EatNBetter

A couple of years ago I had the pleasure of traveling to Taipei, the capital of Taiwan. This exotic tropical city was absolutely amazing to me. While there was a great deal of modern architecture including Taipei 101, the tallest building in the world, there were many temples and other buildings from much earlier eras. Even though I was there on business I had quite a bit of time to go sightseeing. One of my favorite things to do was board the very modern subway/train system and get off at random and walk around the neighborhood wherever I happened to be. I went into stores much like the department stores in the U.S. and I also went into very small specialty shops and everything in between.

Since I am a somewhat adventurous eater and will try almost anything once, I was fascinated by the foods that were available, both in fine restaurants and not so fine restaurants. I ate in restaurants that served multi-course meals, in food courts in large shopping centers (but without burgers, tacos, and pizza) where the dishes were served buffet style and I didn’t know what many of the dishes contained. I ate in little open air buffets, Dim Sum restaurants, and bought food from street vendors. I found almost all of it delicious and very interesting.

I found it at least as interesting to shop in the street markets of the city. Within a very short walk from my hotel were several street markets. They were composed of small stalls similar to what you might find at a farmer’s market in any city in the U.S. The difference was in the variety of the items for sale and the exotic nature of those items. In some cases the foods were displayed in ways the Western traveler might find disturbing. For example meats and fish of various kinds were displayed in the open air (the weather was very hot and humid) with little fans blowing to discourage insects from landing on the meat.

The most fascinating stalls to me were the ones selling fresh fruits and vegetables. Many of the fruits and vegetables were totally unfamiliar to me. I tried as many as I could whenever I found any of them in a restaurant or offered by a street vendor. I still don’t know what they are but I liked most of them. There were gorgeous pineapples, mangoes and papayas. There was a vendor who sold fresh pineapple from a large cart which he parked near the entrance of my hotel each evening. He would peel and section the pineapple with a large knife and hand it to you in a plastic bag all in about 45 seconds. Another cart vendor sold sweet potatoes baked in a ceramic oven on his cart. Yet another cart sold steamed dumplings of various kinds. I found the richness and variety of the foods available charming and delightful. If you get the chance to go to Taipei try everything. You’ll be glad you did.

Tags: street markets, Taipei, taiwan, Taiwan food