Cha For Tea (Not redundant at all)

[Nate sez]: (as he tenuously holds a bottle Mogen David in a Taipei grocery store) One last note about Taiwan. This place was named by the Portuguese as "Formosa" meaning beautiful island. This beautiful island is also home to some of (and arguably the) best bloody tea on the planet. The specialty is Oolong tea. Now we've all had Oolong tea at the local Danny Fu's Chinese Greasy Wok, with its largely unappealing flavor (unless cut with some sugar) and mostly appearing to be an incomplete black tea. BUT the real truth about Oolong is that it is partially oxidized instead of completely oxidized (as Black Tea is).

For all of you who knew me when I was starting a tea business (that didn't get off the ground), I could go on for days about this shit so I'll simply link you to an appropriate tea information area for anyone who cares. Wikipedia - A Primer on Tea & Wikipedia - Oolong Tea

NOW - There is a chain restaurant owned and operated by the massive tea company Ten Ren called Cha For Tea. I read about this place in a Taiwan train-stop tourism guide and thought it might be worth a shot, even though guide book recommendations are notoriously expensive (which it of course was). I spotted the joint while we were walking back to a train station after visiting the National Palace Museum. We were peckish and thirsty so we stopped in.

Little did we know, we were in for one of the best dining experiences to date. Cha For Tea (as it's completely obvious name would suggest) serves a lot of tea, but as a bonus, all of their cuisine is inspired by/made with their tea. It was shockingly delicious.

We started the meal with a pot of their highest quality High Mountain Oolong (which is a Taiwan specialty). It is a very lightly oxidized tea so it tastes and feels green, but has developed mature and floral notes - specifically that of rose, jasmine, and sometimes lychee-muscat flavors. These teas are unusually sweet in flavor without the addition of sugar (which would kill it).

We moved on to our apps which were Tempura Tea Leaves and Jasmine Tea Pork God-Knows-What sauce Tofu. The tea leaves were served with a ground green oolong salt that was absolutely insane and ingenious, and the tofu dish was divine. The tofu was warmed slightly and covered in a light, beautiful savory reduced shrimp and pork stock infused with jasmine tea. I'd never had anything quite like it.

The main dishes were noodles (c'mon, what else do we eat?). I ordered the "King's Noodle Soup" and Ben got the Tea oil Noodles with ground pork. My noodles were actually made with tea powder, so they were green and slightly bittersweet. The broth was underwhelming - that is until I dived into the ungodly-delicious braised pork spareribs next to my bowl. The sauce was similar to that of standard Chinese roasted pork, but they had cut the Cha Siu sauce with some King's Tea Oolong, which delicately rounded out the overbearing sweetness and raisiny tastes found in Cha Siu. I generously added the remaining sauce to my bowl of noodles (whether that was the "right" thing to do or not) and it tasted a whole lot better after that. Maybe even really damn good. But the pork spare rib was the best spare rib I've had to date, so that says something.

Ben's dish was in another league all together. This green tea rice noodles were cooked off, then coated with tea oil. Then it was topped with a salty, meaty-dark pork sauce with a shredded seaweed garnish. The plate came with some steamed broccoli, baby corn, and tea infused prunes. This was the star of the show. The flavor was definitely a savory one by and large - but the tea oil brought a body and character we had never ever tasted before. Slightly bitter, very green, indirectly floral - this tea oil was magic. And the tea infused prunes were a brilliant match for this rare dish.

[Ben sez] The presence of strong green tea flavor in this dish was amazing. Using tea oil to create a magical, savory tea flavor (as opposed to the sweet, floral notes of tea as a beverage) made for an out of this world plate of noodles. A perfect balance when mixed with the salty ground pork.


We kind of looked at each other in disbelief of what had just transpired. So if you're in Taiwan, and you're in Taipei, go to Cha For Tea. I'm the last person on this bloody planet that would encourage anyone to visit a chain establishment. However, there are noteably important exceptions.

And who doesn't like Taco Bell at 3 in the fucking morning after drinking too much anyway?

Noodle-Futures and other Night-Market Indicators

[nate sez] After a long week of pointing, and gesturing, and rudely gesturing towards other people's meals, we've managed to order some semblance of food in Taiwan. There is an abundance of Japanese, Korean, all styles of Chinese (Hunan, Sezchuan, Canton, Peking, etc.), and of course the local Taiwanese street grub.

Which is by far the best thing to eat around here and in frighteningly large supply at the Taipei Night Markets.

At first, entering any foreign street food market is nothing short of synapse searing confusion - the strange, delicious smells, the bizarre piles of god-knows-what, the lines, the people, the pushing, the foul smell of rotten Chinese tofu that people LOVE around here, and of course, more noodles than you can handle.

There is a startling lack of most things that we consider to be "Chinese" in the states. What we're used to is expensive banquet and special occasion food - and frankly, it costs about as much here as it does in the states to eat half of it, and it isn't necessarily much better if you know where to eat.

BUT - the street food scene is absolutely unmatched (although we haven't been to Bangkok yet) and so here are some of the highlights:

Noodles:

There are several distinct types of noodles, some stewed, some fresh, some egg, some rice, some in thick soup, some in thin soup, fried, griddled, wrapped, and tossed into salads. The most widely available noodles are the Beef Soup & Noodles, and the Dan Dan noodles. These are also our favorites. The Beef Soup & Noodles is really freaking straightforward. Good beef soup, good fresh egg noodles, a little bit of mustard greens/baby bok choy, and a dash of green onion. It's usually better with a hit of table chilies.

The Dan Dan Noodles over here are out of control. This is a dish of boiled egg noodles, a pile crushed sesame seeds, and some kind of amazing ground pork w/ bean paste and something concoction that goes on everything. It's not the traditional Dan Dan Noodles which are much more nutty tasting and thick - it's just really savory, a bit sweet, meaty as hell, and leaves you craving another bowl even though you couldn't stuff another one in.

Fruit:

One of the most common stands is the fruit stand - guavas, pineapple, pickled baby pears, massive Asian pears, apple-pears (seriously tastes like both with a pleasing texture of juicy styrofoam), strawberries (man they're good), and cherry tomatoes stuffed with prunes. They slice it, bag it, shove a few eating toothpicks in it, bag it again, and hand it to you for about $1.50 a fruit serving. While buying the fruit yourself is obviously cheaper, it's still a bargain. There's also fruit juice/smoothie stands and roasted/unroasted (black and white) sugar cane juice. All for like under a buck.

A word of caution - I located some deliciously ripe pink guavas at the Snake Alley night market and the lady poured on some brown looking powder onto my guavas. Turns out, the locals love to have overly salted, fermented prune drenched guavas. I nearly pissed my pants from the horror of discovering this on my first crack at fresh pink guavas (which has always been my favorite flavor of imported fruit nectar). I have since learned better. So next time you're in Taiwan at a night market and want some damn guavas, make sure they don't hit it with shit salt.

Fried Stuff:

They LOVE fried food (who doesn't?) and so of course there is a down right sick array of fried deliciasities. The best so far have been two things prepared the same way: bread-crumby battered assorted mushrooms and pounded chicken cutlets fried crisp and seasoned with Taiwanese pepper (which has that ubiquitous Taiwanese broad bean flavor) and some hot pepper powder. It's shockingly good. We'll leave it at that.

There's also 782 stands at every night market selling fried (and I guess boiled) stinky Chinese tofu. If you're ever here, you will be able to instantly identify it as the completely foreign, and wrong smelling odor.

Everything Else:

There's also bubble tea stands everywhere, oyster omelets, Taiwanese burrito-like objects, corn corn corn (boiled, roasted, salted, candied, over ice, over rice, on it's own, on the cob, in your dumplings, on your face, every-freaking-place-you-go...PS we have way better corn in the States), steak & pasta griddles with fried eggs on top, and more stinky steamed and fried tofu.

In most night markets, you can turn off the main drag to enter the "sketchy-as-fuck" food zone. All your entrails, fish heads, duck heads, steamed-yesterday & been-in-the-zone-all-day shrimp and crab, guts, snakes, wiggling turtles, and of course, the ever present god-knows-what. Seeing as this isn't japan, and all the fish heads look freezer burned, we look, gag at the smell, and proceed to find things that might not eat us once inside of our stomachs.

We're eating large and pounding the pavement hard in Taipei. Next week we're planning to scooter around the island. I'm sure we'll encounter some tasty (if not at least interesting) new regional cuisine to entertain you all with.

-Ben et Nate