Delicious Pepper Buns at the Raohe Night Market

It’s hard to go wrong with a night market.  It’s basically just food, food, and more food.  One of the more popular ones in Taipei is the Raohe Night Market, and one of the more popular stalls sells pepper buns that everyone agrees you need to try.

So of course I tried it, and yep: everyone’s right.  It’s quite good.

A pepper bun is pretty simple — it’s peppery ground pork and green onions wrapped in dough.  The thing that sets Fuzhou Pepper Buns apart is the way they cook their buns.  They cook them in a circular, coal-fired tandoor-style oven, and it really makes them something special.

The buns stick to the side of the oven, which gives them an irresistibly crunchy bottom and a nice, fluffy interior.

It’s also volcano-hot in there and is dripping with scalding hot grease, so take a big bite at your peril.  I took a few small bites to let it vent, and it still took several minutes before it was even close to edible.

The very greasy pork and the green onions go quite well together, though really, it’s the crispiness you get from that oven that makes these such a draw.

And it’s a huge draw.  The line moves quite fast, but it’s long, so be prepared to wait.

But then the whole market is super crowded; I visited on a Sunday night, and the crowds were intense.  I was planning on walking the whole market, but the place was so insanely packed that I only got through maybe a quarter of it before my claustrophobia set in.  At this point it took all my willpower not to just let my elbows fly so I could get out of there as quickly as I could.

I wanted to try something else, however, so I found another stall near the front of the market selling fried dumplings.  This was one of the few truly disappointing foods I’ve had since coming to the culinary wonderland that is Taiwan.

They were fine, but they tasted like any number of frozen dumplings I’ve had back home, and they weren’t on the griddle long enough to form a satisfying dark brown crust.

Address: 號, No. 253, Raohe Street, Songshan District, Taipei City, Taiwan 105 (That address is for Fuzhou Pepper Buns, which is right at the entrance of the market.)

How to find it: The Raohe Night Market is extremely easy to find, and is right around the corner from Songshan Station.  Fuzhou Pepper Buns is at the entrance, and the fried dumpling place is maybe a dozen stalls deep into the market.