Northern Taiwan Food & Traditional Cuisine

Taipei is one of the world’s great eating cities, and the reason is historical accident: after 1949 the regional cuisines of the whole of China arrived at once, in one city, alongside a Taiwanese tradition already shaped by Fujian and by fifty years of Japan.

The Taiwanese base is Hokkien in origin — light, slightly sweet, heavy on seafood, sweet potato, pork and braising. The Japanese layer contributed sashimi, tempura, bento and a taste for dashi. The mainland arrivals brought Sichuan, Hunan, Jiangzhe and Shandong cooking, and beef noodle soup was effectively invented in Taiwan by veterans from Sichuan.

What ties it together is the xiaochi tradition — small eats, single-dish specialities sold from a stall or a shop that does one thing and has done it for decades. This is the organising principle of the night market and of Taipei eating generally.

Meals are informal, often eaten standing or at shared tables, and convenience stores are a genuine part of the food culture rather than a fallback.

Beef noodle soup is the city’s defining dish — braised shin in a dark, spiced broth with hand-pulled noodles and pickled mustard greens. Taipei holds an annual competition for the best bowl, and the argument is taken seriously.

Xiao long bao, soup dumplings with a thin pleated skin and hot broth inside, are a Jiangnan dish perfected here; Din Tai Fung began as a Taipei oil shop.

Lu rou fan — minced braised pork belly with soy, spices and often a stewed egg, ladled over rice — is the everyday Taiwanese comfort dish and costs almost nothing.

Oyster omelette, bound with sweet potato starch so it is soft rather than set, with a sweet red sauce, is the night-market classic.

Stinky tofu, fermented and then deep-fried or braised, announces itself from some distance and is much better than it smells.

Also: gua bao, the steamed bun with braised pork belly and peanut powder; pepper buns baked on the wall of a clay oven at Raohe; and bubble tea, invented in Taiwan in the 1980s and now everywhere.

Night markets are the institution. They open around six and run past midnight, and they are where ordinary Taipei eats, shops and spends an evening — not a staged attraction. Each has a character: Shilin is the biggest and busiest, Raohe is a single manageable street with a temple at one end, Ningxia is the one food writers recommend, and Tonghua is where locals go.

The convention is to graze: buy one thing at each stall, eat it standing or walking, and keep moving. Queues mark the good stalls.

Breakfast shops are a separate institution, open from dawn and selling soy milk, shao bing flatbread, egg crepes and fried dough sticks. Fu Hang Dou Jiang has a queue down the stairs every morning.

Convenience stores — 7-Eleven and FamilyMart on almost every corner — sell genuinely decent tea eggs, hot pot and rice balls, and function as a normal part of the food landscape.

Traditional markets like Dihua Street sell dried goods, herbs and Lunar New Year provisions.

Taiwan is not a wine country in the grape sense — the climate is too humid — but northern Taiwan has an unusual and genuine claim in distilling instead.

Kavalan, in Yilan, is the island’s single malt whisky distillery, founded in 2005 and producing whisky that has won major international awards and beaten Scotch in blind tastings. The tropical climate accelerates maturation dramatically, so a Kavalan of a few years has the character of a much older Scotch. The distillery is open to visitors and is a legitimate reason to cross the mountains to Yilan.

Rice wine — mijiu — is the traditional drink and an essential cooking ingredient, particularly in sesame oil chicken. Shaoxing-style wine is made at Puli.

Kaoliang, a fierce sorghum spirit usually around 58 per cent, comes from Kinmen and is the island’s traditional strong drink.

Taiwanese craft beer has grown quickly, and Taipei has a good bar scene for it.