Taiwan Eats, Part V: Traditional Restaurant Meals

The photos you see below are a conglomerate of four of the bigger meals we had with family at more traditional style restaurants throughout our trip. These are not necessarily representative of a "normal" go-out-to-eat restaurant a family might visit on a Friday night (unless you're my dad...). But a person might frequent these sorts of places often enough for more special occasions such as birthdays, holidays, or with special guests.

This meal is also described in this post...lots of things with faces, lots of seafood in general. My family and Jess and I had lunch with a couple of my dad's friends from the insurance world at a family-run seafood restaurant in Lugang, Chunghwa county. The first picture far above shows various customers picking the tastiest victims seafood for their meal.

Fried oyster fritters

Steamed shrimp

Steamed bamboo, drizzled with Japanese-style sweet mayonnaise and rainbow sprinkles

滷肉飯 (luroufan): Soy sauce-stewed chopped or ground pork on white rice. It's like the marinara sauce of Taiwan: everyone's grandma makes "the best" and many restaurants claim to have "the best." In other words, so simple, yet perfection is so elusive and subjective.

My family joined my uncles and their families (mom's side) for a train ride and a scenic hike up to the waterfalls near Shifen in the mountainsides north of Taipei. There were a lot of little cute traditional style villages filled with trinkets to buy and snacks to eat. These old train lines were left over from the coal mining days, but now mostly serve the weekend tourist from all over Taiwan as well as other countries.

Back at the little quaint touristy town of Shifen, we ate some local specialties, like fried whole little shrimp and fish. Yes, you eat the entire thing, heads and guts and all.

A local dish, "sword bamboo"

Later that day, we sat down to dinner at a locale known for their tofu (I forgot the name), particularly spicy stinky tofu. The version we had at the restaurant was all spicy, only a tiny bit stinky. Disappointing, although the tofu itself was delicious. Supposedly the old town district near the restaurant had a lot of street vendors that specialized in the spicy stinky tofu, but we were too full to go out and try more.

And last but not least, a meal at a restaurant near my grandparents' house in Taipei. My grandmother showered Jess with edible gifts and invitations to come back anytime. They also thought she was very tall and was also impressed at how much she was willing to try/eat.

*drool*