Angelina Hue

We walked around Brussels on Saturday and it is always surprising to see that the street food culture that is so prevalent in Asia doesn’t seem to exist here (nor in Paris). In Brussels, the typical ‘snack’ foods would be greasy, mediocre kebabs and frites (french fries). While there are a few friteries (fries stands) here that serve decent frites, there’s only so much of these fried potatoes that I can eat in a month.

In Taipei and Hong Kong, it’d be so easy to find a wide selection of freshly prepared (and cheap) small bites at almost any time of the day.

Anyway, following my previous post about Taipei’s street food 小吃, here are a few pictures of some of the sit-down meals that I had in Taipei.

Jin Feng Lu Rou Fan 金峰滷肉飯 @ 10 Roosevelt Road, Section 1 羅斯福路1段10號: I really wanted to like the pork lard rice 滷肉飯, but it was too greasy for my liking and I just couldn’t bring myself to eat up all the lard in the bowl!

Du Xiao Yue 度小月擔仔麵 @ 12, Lane 8, Zhongxiao East Rd 忠孝東路四段216巷8弄12: The eatery is famous for its dan tsai mian 擔仔麵, which I thought were not bad.

What really impressed me was the fried tofu. This was so good and reminded me of the Japanese agedashi tofu – lightly fried on the outside and wobbly hot on the inside. Delicious!

The cabbage with tiny deep-fried shrimps was pretty good too. It had been a while since I’ve had these mini shrimps and I made sure to eat every single one so that none would have died in vain!

Eating at these two eateries was quick and simple. You enter the restaurant, let them know how many of you there are, take a seat, mark on a piece of paper what you wish to order, hand it to a server and your food arrives in a few minutes, finish your meal and pay at the cashier. Much more efficient than in restaurants in Paris or Brussels where it can often seem like a wait-and-catch-the-server’s-attention game!

Yen @ W Taipei: I had to stay at the hotel for lunch on one afternoon due to some urgent discussions and ordered a plate of “twice-cooked glutinous rice cake” 干貝鹹肉米糕 as I was curious to know what it was. Turns out that it was glutinous rice with scallops, salted pork and roasted pork with vegetables on the side. What an unexpected surprise as I’m a big fan of glutinous rice and I’ve not had it since 2011!