Taiwan 2013 - Non Banquet Eats Part 1 - 3-4 Forks

So instead of listing every single place I ate in Taiwan by date, I'm going to lump them into two different categories:  Banquet and Non-Banquet style restaurants.  The main reason I'm doing this is, well frankly, I was eating so much food there that it became overwhelming and I just can't post about everything.  Plus a lot of the places I ate at don't have English names, so some of the entries are going to be a bit skimpy.

My first stop was Din Tai Fung (3 Forks).  This is one most well known chain restaurants in Taiwan (and maybe even Asia).  It's been written about in tons of food blogs and was mentioned in a recent episode of The Layover with Anthony Bourdain.  So of course I had to go and try it.  There are tons of locations but the closest one to my grandfather's place was in the Taipei 101 building.  It's located on the bottom level near the food court.  When we got there, the wait was about 30 minutes but the good thing is that they let you place your order first so that when you sit there is minimal wait time for your food.  My mom and I ordered the famous pork soup dumplings, shrimp and melon soup dumplings, and wonton soup.

They are famous for having 18 perfect folds in their dumplings and when you walk into the restaurant you see a huge glass room where there are tons of very efficient works folding each dumpling.  The dumplings were good but they didn't really bring me to tears like they did for Anthony Bourdain.  The wonton soup was also ok with 5 plumb wontons in a hot broth with noodles, but also not mind blowing.  The fact that the place was also so clearly a tourist trap also kind of put a damper on things for me.  Now don't get me wrong, the food was good but I was ready to have some kind of religious experience based on all the reviews and I just didn't.  Price-wise our entire meal was $25, which you think is pretty cheap but considering how many other super cheap dumpling places there are in Taiwan (like $.25/dumpling) this place was definitely on the pricer side.

The other thing about our meal at Din Tai Fung was that it wasn't very filling.  We were still hungry so we ended up scouring the food court for other food options.  We kept coming back to this one place that had this sizzling plate of giant squid (3 Forks).  Lots of other people in the food court had gotten food from here so we figured it was worth a try.

For $5, you get this entire hot plate of squid, chicken, bean sprouts, a green veggie, fried egg, white rice and miso soup.  This was definitely more than enough food for 2 people.  The squid was good, not too chewy or difficult to eat.  Maybe it was because I had already eaten but the meal wasn't nearly as dramatic as I thought it was going to be.  The rest of the meal was fine, it tasted a bit like stir fry with some sauce to it.

You'd think after eating these 2 meals that I would be too full to eat a multi course dinner.  But oh no, this is Taiwan.  You literally eat until you burst there.  For dinner, I took my grandfather to one of his favorite restaurants (I don't know the English translation but this meal was 4 Forks).  They only have multi-course prix fixe meals, no ordering a la carte.  My mom and grandpa got the $40 version with shark fin soup (what they are known for) and I got the $30 version with lobster and fish.  The food here is all extremely authentic and much more local.  Both sets of meals came with fish, rice (fried or in a banana leaf), sauteed green veggies and a fungus dessert soup.  The only difference is that the $40 set had shark fin and abalone.

Yes, I know shark fin soup is cruel and is actually banned in some countries, but it's still considered a Chinese delicacy.  It's really not that bad of a soup (the fin has a bit of jelly and a bit of crunch to it) and is served with tart vinegar.  I wouldn't make a habit of eating it but I do have it every now and then if I'm in an authentic Chinese restaurant. 

The steam fish (I think it was cod) filets were great and served with a lot of garlic which always makes food taste better.

The lobster was served cut in half, not like how it's usually served in its full state in the US.  The tail was a bit smaller and not as meaty than Main lobsters but it was still sweet and again was covered in garlic. 

The steam sticky rice wrapped in a banana leaf is one of my favorite ways to eat sticky rice.  The rice has a lot of flavor to it and has bits of mushroom and chicken (or sometimes sausage) cooked inside of it.  Unlike Din Tai Fung, this place only had locals and the staff was very friendly and looked like they took real family pride in their restaurant.  The total bill was $110 for 3 people, which considering how much food we got was still a great deal.

One of the things Taiwan is most famous for is their night markets.  There are tons of them all over the city and it's one of the most fun things to do there.  One of biggest markets is the Shilin Night Market.  It's blocks and blocks of street food, cheap clothes and souvenirs, and foot massages.  In the back there is an inside food court that serves up similar foods on the street.  My uncle, aunt, mom and I had our first meal of the night at the first tappanyaki place (3 Forks) when you walk into the food court.

Tappanyanki is essentially the same thing as habachi or cooking on a hot flat top.  My mom and I split the seafood combo (~$12 total) which had sauteed bean sprouts, cabbage, shrimp, cod and crab.  It was good but frankly it was super salty and you can taste TONS of butter in it, which is surprising because Chinese people typically don't use a lot of butter.  The crab part was a bit disappointing because the meat was small and after seeing the chef cook the delicious chicken thigh in front of me, I would have preferred the that instead.

 One of the stalls in the food court offering fried crab and delicious looking shrimp.

 Crispy squid on a stick - I didn't eat it but I thought it was an interesting picture.

Two of the most famous Taiwanese street foods are the stinky tofu and oyster pancake.  The stinky tofu (above) is appropriately named because it seriously smells.  It mostly smells like stinky feet but the smell comes from the fermentation and vinegar used in the dish.  I didn't want to try it but I felt like since I was here, I had to.  In all honesty, if you plug your nose and don't let the smell get to you, it doesn't taste that bad.  This version was fried (there's also non-fried tofu) and if I blocked the smell out of my mind, it tasted like a piece of fried tofu with sauce on it.  But the smell is super potent, so I can see how difficult it can be to separate the two.

Next I tried the oyster pancake.  I recently had one while I was dining in Flushing so I knew what to expect but my mom claimed that the oysters here were small and sweeter.  They were indeed smaller but I'm not sure if they were really sweeter.  I really wanted to like this dish, but it was too heavy on the corn starch and too light on the egg for me to really like this dish very much. 

We then ended the meal with another Taiwan favorite: shaved ice with mango ($4).  It's the perfect dish to have on a hot night.  The mangoes so incredibly sweet and juicy and the ice is a sweet combination of ice with mango flavoring to it.  Your mouth is just freezing with mango goodness.  I wish I could eat this stuff everyday here in the U.S.

The above and below photos are just shots of all the crazy chicken/pig products on a stick that are offered in the market.  I am totally an adventurous eater but there's something about raw meat sitting out in the heat for longs period of times just doesn't really appeal to me.