Taipei Day 1 - Eat, Eat, Eat, Repeat

What a way to start an entry, talking about food. But then again it's Taipei so what's not to talk about right?

Being my first time to the place, I wanted to make sure I got my stuff right, and did quite a bit of research before we headed to the country. 5 days in Taipei is a bit too long especially if we were not heading out into the other parts of Taiwan, so some planning to ensure we covered as much was an ideal plan.

Yonghe Dou Jiang

So day one started out with us heading out for breakfast upon reaching our hotel. Since the rooms weren't ready, we unloaded most of our stuff and headed towards one of the franchises for breakfast where they served up some pretty good soy bean milk and onion pancakes. We had ours mixed with an omelette.

Fei Qian Wu

I was pretty surprised when I was told one of the best places for unagi outside of Japan came from Taipei, specifically, a shop called Fei Qian Wu, which serves up unagi don daily, causing a long line at its stall entrance even before it opens.

The wait took us about half an hour and when we got our seats we were sharing it with another couple as well.

Unagi is apparently the main star here and so we ordered a large box to share, along with a few other items to go along with it.

In summary, the unagi is good, even for a person who hardly eats unagi, this is something. I probably won't crave it, but it's certainly the best I've tried. Shufen had eaten in Japan before and though it wasn't as good as back in the land of the rising sun, it was a lot better than many places elsewhere.

Apart from the unagi, don't really bother about the other things, the gyudon was alright, the egg rolls were so so, and the tempura prawn looked great but the meat inside was all mush, the worse of all the items, it really wasn't good at all.

So yeah, just go for the unagi don. =)

Formosa Chang Lu Rou Fan

We read up about two places for Lu Rou Fan here, but didn't have a chance to try both, so we went for the more common one which is Formosa Chang.

Upon reaching the place did I then realize its the same packet Colin gave me awhile back. Mind you that pack is still in my cupboard to be saved "for a rainy day".

I just checked, the packet has expired =P

Food wise, Lu Rou Fan was ok, but I guess it wasn't spectacular to me. I was hoping for something more meaty to the bite but everything just fell apart like mush, I guess people like it like that here?

The meat balls were pretty good though, definitely more meaty than the bouncy stuff you get back in Singapore.

Raohe Market

Last stop for the evening was to check out the Raohe Market, apparently one of the nicer markets around that isn't as commercialised as Shilin.

Not as commercialised doesn't necessarily translate to less crowd, the place was still bustling with people.

Food wise, we had a few items, which included flame torched beef, grilled abalone, pork rib soup and pepper buns.

I think the two main things that stuck out for me were the flamed beef for the way its cooked, and the pepper buns, the rest were good for their price, no complaints here.

Ah Chung Mee Sua

The day ended with a bowl of pork intestine mee sua at Ah Chung near the hotel. It was famous, and there was a line. I thought it was not bad, and to be frank I hardly eat oyster or intestine mee sua back home so I had to proper point of reference, I just thought it was pretty decent.

Overall Day 1 was pretty much just eating, sorting out our sim cards, getting into our rooms and being touristy at food spots.

Will blog more about Day 2 where we headed to Mao Kong to check out the tea plantations and Yinhe temple/waterfall.