Travel in Taiwan --- Delicious Foods That You MUST TRY

Taiwan, an island on west Pacific, is known for its astonishing landscape, friendly and helpful people, and impressively delicious local snacks and foods. 

Besides famous attractions such as Taipei 101, Taroko National Park, and Alishan, we are proud of having diverse kinds of snacks and foods that attract and impress everyone who had ever tried.

For foreigners, restaurants like Din Tai Fung, drinks like Bubble milk tea, and local snacks like stinky tofu and oyster omelet are the must tries when they first visit Taiwan. Also, most of them go to Shilin Night Market, Raohe Night Market, and Tamshui Old Street to find some local food and experience the atmosphere.

Of course those are where you can go if you visit Taiwan. However, those spots are full of tourists and become too commercialized nowadays. So I’m going to tell you how to eat like local people and experience the real life in Taiwan.

1.      Local breakfast

In Taiwan, we often buy breakfast outside and have it, especially students and office workers. I will recommend you to try Taiwanese breakfast such as rice milk (made of rice and nut), Chinese omelet with diverse ingredient choices, and pepper fried noodles with a sunny egg on top. If you can eat a lot, you must try all of them! It won’t even cost more than 4 euros!

Where to eat: You can google for the best one around you, or just find the one with lots of people waiting in line near a school! (Most of the time the store near schools provides great taste!)

2.      Taiwanese noodles, rice, and rice noodles

We eats noodles, rice, and rice noodles a lot in Taiwan, and there’re a lot of choices. For example, noodles, rice, and rice noodles can be with soup or without soup, and there’re different flavors to choose, some of them even sell dumplings. It’s usually cheap and tasty! For Taiwanese, it can be lunch, dinner, and even breakfast.

Where to eat: I’ll recommend you to try venders and stores in traditional markets. You can find reviews on google in advance or just ask people in the market to recommend for you.

3.      Stir fries

If you want to try diverse Chinese and Taiwanese food at same time, and also want to experience the unique culture, you must try stir fries! You can order different kinds of foods at one time because they are really cheap, and don’t forget to try some great Taiwanese beer. In these stores, people usually drink beer and have dinner with their friends, so they chat loudly and the atmosphere is quite hilarious. It’s where Taiwanese people, especially middle-aged people, goes to hang out with their friends.

Where to eat: There’re some street that has lots of stir fires stores gathered, you can just google the one near you. Remember to avoid going to area with many tourists, you might be ripped off if you didn’t check the price in advance.

4.      Night market / Old street

When it comes to Taiwan, lots of people will say that night markets and old streets are the place you must visit. In these places, you can find a street full of venders and shops, selling clothes, food, drinks, and diverse products. In some night markets you can also find places to play some traditional games like pinball and ring toss.

Where to go: I’ll recommend you to go to places like Ningxia night market, Yansan night market, and Daxi old street. These places are not that commercialized and full of foreign tourists, so you can see the real and traditional culture and food.

  

5. Special recommendation

If you are having a riding tour, or there are friends who can drive, you must go to the restaurants just on the side of road on mountains! These restaurant usually don’t have great look, but in here you can try vegetables and some fish and shrimp that can only find here! Local Taiwanese often travel to other counties or mountains in weekend, and we have meal in restaurants just on the side of road. You can also find vendors selling corns, peanuts, and fruits on the side of road, we usually stop and buy some as snacks for the following trip!

Photos credit to: Taiwanese government websites, blogs, news