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

Knees en place

[Ben sez] Dateline Taipei: Ben et Nate are invading a second island nation with plans to lay siege to any and all culinary establishments they can find.

We stepped off the plane, breezed through customs, and while waiting for our bus to downtown Taipei got a bottle of tea from a vending machine. It is no exaggeration to say that Taiwan is the tea capitol of the world, even the vending machine tea is phenomenal which is amazing considering the quality of products that drop with a resounding thud from the crap-dispensers in the states.

Thus far our view of Taipei has been shaded by the fact that Chines e New Year has turned this city into a veritable ghost town. Despite this fact we've been able to experience a small sampling of street vendor food and even find a couple of restaurants to eat at. One of the few open establishments was a Chinese place specializing in prawns but also featuring such culinary delights as Lamb Knees.

Lamb knees, sounds delicious, right? Right. You know something is going on when a meat dish shows up at your table with plastic straws laying on the service platter. While we gnawed at the flesh on the outside of the knees we pondered these plastic straws, soon realizing (to everyones delight) that they were provided to facilitate the removal of marrow from bone.

[Nate sez] If y'all aren't clued into this hip scene - marrow is the shit. Period. I don't really believe in aphrodisiacs - HOWEVER, I was severely turned on by the putting of really good lamb/soy/chili/garlic leek broth into the bone, mashing up the marrow with said sauce with plastic straw, and then sucking it up like a kid getting every last drop out of his soda.

To note: though the French have a special marrow fork and have historically been marrow freaks (as are all people who spend time making stock), but I really think the straw/lamb/sauce thing is one of the singly sexiest things available on the planet. I had to wash my hands thoroughly after this meal.

Oh, and the shrimp was really good too.

Korean Road Rules vs The Nate's World

[nate sez]: Okay, so here I am, minding my own business, walking down the street at my usual frenetic pace ranting and raving about some crazy thing we ate, or wondering aloud whether we should or shouldn't eat dog in Korea, and what the ethical implications of that are, when from behind our nice stride on the sidewalk, a goddamn scooter swerves around us and blazes down the sidewalk.

THE SIDEWALK!

Following my enraged curses and streams of profanity in every single language I could muster, the same damn thing happened again! Apparently, in Seoul, where the people are very nice and helpful, and the pace of life rather easy and smooth, it is completely acceptable - no, in fact common freaking practice - for meat-headed scooter freaks to weave in and out of pedestrian traffic ON THE SIDEWALK even when there is perfectly enough room for them on the massive boulevard which they are avoiding.

Due to the fact that this has happened no less than 17 times during our short stay in Seoul, we may in fact, have to have a hearty bowl of puppy chow and raise our Soju glasses to Lassie stew, simply because of the sidewalk riding, homicidal scooter wielding maniacs. It doesn't have to make sense, I just feel that something needs to be done.

Meow... I mean woof... I mean dinner.

Chic Korea OR Seoul Train

Ben (and vicariously Nate) here. Checking in from Seoul, South Korea, where it's cold and windy.. almost makes me miss the weather in Minneapolis.

Almost.

We got into Busan on the 8th and spent a few days wandering around the shopping and eating districts doing exciting things like shopping and eating. Most notable dishes were a giant kalbi set (aka yaki niku, aka a bunch of meat you cook over a fire at your table), one of the best waffles ever, and pickled pigs feet salad.

Kalbi: Wandering through the streets of Busan we found ourselves outside a restaurant filled with people, from which wafted the sweet aroma of meats cooking over an open flame. Given that a packed restaurant is the international sign of a good meal, we decided to investigate. Walking around the front we noticed that there was another restaurant across the street with the exact same sign, across another street was a third restaurant. Three of the same kalbi restaurant at one intersection, all packed with people: definitely a sign of good food to come.

We sat down, looked at the menu and pointed to the cheapest set 22,000\ for what turned out to be more food than we could dream of eating: chicken, pork, marinated beef, and a platter of seafood the size of a small city.

Waffle: Street food strikes deep at our hearts and stomachs with its sweet, sweet dagger of deliciousness. One of the best waffles either of us has ever had was found in the middle of an intersection of one of the pedestrian areas. Relatively thin, this waffle was crisp and lightly browned on the outside (for that sweet caramelized flavor) but still soft on the inside. If a sweet waffle batter was not enough, a thick whip cream is spread onto one side, then citrus honey slathered on top of that. Fold the waffle in half and wrap it in a napkin, that's it.

Waffleman creams (and honeys) the waffle, then we cream (and possibly honey) our pants.


And on a slightly less delicious note - Pickled Pigs Feet Salad:

Having followed the lesson from the packed Kalbi joint, we walked up to a full restaurant that we otherwise knew nothing about hoping that a good meal would be found inside; the pictures outside looked good enough, some sort of meat salad (and we all know growing boys like us need to eat our vegetables).
Through the normal routine of pointing at the characters in the menu that matched those on the picture outside we got a wide variety of pickles and soup delivered to our table along with a massive, meat-topped salad. The server put on plastic gloves, poured on the dressing and started mixing the delicious-looking meal.
After a couple bites we found ourselves wondering, "What is this strange cut of meat?" After a couple more bites Nate sat back and said "Hmm.. I think it's pigs feet. It's got that nasty, formaldehyde, gelatinous, and satisfyingly chewy skin."

Pigs feet. Pickled pigs feet to be specific. After a few more minutes of eating I was pretty sure that whatever pickling agent was used on the pigs feet was also attempting to preserve my stomach in a similar fashion. Needless to stay I wasn't a big fan of the pickled pigs feet scene, I was nearly on the verge of painting the sidewalk a nice shade of pigs feet on the way home, but was able to contain my "enthusiasm" over such pickled porcine parks.

Besides the stomach ache that I had for the next 24 hours I managed to survive the pigs feet, but I don't think I'll be going back for more anytime soon. According to a friend of Nate's we went to the single best pigs feet restaurant in Korea, so at least I know I had the best and hated it.

That's the news from Korea - for now. We're headed for Taiwan in a few days to hopefully get our hands on some Chinese food and maybe a bowl or two of noodles. Hope everyone is having a good time in our absence and eating some good food. The beer here sucks, so drink a good one for us, just don't tell us about it or we'll be really jealous.