Taipei Food Tour, Taiwan

On Saturday I did a food tour with Like It Formosa.  The three hour walking tour was NT$ 1,100 (€31 or USD $37).  It was a small international group.  A German guy living in Austria, a Polish girl from London on an international assignment in Hong Kong and me, an American living in Czechland.

We started out at an open market with plenty of fresh fruit and walked to a small restaurant where we had Taiwanese dumplings and hot & sour soup.



After a short walk we picked up some bubble tea.  Bubble tea is one of my favourite things.  You can find it sometimes in Czechland but it's not very good at all.  In Asia I tend to drink litres of it.

Then it was on to a small corner stand in the Da'an District called Tianjin that is known for the best scallion pancakes in the city.  Less of a pancake and more like a flaky grilled flatbread.  Savoury and quite tasty.

Then it was on to have some have some vermicelli soup with oyster and braised pig intestines.  Way tastier than it sounds.  It's best with some strong black vinegar and fresh corriander.

Beef noodle soup is one of the best known dishes in Taiwan.  It is made from braised beef, beef broth, vegetables and noodles.

The soup was served with some kind of "dumpling".  Basically a savoury flatbread filled with meat.

It was a lot of food.  Not full sized portions but enough to try lots of different things and feel completely full.  The few kilometres of walking helped keep us from feeling done in.



It also allowed us to have room at our final stop for some shaved ice with mango and taro.  The tour was great and highly recommended.

It's easy to eat well in Taipei.  If there's no English then you get by with hand gestures.  Although this doesn't mean that you won't have a few adventures along the way.

One day I went to a small hole in the wall place where I was the only non-Asian there.  My lesson learned here was that I had better stick to learning Czech because when I tried using limited Chinese I ended with chicken feet and some kind of mixed meat soup.  Not quite what I was going for but not bad.