Keelung is a small, seaside town that’s a very quick train ride from Taipei, which makes it an effortless day-trip destination. And that’s a good thing, because the night market here is definitely worth visiting.
After eating one mind-blowingly delicious meal after another here, it’s beginning to dawn on me that Taiwan is one of the best countries for food that I’ve ever visited. Everything I’ve tried has been so good, and everywhere I go there’s one restaurant after another with food that looks delicious. And the street food! And the night markets! It’s overwhelming.
I just mentioned that a cheap Michelin-rated restaurant is basically guaranteed to have a line. Well, Lin Dong Fang is (relatively) cheap, and it’s Michelin-approved, so yeah, there was a line.
If an affordable restaurant has been recognized by the Michelin Guide, you can pretty much guarantee that there’s going to be an intense line to get in. And lo and behold, the Michelin-approved Taiwanese breakfast joint, Fuhang Soy Milk, is fairly notorious for the line that snakes out the door.
There’s a Taiwanese specialty called lu rou fan (or braised pork rice) that consists of ultra-tender pork belly and mushroom on top of rice.
I don’t think there’s any universe in which that wouldn’t be delicious, and certainly, the version they sell at Jin Feng is extremely delicious.
Apparently noodles for breakfast is very conclusively a thing here, because I had noodle soup for breakfast the other day, and now here’s another plate of tasty pre-9AM noodles.
Well, the trip is drawing to a close, which means that this is my last taste of international McDonald’s weirdness.
Line-ups for food are a traveler’s best friend. Have I mentioned this before? I have? A million times? Well, it’s true.
The latest line-based discovery: a street food stand called Uncle Bean, which serves up some seriously delicious tofu-based desserts.
Here’s a very pleasant surprise, and something I hadn’t even heard of until I came to Bangkok: khanom bueang, a Thai dessert that consists of thin, crispy pancakes with a generous spread of a creamy Italian-meringue-like substance, along with other fillings (the one I tried had egg yolk threads, though coconut was also an option).
Funnily enough, one of the best things I’ve eaten in Bangkok isn’t Thai at all — it’s Chinese, from a Michelin-rated restaurant in Bangkok’s Chinatown called Nai-Ek Roll Noodles.