Come on, Taiwan. I know your food is great, but now you’re just showing off. The pork knuckle I just had at Zheng Pork Knuckle? Ridiculously good. It’s upsetting how good it is. I don’t live here; how am I supposed to go back and eat this a million more times??
This is another one of those places with no English menu, so get ready to point (I think there’s like three things on the menu, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to get the right thing).
The bowl comes with pork hock, cabbage, various pickled veggies and an egg on top of rice.
There’s also a big jug of chilis you can add to your bowl; these things are serious business. A lot of the time the chilis will be in vinegar or part of a sauce, but these were just pure, unadulterated, inferno-hot peppers. I added a whole bunch to my plate and probably would have been happy with half as much.
Everything in the bowl is quite good, but that pork… It’s incredible. The flavour is amazing — it’s mildly sweet and perfectly porky.
But as good as the flavour is, the texture is bonkers. Pork knuckle is mostly skin and collagen, so if you don’t cook it properly, it’s going to be rubbery and unappealing. The pork knuckle here, on the other hand, is luxuriously tender, and so soft that it basically melts in your mouth.
It’s pork butter, essentially.
I mean, look at that. It’s a thing of beauty. It works perfectly with the rice and veggies, but let’s be honest: all I really need is a bowl piled high with that pork. Everything else is good, but the pork is where it’s at.
Location: No. 22, Yanping South Road, Zhongzheng District, Taipei City, 100
How to find it: There’s no English on the sign, but all of that glorious pork is out and in full display, so it’s hard to miss. It’s within easy walking distance of both Taipei Main Station and Ximen Station.