But in any case, usually when you go to Asia and someone wants to take you out to a nice dinner, chances are they will take you to a place that serves banquet style food. This usually comprises of 10+ courses served on a lazy susan. You are literally eating for at least 2 hours and it's considered rude if you don't at least try every single dish. Most of the places I ate at started with a cold jellyfish and cold meat appetizer, a steamed whole fish, shrimp with the head on, eel dish, whole crab cracked in half, sliced beef tendon, pig knuckle or some kind of pork dish, sauteed green, at least 1 or two different types of soup and then ending in a sweet bean dessert soup and fruit. The food is extremely local, authentic and not something you'll get in the States. You won't find any of the low mein, orange chicken, or beef with broccoli crap here.
This picture was from my 2nd night in Taiwan and while it may not look like it, it was a fairly large piece of delicious fish (I believe it was a tilapia or something similar). Sorry but I don't know what the name of the place was.
This picture below was from a dinner at a restaurant (4 Forks) literally around the corner from my grandpa's apt. What was glorious about this meal was that we had 2 whole succulent peking ducks. Truly decadent and delicious. There really isn't anything like a warm freshly sliced peking duck served with the fluffy buns, hoisin sauce, scallion and cucumber. I must have had 3-4 buns stuffed full of duck meat and crispy skin. Also at this meal were fantastic pork spare ribs, scallion pancakes, and amazing jumbo shrimp with mayo (I know, it sounds kind of gross, but trust me, it was addictive)
For my grandpa's actual 100th birthday we ate at Hung Kan Restaurant (3 Forks - great food, bad service) which apparently is one of the more famous and well known restaurants in Taiwan. It's a huge restaurant full of giant private rooms for banquets and weddings. The food was great but the service left much to be desired. My cousin asked for a fork for her 4 year old and they said they didn't have any and gave her a giant serving fork. Umm, yeah a 4 year old can't be eating with that. Then when they served the cake, again, no forks and they looked at us like we were crazy for asking. Just rude.
This was a special peach bun served at the birthday party - it represents longevity and had bean paste inside. Honestly, not my favorite thing but it was right for the occasion.
On my birthday, we were treated to lunch at Hwa-Young (2.5 Forks) which I was told was a dim sum place, so I was super excited. Sadly of all of the big eats places I went to, this one really wasn't that great. The dim sum was just ok, I've actually had much better in DC and in NYC. I will say that the shrimp with head on was delicious because it had been soaking in a sherry wine and the spring rolls were tasty, but the rest of the dishes were really mediocre. Compared to how many other awesome dim sum places there are in the city, this one was disappointing. Plus the service was also pretty slow and unresponsive.
And the other dish was this piece of super tender pork rib coated in this crunchy outside. I have never had a dish like this and thought it was wonderful (sorry the picture kind of makes it look gross but I swear it was great).
Banquet eats are always an honor and ridiculously overwhelming. I mean the food is (usually) always delicious but to be eating 10+ course meals this often got to be very tiring. But I will say it's food like this that make me not want to eat Chinese food on my own in NYC. People always ask me if I eat a lot of Chinese food in NYC and I don't and it's because of amazing authentic experiences like these that make eating General Tsao's Chicken and Shrimp fried rice so hard.
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