Monday, December 15, 2008

Cheap-Ass Lunches in Taiwan

One of the best things about Asia is the abundance of restaurants and vendors serving tasty, cheap-ass food. These places are especially good to hit up for lunch because they serve the food quickly and earnestly, wasting no time on social pleasantries or the rattling-off of daily specials. Usually, each vendor specializes in dishes focusing around a main ingredient (i.e. beef noodle soup, roasted duck, etc). If only more restaurants with the same business plan existed for us here in the US.

From the wet market:
Ba wan: kind of like a savory mochi filled with ground pork, ginger, mushrooms, and topped with gravy



From a noodle soup place:
Beef noodle soup with tendon. The noodles were handmade and thus had marvelous toothfeel, the Taiwanese word for which is "kiu."


From a pork restaurant:


Top to bottom: homemade Chinese sausage (xiang chang); stewed ground pork (kou rou); pork chop and rice with pickled greens (pai gu fan)


From a duck vendor:



Top to bottom: duck soup with Chinese herbs; sauteed duck intestines with bean sprouts and scallion

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