DISH 119OPPOSITE PAGE: Toffee-covered
strawberries are everywhere at
Taipei’s Shilin Night Market.
ABOVE CLOCKWISE: Shoppers
in Taiwan are spoiled for choice
when it comes to seafood; steamed
buns and rice cakes are popular
Taiwanese snacks.I
n a small courtyard in south-western
Taiwan, a woman by the name of
Beautiful Cloud is gently seasoning
oysters with salt, white pepper and
the lightest dusting of chilli powder.
Later, she’ll plunge them into a bubbling
cauldron of hot oil, before serving the popular
street food (known, variously, as salt and
pepper oysters, popcorn oysters or, simply,
fried oysters) in their shells.
Beautiful Cloud (“I picked the name because
it’s so pretty,”) has been serving oysters this way
for more years than she cares to remember. Her
mother did it before her and her grandmother
before her, she explains, the air around her a
woven basket of smoke, spices and the briny
scent of bivalves plucked from the nearby sea.
Arriving in Taiwan with few expectations
we are met by some of the friendliest people on
earth, most with an obsession with good food.
“Taiwan is all about food and temples,” says
our guide Sophia during a Taipei Eats food
walking tour of the capital. “We eat, we go to
the temple to make offerings and then we eat
again. Our culinary philosophy is to eat well
and eat often.”
They’ve certainly got lots to choose from.
Taiwan’s gastronomic culture has been shaped
by numerous interlopers, from the Fujian and
Hakka people of the Chinese mainland to 16th
Century Portuguese sailors who took such
a shine to the place they named it Formosa
(beautiful island). The Dutch, Spanish and
Japanese all subsequently ruled this island
whose defiant independence has long been a
thorn in China’s ideological side.
“Taiwanese food takes a little from China
and a little from Japan,” explains Sophia.
“They left us a taste for dumplings as well as
raw seafood.”
One of the best ways to get a culinary handle
on a new city is to put yourself in the hands
of an expert. And Sophia, a part-time actress,
full-time foodie and fluent English speaker, is
just that.
On an unseasonably warm spring day we
meet in Taipei’s shiny Xinyi District, just
minutes from the capital’s tallest tower, Taipei- It’s mid-morning but Youngchun Market
washed the sleep out if its eyes hours ago. We
navigate around haphazard piles of seafood,
butchered shark meat and bright pink dragon
fruit. While we wander, Sophia offers us slices
of milky guava, which we dip into bags of dried
plum powder. There are black peanuts and love
apples and items I can’t quite find names for.
The Taiwanese are pancake mad; nowhere
else in Asia, apart from India, is there such a
diversity of these delicious flatbreads. On offer
are crêpe-like popiah, northern-style shao bing,
omelette/pancake hybrids and flaky paratha-
style bread deep-fried in oil. We opt for fat
wedges of green onion bread, cooked on a large
circular grill, which are the perfect balance of
doughy and flaky. Flatbread is common around
the clock in Taiwan, but is most popular at
breakfast when the locals like to dunk it in
warm, silken soy milk, sort of a Taiwainese take
on churros.
We turn right outside the market and head
for a postage stamp-sized cafe to try Gua Bao,
Taiwanese burgers. These plump steamed buns
bulge with slices of braised pork belly, pickled
Chinese cabbage and powdered peanuts. WeThe rest of the
afternoon passes in a
pleasant blur of sticky
rice, noodles, Shanghai
dumplings and the
ubiquitous bubble tea,
a Taiwanese invention
and probably its best
known culinary export.