for at this restaurant that specialized in wheat grass deserts.

The black stuff is the wheat grass. The other things in the bowl are flavoured tapioca.

This desert is called aiya. It's made from a type of seed (sorry, I don't know what the seed is). It has the consistancy of watery jello and served cold in a bowl with ice. It has a citrus type taste to it.

More eating! Yes, we did a lot of eating this trip! We stopped off at this famous restaurant that serves only oyster noodle soup.



This video shows how amazingly fast this guy was serving out the soup to the customers.



The restaurant had no tables or chairs. It was just a store front. After buying their soup, customers had to eat it standing up on the sidewalk and street. As you can tell by this video this place is pretty popular.

Next stop, an underground cocaine processing factory!

Just kidding, these guys aren't cutting and bagging cocaine, they're making dumplings.

See, dumplings! Would I lie to you?

This photo was taken at the Chiayi Distillery. It's famous for it's rice wines.

All of their wide selection of wines are packaged in special artistic bottles.

I was excited when I found out we were going here because it brought back memories of the great times Aimee and I had on wine tours in the past. Well, rice wine and grape wine are two different worlds! As we sampled the wines I felt my insides slowly being dissolved away.

And after a while, I couldn't handle the taste anymore. This photo is showing me sampling their rice wine that's fermented with ... chicken fat! Yes chicken fat! It apparently has health benefits. Health benefits or not, I wasn't enojying my chicken fat rice wine. It was pretty hard to swallow.

The distillery had a great informative museum attached to the wine shop. It documented the history of not only the distillery but rice wine as well. How rice wine is made. How it's aged. How it's bottled... There was even a section that showed a timeline of all the bottles used over the years.

As you can tell, they've had a wide diversity of bottles over the years!

Before we returned back to the Philippines we ate our last meal in a Japanese restautant. All of the food courses came out beautifully decorated. I really liked how they displayed this desert. I loved the chair. I was debating on hiding it in my coat and leaving the restaurant with it. It would make an awesome cellphone holder. Thankfully good Kenn beat out evil Kenn and I didn't steal the chair.



The finally posting on this blog is the awesome techno sounds of sushi. Now I know there's nothing original about a sushi conveyor belt. We even have them in Vancouver. I just thought watching the sushi slowly creep by with the sounds to techno music in the background is actually quite relaxing. So if you're feeling a little stressed, here you go! Watch the sushi ... all your troubles and fears will melt away!

I think I gained 5 pounds during this trip!