Food @ Taipei

*Long post ahead...

In Taipei, we were eating almost every few minutes. I'm serious! It was so bad that after only about 2 days there in Taipei, we already felt very 'muak' of the food, especially those overly famous street snacks.Our number 1 mission in Taipei was... FOOD!!! Wahahahahaha...
Like the previous Taiwan trip post, I'm not going to crap about all the food we had, I've chosen some that are worth mentioning, which I found quite a lot actually... Hehehehe... :p

Here's a list of Shirlexia's pick of the best food in Taipei...
1) Stewed Pork Rice (Lu Rou Fan) 鲁肉饭
Deng deng deng deng... Yes, Lu Rou Fan would be my number 1! Not that you can't get it here in Malaysia, it's just that theirs are definitely different!The Shilin Market's hawker centre is quite a crazy place~!
We first tried Lu Rou Fan at the Shilin Market (note: not Shilin Night Market) and totally fell in love with it! The pork tastes really yummy and flavourful, while throughout our trip we've found out that Taiwanese rice are really special and extra delicious! Of course, this dish is a bit oily, but hey, yummy food are always unhealthy right? Best thing is, it cost you only NT$20 (around RM2 plus)for a bowl of that! Salivating yet???? Hmmmm???
Oooohhh... The Lu Rou Fan is so tempting~~~!!!
We tried another one at Hu Xu Zhang 胡须张, but I reckon the one at the Shilin Market is better.
There is no way you're going to miss Lu Rou Fan whenever you step into the land of Taiwan!!!

2) Boneless Chicken Leg Rice @ Wu Fen Pu 无骨鸡腿饭 @ 五分铺
This probably would be my deardo's favourite food in Taiwan, because that's the only restaurant we went twice in two days in a row! Watch out for this little restaurant located at Wu Fen Pu opposite the back of a temple there!
We just wanted some lunch and decided to pick this tiny restaurant to try and surprisingly the food amazed the both of us, especially the Boneless Chicken Leg Rice! The grilled chicken is nicely done with some herbs or something on top of it. They will even ask you if you prefer to have onions with it or not. What I especially love about the rice is that it comes with spoonful of different vegetables. So although it's not very cheap, selling at NT$90 (around RM10), it's worth every cents of it! :DWah... I'm seriously missing that already!
A closer look at the chicken... Slurp~~~!!!
I also tried the Sha Cha Beef Rice, which was pretty nice too! :)
And the service we had from the young couple owners was awesome too! :)

3) Wild Boar's Meat Taiwanese Sausages 山猪肉香肠
You can easily get Taiwanese sausages here in Malaysia. Even supermarkets are selling frozen ones. But for sure you can't get those with wild boar's meat ones here! We had quite a few of them there and the best one would be the one we had at Jiufen...Be alert walking in Jiufen's Old Street. This young lady sells one of the best Taiwanese sausages!
Nyum nyum nyum nyum...
The meat is more juicier and chrunchier than the normal Taiwanese sausages, and if they grill them well, it could be the best Taiwanese snacks we've had in Taipei!

4) Beef Noodles 牛肉面
I think beef noodles is also one of the Taiwanese delicacies. The one we tried is at this little stall located near the Taipei main station. It's like in a small lorong in between some shops. But ya know, all these small stalls always turn out to serve some of the best food! Simple stall, but it attracts quite a lot of costumers! Ohyea, they have an Indonesian maid who can speak fluent Mandarin!
We had both the Hong Siu 红烧 beef noodles and the clear soup beef noodles. Both are good but I personally prefer the Hong Siu one. Although I don't prefer the thick noodles they use so much, the soup and the beef are enough to make me feel so hungry now I want a bowl of that beef noodles NOW! SEKARANG JUGAK!!! Also tried the cow innards...Yu~~~~~mmy~! Yummy 红烧牛肉面！！！
My dear was so happy with the noodles that he ordered a second bowl with the clear soup, but requested the beef to be still the Hong Siu one.

5) Deep Fried Octopus Legs 花枝烧
If you haven't yet know, Taiwanese call octopus as 'Hua Zhi' 花枝, not 'yau yu' or 'sotong'!
This Deep Fried Octopus Legs can be found in almost all night markets. Of course the we tried was not at night, it was one of the stalls at Tanshui （淡水）Old Street. Deep Fried stuff are very common in Taiwan.
Look at that BIG FAT LEG!!! I can assure you those are not flour!!!
It's actually a whole BIG FAT OCTOPUS LEG deep fried and cut into pieces for your enjoyment. To be frank, I've never seen such BIG FAT OCTOPUS LEG served as food in Malaysia! It's amazingly fresh and is so yummy you will go "Wah~~~! This is awesome man!!!" :p
High in cholesterol though... Kekekekeke...
(Aiya, come home and diet lar!!!)

6) Octopus in Thick Soup 生炒花枝羹
We had this at the same stall as the one we had our Lu Rou Fan at the Shilin Market.
It's a bowl of stuff with some huge pieces of sotong and dried sotong with some cabbage in it. It's quite a simple dish yet both the bf and I could not leave that out from our list of unforgettable food in Taiwan.At NT$60 (around RM7), we consider this as very cheap too!

7) Famous Tanshui Fish Balls 淡水可口鱼丸It's so famous that even Lian Zhan 连战came before!
Now this one we were very lucky cos it was a shop we randomly picked out of the whole loads of fish balls shop at Tanshui and it turned out, my friend in Taiwan, A-So told me it's the most famous one! Yay~! :DThat's what the people ordered, so we followed... Wantan and fish balls plus a meat bun.
I definitely love the meat inside the fish balls!
A bit like those Hokchew fish balls, the fish balls is very tender on the outside, and there are some mince pork inside which I believe was marinated with some Chinese wine beforehand. Oooohhh... That was amazingly yummy!
We didn't like the wanton and pork bun though...

Alternatively... You can try out some decent meals at some decent restaurants just like we did!

1) Hinomai Yakiniku 火之舞
On the first night we arrived in Taipei, it was raining and it was pretty cold we can see the so called 'smoke' from our mouths when we were talking. My friends in Taiwan, A-So, Feng Li and Xiao Xiao C made a right choice in bringing us to this warm Yakiniku restaurant near the biggest Cheng Pin in Taipei where it's eat all you can at NT$399 (around RM40 plus).Ohyea, eat all you can but in 2 hours time!
Since the Yakiniku are all done with charcoal, they are safer to eat and yummier in term of taste. I can see the girls really can eat man, we ordered so much of food, and most of them are meat!!! From chicken, beef till lamb and seafood, all comes in different kinda shapes, can be in thin slices and can be in pieces of thick steak. Makan, makan, makan, marilah makan bersama-sama~!
The big plate of beef...
Swishhhhhh... Can't wait to eat hey?
More meat...
We also had this steamboat thingy like those Japanese Shabu Shabu...
Taiwanese love these Mochi, they grilled and then eat with milk, honey or peanuts. We didn't like it though... :p
Service was very good too as the waiters wouldn't mind helping you in grilling the food upon your request. Drinks and ice-cream are included in the package!
It was definitely the best decent meal we had in Taipei!

2) Mos Burger
I LOVE MOS BURGER!!!
Ever since I went to Singapore last year and tried Mos Burger, I keep hoping Mos Burger would arrive in Malaysia. Unfortunately, it doesn't happen. So I can only find them in places like Taiwan!!!
Mos Burger is basically some Japanese styled burger with the burger buns being replaced by rice, making it rice burger. We had our set of burgers with drinks and salad and chicken chop.
I had the Seafood Jumbo Rice Burger. Yum~!
Deardo had the one with the beef! Yummy too~!
Anywayz, I reckon Singapore's Mos Burger has a wider range of choices in their menu. Yet the rice burger still impressed us a lot! Look how happy I was getting the chance to re-eat my Mos Burger???
Deardo was very impressed too! I still couldn't believe he hasn't try that before after so many visits to Singapore!
Aaaaaahhhh... Why Malaysia doesn't have Mos Burger lar~~~~~~?!?!?!?!

Bonus:
1) The Red Fleshed Jambu Batu 红心巴乐Unlike the Jambu Batu we have in Malaysia, this one is pretty soft to chew. Very nice but quite expensive... We had that one packet of the fruit at NT$50, which is about RM6! :S
This is the one kinda fruit I really hope Malaysia has!

2) Food at 7-Eleven
I think many of you who've been overseas would be amazed at how wonderful other people's 7-Eleven are. I've seen Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwanese ones, they all have whole loads of fun stuff to eat! In Taiwan, there are such a wide variety of food for you to choose from, the sandwiches and Temaki all look so fancy and yummy! And most of them, including cold drinks such as those fancy milk and soya bean milk can be heated in a microwave upon your request. How cool is that? First meal after checking-in to the hotel... 7-Eleven! Ohyea, they have these packets of honey mustard which are superly yummy~!
Last meal before checking-out the hotel... 7-Eleven again!!!
I seriously don't want the yucky fried mihun and nasi lemak or those awful-looking sandwiches in Malaysia's 7-Eleven after having such a food fest in those Taiwanese 7-Eleven!

What we think was pretty bad in Taiwan...
Lu Wei 卤味
It's a mixture of everything you can choose from, a lot of them are animals' innards, with some salted chicken, vegetables, etc. Some of them looked all dark in coloured but this one that we tried wasn't. It's just everything mixed-up with some oil (probably sesame oil), pepper, garlic juice and some ginger. I've picked one whole packet of stuff but I think we didn't even finish half of them!
It's not like really terrible but they are all cold and a bit tasteless lor...
You might want to avoid that! Hehehe...

Perhaps it was all the hoo-haa that Taiwanese street snack are bloody yummy and all, it made us had high hopes. Honestly, street snack wise, it was quite a disappointment. The super large Deep Fried Chicken Chop there are just quite the same as those you can find here in Malaysia. And most of their snacks are deep fried it freaks us out a bit. I think it was the difference of taste buds. Taiwanese has sweet tooth, a lot of their food, even the Oyster Mee Sua tastes a bit sweet. So I guess it's probably just us not used to it lar.

Taipei as a whole, is a great city! Most of the shops and buildings still look very old schools, but mind you, their public transportation system, their cleanliness is million times better than ours! Trains and MRTs come on time and frequently, bus drivers say hi and thank you to the passengers... People smoke and keep the cigarette bud with them until they see a rubbish bin, recycle bins are all over the city next to the normal rubbish bin, people are friendly and are always willing to help... All these are what Malaysia should learn from! I would love to see recycle bins all over KL city!
Sunset from our flight home~! :)
I would say it was quite a cool trip, but not too fantastic. I reckon I had a better experience in Hong Kong... It's good to go visit once, but I'm not looking forward for a next trip there, at least not too soon.

Phew~ That was a long long long one...
If you've make it till this final line, I thank you for your patience! :p

Ahhhh... Here's a video of me enjoying my ice-cream in Tansui... Hehehehe...

Places @ Taipei

*My Ah Ma(grandmother) is very sick at the moment, I've never seen her that weak before in my entire life. Recently there are just too many problems surrounding me it seems like the problems never stopped coming. Now I have to be worried about not only my job hunting matter, but also my Ah Ma. So yea, sometimes that prevent me from blogging, or rather, blogging funnily...
I'm sorry my dear friends, please pray for my dearest Ah Ma... :)

Back to the Taiwan trip...
It was a jam-packed week trip in Taiwan with the bf. We had a lot of fun traveling together, although we didn't find Taipei as interesting as expected, especially those famous snacks.
Anywayz, I'm not going to crap about every single thing in my blog since you can check out the pics in my Facebook. What I'm going to do is simply recommend you places and food you must go and must try.
So let's start with recommended places!
Here we go~!

The we-had-the-most-fun place: Jiufen 九份
It was quite a long journey there. From Taipei main station, it took about 50 minutes of train ride to reach Rui Fang 瑞芳station and because we went on a weekend, we had to stand through the whole journey there. And then from Rui Fang, another 10-15 minutes bus ride up to the hill of Jiufen. A first view from Jiufen... Very nice hey?
One of us!
Another angle here...
The weather wasn't really good, as you can see from our pictures, pretty cloudy, and it rained a little later...
Over there there is this Old Street 老街, which seems like quite commercialized with shops selling souvenir and all kind of food. Entrance to the Old Street!
This aunty selling Taiwanese sausages is definitely getting a lot of the attention, but the sausage was just so-so...
One so called 'secret place' is this one place where you can enter by only paying NT$10(which is around RM1 plus). XT went there but she didn't even know there is such place, so I guess we explored quite a lot there just to find out about this lovely place where we had the most fun there. Yea... Something called 秘密基地...
Inside you see all kind of old school stuff like toys you've played when you were a kid, those old records, old furniture, old communication tools, etc. I gotta tell you, I always love this kinda stuff! And to top that up, you can choose from a variety of costumes to wear and take pictures with it! As you enter, there are whole loads of old records... Can you recognize any of them???
Old school toys as well...
I dressed up as a sexy lady with the little 肚兜！
啊~少爷，你别杀我呀~~~~!!!
阿里山的姑娘美如水啊~~~~~
I still keep some of these old cassettes at home you know. :p
Mr. President is getting real MAD! Hahahaha...
Mrs. President? Ah, I want to be like Michelle Obama, can ah???
Dooo...Dooo... Dooo... I'm sure you've seen this in war movie!
That was really a cool place with loads of cool stuff! And for all that fun, it takes only less than RM2! That was bloody awesome. P/S: We even got some lollipops as we paid our entrance fee! :DWe definitely love Jiufen a lot~!
Gotta thank XT for her recommendation on this one! :)

The Must Go Place: Taipei 101
A Taipei trip can't be called 'complete' if you didn't visit Taipei 101. It is currently the tallest building on earth (waiting to be beaten by some fancy building in Dubai, IF they have the money to finish the project). First down side is, you gotta pay NT$400 (equivalent to around RM40 plus) to enter the building. Judging from the amount of visitors we saw, those people are earning a lot from the entrance fee, definitely! One thing we only found out there is that the elevator is also the fastest one in the world! It took us only around 30 seconds to reach 89th floor!
Normally they let you go till the 91st floor but because of the cloudy weather we only got to go till the 89th floor. So yea I guess the tip I would give you is to go when the weather is nice. :)
Honestly, the view from the top is really just so-s0. I've been to KL Tower and it's really much better. I think it's the fact that most of their other buildings around the Taipei 101 aren't very tall. And most of them aren't commercial buildings so not much of pretty lights at night. That was a bit of a disappointment.While the bf enjoyed reading about the amazing building, I prefer to be a fashion queen... Hahaha...
Yes, number 1! Beating the KL Twin Towers!
The GIANT BALL behind is what prevent the Taipei 101 from collapsing!
A night view from the top of Taipei 101.
Of course you can still spend your time reading the facts and figures over there, read about how the building was built, how they prevent the building from collapsing when there is an earthquake, read about the fastest elevator in the world, etc. The bf definitely enjoyed reading about all those constructions thingy... Later, we bought some really nice souvenir there. One thing for sure, the souvenir there aren't too expensive. I guess yea, they earned enough from the entrance fee!

The girls-must-go place: Wu Fen Pu 五分铺
Said to be a place for cheap clothes, I think Wu Fen Pu is not only for girls, cos the bf bought more stuff than me from there! Aih... How Sat Bai I am man... It became very sunny the last few days of the trip so we can show off our new sunglasses. Yay~!
Note: DO NOTE GO ON A MONDAY! That's because it's a no-retail-day. So unless you want to buy 10 pieces of a same item, you better don't go on Monday. But yes, we went on a Monday and so I was turned down so many times just because they refused to sell me the stuff I love! Aaaarrrhhhh... Nevertheless, I got a few pieces of clothes from some shops that don't mind selling them to me. And we went there the next day just to get more! I was very ready to shop but... Ish ish they don't want to sell me stuff!
Look how crazy it can be...
But then hor... To be honest, I don't find the stuff there too cheap lor. I mean, they all look like very normal, some quite low quality kinda stuff, but the price can be surprisingly very expensive! for instance, there was this one skirt that I love very much was selling at NT$980, which would be around RM100! Shoes there are mostly over NT$1000, which means over RM100! How is that cheap? Unless if they are some branded stuff, otherwise I refused to buy them with such high prices.

P/S: I had one of the nicest food in Taipei at Wu Fen Pu, stay tuned to find out about it!

The alternative choice: Taipei Zoo
We left our second last day of our trip empty so that we can maybe go to places we want to visit again or go to some places without any planning beforehand. Wu Fen Pu was the one we went the second time but before that, we made a 'kiddy'(there were like millions of kindergarten kids when we were there) choice of visiting the Taipei Zoo in the morning.Shirlexia is very excited to see the pandas! Ohyea, that was my new dress from Wu Fen Pu, nice?
Some of them are sleeping, while standing! Cute!
Frankly, we were only there for the pandas and penguins. So we thought why not? the entrance fee is just NT$60, which is around RM7! So basically we spent RM7 just to see the pandas and penguins, didn't even bother to finish the entire zoo. :p
The zoo's main attraction is the two pandas, namely Tuan Tuan 团团& Yuan Yuan圆圆, in which if the names are combined into 'Tuan Yuan团圆', it means reunion! That was the first time I saw real pandas and I think they are really cute! very fat, clumsy but bloodily cute! Really man, especially when they are eating the bamboo leaves! So cute lar!!! Say hi to Yuan Yuan, and she is a 'she'.
And this is Tuan Tuan, the male one.
He looks so cute covered in a bunch of bamboo leaves! Nom nom nom nom...
As for the penguins, the bf said we have more in Langkawi, so I guess that wasn't too fun lar.Gosh, the penguins look so fake at the back, like I was posing in front of a picture...
The Taipei Zoo is very big and clean. Plus, the entrance fee is just too reasonable! So for animal lovers, it might be a unique choice to visit the zoo when you are in Taipei.

The food post is coming next, so stay tuned!

Meanwhile, check out my Facebook's Taiwan Trip albums for more pictures!
Album 1
Album 2
Album 3
Album 4