a tabula rasa every time we eat

Address: 2nd Floor of Hua Shan Market, right off of Exit 6, Shandao Temple Station, Blue Line

My mom heard that there was an awesome 豆漿油條/soy bean chinese donut place here, AND it was a market, so we brought my grandma along to do some grocery shopping and eat breakfast. i’m all for killing two birds with one stone! except…this market only had like one veggie stand and maybe 2 fruit stands. erm…cricket cricket. FAIL! lol, at least there was food to look forward to!

This dou jiang place takes up the whole 2nd floor, and the whole seating area is dedicated to just this one restaurant. You can see them making the soybean. MM their salty soybean is light and fresh, and the thick shao bing is SO GOOD! super QQ, just how i like my bread. my mom read that people buy 100s to take home to the states and freeze them. you betcha i’ll be doing the same. maybe not 100, but enough :).

Grandpa took us to a French Restaurant close to his home. NT450 for a 4-course lunch! WHAT a steal! I love how in Taipei a lot of “business lunches” come with multiple courses and at such an affordable price. i loooooove it. AND free bread! i love me carbs. and this basket of bread happened to come with an olive tapenade that was SO good. i saw the chef (caucasian guy) come out of the kitchen to check up on the dining room a couple of times throughout the meal, which I thought was super cute!

First course: Very bland asaparagus cream soup. This course got me worried about the rest of the meal…would they all be like this…well I guess for NT450 I can’t complain.

Second course: Smoked salmon appetizer. Mmm, i spread some olive tapenade on the bread and salmon on top. Yum Yum.

My mom got this custard-y, egg-y frittata of sorts. It was so good. I ate at least half of hers and another quarter from my grandma hehe.

Entree: My mom got the lamb, very tender but the lamb flavor was a bit strong. I got the pan-fried striped bass, which was sort of just average. Came with au gratin that was so good. MM.

Dessert: their desserts are BOMB! I got the lava chocolate cake. ooey chocolate goodness comes flowing out once you poke into the cake. and the sauce that comes with it is simply divine. DROOL. creme brulee was AWESOME. one of the best i’ve had because it’s not overly sweet, just lightly so. mm. and my grandma got a souffle-y type thing

吉園/Ji Yuan

I have been going to Ji Yuan ever since I was a weeee weeek toddler. Every visit back to Taiwan would include a trip to Ji Yuan. The G-pa is picky and strict about where we can eat out, but Ji Yuan makes the cut for family reunion dinners. Probably only cuz he’s been going there for over 20 years and it’s only like 2 min walking distance from his home. We don’t go as much anymore, I don’t know why, but when we do, we usually order the same set menu. There’s usually this to-die-for crab congee that’s butter-y and garlic-y and it comes with crab legs that have been baking in the butter-y and garlic-y goodness. There’s also this scallop soup that they wrap up in a foil volcano. It’s a wonderful parade of food! Oh, and the same waitress serves us. She looks the same, even after 20 years. I wonder how she does it?!

My cousin just started working so she treated me, my parents, grandparents, and her parents to dinner. Because G-Pa was coming, we needed his approval of restaurants, and he selected Ji Yuan. Since it wasn’t a big family gathering, we ate a simpler set, and G-Pa veto’d the crab dish because it was too buttery-y, anyway. 

周胖子餃子館/Fatty Zhou’s Dumplings

Address: Multiple Locations, this one is right off of Exit 4 of 市政府/Taipei City Hall MRT Stop

Author: Jennifer

MMM I LOVE DUMPLINGS (even caroline’s mommy knows)! Mr. Zhou must too, otherwise why would he be a FATTY? must be from eating all those dumplings teeheehee. mm zhou’s dumplings are humongous as delicious. they’re packed during the lunch hour and we had to share a table with another party of two guys. we sure looked like fatties compared to those two, who ordered a bowl of noodles each. weak sauce!!

my mom and I ordered 18 dumplings (veggie, pork, and beef flavors), a medium hot&sour soup, some small dishes (large size) to share, and we were so full we had to take some dumplings and small dishes home. usually i can eat anywhere from 10-20 dumplings in one sitting but these were HUMONGO. the hot&sour soup is really salty tho!

Gong-Guan/CKS Area EATS!

Yes, I did eat all of this in one afternoon/night. In serious food coma afterwards. Friend took us around so I don’t really know where the places are and don’t remember the name. but everything was delicious. Oh, there was also a shui jian bao that i forgot to take a pic of.

Dan Shui Eats!

Address: Dan Shui MRT Stop, Red Line!

Author: Jennifer

Dan Shui is one of my favorite places in Taipei! It’s away from the the busy city life and next to a river, so it’s an extremely popular place for locals and tourists alike during the weekends/holidays. there are a lot of shops selling cute lil things like jewelry, keychains, stuffed animals, and a lot of 小吃! My picture don’t do justice of all the delicious food Dan Shui has! Breads, sausage within a sausage, a LOT of seafood restaurants where u pick ur seafood from a tank in the front and tell them how to cook it, these super long frozen yogurts, mm, you cannot go wrong here!

Location: 葡吉小廚 Kitchen Pucci

Address: Multiple locations, I went to the one near Zhong Shan MRT (Red Line), 台北市南京西路一段 1 號﹝捷運中山站 4 號出口，步行約 3 分鐘﹞

Author: Jennifer

Traditional Chinese fare, serving up xiao long bao, noodle soups, and familiar dishes such as string beans, ma-po tofu, in a clean, modern setting.

Wow these dan dan noodles were super SUPER DUPER Ma-La! my tongue was like so freaking numb and i had to run over to the small plates section and get some refreshing marinated cucumbers to help relieve my tongue from the ma-ness. Couldn’t even finish the dan dan noodles and took them home (and forgot them on one of the many stops before I got home haha!)

The pumpkin beef noodle soup was an interesting twist on your traditional beef noodle soup, and the soup base was a pumpkin broth/puree. Yum!

Xiao Long Bao’s were average, still prefer DTF! Wonton soup was pretty solid, soup broth was on the salty side.

Location: 聚/Ju

Address: Multiple locations, the one I went to was inside the Zhongxiao Sogo, 11F, 台北市忠孝東路四段45號11F

Author: Jennifer

Caroline took me to another location of Ju earling this year during winter break and I loved it!! At first I was slightly underwhelmed by the amount of food (I can eat a lot, and a LOT of hot pot) - that’s all the glass noodles they’re giving me?!, but by the end of the meal I couldn’t even finish my meat. You choose from your choice of soup bases, type of meat(s), carb (rice, glass noodle, or udon), type of fishball assortment, type of drink, type of dessert, and can top it off with this vinegar drink. Taiwanese people like drinking vinegar because they think it helps with digestion. Not sure if it’s really true, but I’ve grown to like it.

Anyway I’d been asking any body and every body if they wanted to eat hot pot with me. I am a LOVER of hot pot and can eat it even if it’s 100 degrees outside (as long as the restaurant has A/C!), and finally my mom gave in!

Location: Can’t read the first character, something kitchen

Address: ChongDe Road, Section 2, near the Liu zhang Li MRT line (brown line)

Author: Jennifer

Bad food exists in Taipei :( Okay I’ve had my fair share of disappointing and downright bad meals but I still feel alarmed when I come across bad food in Taipei. It’s like…bad food and taipei do NOT go together!

Good thing Part 1 of this meal was sooo delicious. It was a chives xian bing from this store as I was walking back from the library back home. Hot, steamy with a chewy crust MM. and it was stuffed with chives/bean curd/small rice noodles. Gluttony got the best of me, though, as I wanted more food for lunch. I came across this dumpling restaurant since it’s basically right below my apt. It was SO BAD! okay yes, i did order spicy wontons/hong you chao shou/紅油抄手 so maybe it’s not their specialty but really? limp wontons with barely any flavor. expensive for taipei standards too! NT60 for 8 lame wontons. food fail :(. marinated cucumbers were a bust too. double :(