Food Delights at Taipei

Recently I made a trip to Taipei but with few opportunities to eat outside food. Here is one packed lunch from a shop around Ximending area. The way they serve packed lunch is unlike S'pore's. They serve rice separately from the dishes.

I love the left corner beancurd like dishes which is known as "Taiwanese's vegetarian chicken". It looked like beancurd but tasted like compact beancurd skin and according to my S'porean friend who had stayed in Taiwan before, it could be found easily in the markets of Taiwan and looked like shape of intestine in its raw form but does not seem to be introduced into S'pore yet. I wish it could be imported into S'pore soon...:P Another interesting point for their packed lunch is they are priced by the weight rather than selection of dishes.
Fried smelly beancurd (臭豆腐) from Shilin nite mkt, but I still miss the "Shenkeng" (深坑臭豆腐) smelly beancurd tried years ago at Taipei's Danshui street. The beancurd tasted then was "fragrant"and smooth & chilli that goes with it added points to it.
Just like Durian, those who love it will find it "fragrant" while those who don't will avoid the smell. :-)


Coffin Shaped Bread (Guan Cai Ban 棺材板) which is like a thick piece of toast bread without the core part. The vegetarian version was filled with stuffing of salad corn & vegetables.

And not to be missed is my all-time favourite Taiwanese snacks: Fried mushrooms (炸香菇) ! Now, they use the Xin Bao Gu (杏鲍菇 or Bailing mushroom), cut into small cubes, coated with flour and deep fried them. There's also the shitake mushroom and golden needle mushroom version. Very delicious!
Being quite derived of noodles when on mountain, (we had rice every meal except twice when there is fried udon but the Taiwanese rice grains are similar to Japanese rice, very Q & tasty that I don't mind having them every meal, almost tempted to bring back a packet of their rice from the supermarket:P) I searched for noodles stall & was quite surprised to find a vegetarian noodle stall at a corner shop near our hotel at Ximending. We tried the Cold noodles (Liang Mian 凉面) which tasted like dry maggie-mee like noodles with peanut-like gravy.

Another popular/specialty noodles according to the boss is his mushroom and pumpkin noodles. Initially, we thought the speciality would be the texture of the noodles with pumpkin taste but it turned out to be maggie-mee like noodles soup with mushroom, vegetables and big pieces of pumpkin with slices of vegetarian ham. The soup was tasty though.
It was an enjoyable supper with great company. Thanks, All! :-)