It must be said that on the whole, I'm not a big fan of Taiwanese cuisine. So for that reason, I find myself agreeing with Michael's first comment on this thread. Nevertheless, it got me to wondering: What Taiwanese food DO I like?
The answers are on this short list I threw together. (Which I may add to later if I recall other things.)
Main courses:
1) Steamed fish.
Zhun yu in Mandarin, I believe. Westerners will have to get over the aesthetics of fish being served with head & tail intact. But do that, and you'll find a dish utterly amazing -- hot and tender which melts in the mouth like butter. The very top of my list.
(Image from FoodMayhem.com)
(Caveat: About 10-20% of the time, the restaurant will substitute some kind of cheap, oily fish for the usual one they use. And when that happens, zhun yu is kind of revolting.)
2) Stir-fried prawns with basil or garlic.
I don't know if these count as specifically "Taiwanese" food, but a couple of restaurants in the city of Zhong-li do these really well. I was never disappointed with them.
3) Stir-fried squid.
At least, I think they're squid. Little guys, about 2 1/2 inches long. Nice, salty taste. Not oily, but a bit rubbery at times.
4) Five-flavor octopus.
Thin slices of octopus served on a bed of shredded cabbage. Sweet, salty, sour, and spiced with ginger as well.
This one was hit and miss -- I preferred it on the sweet / sour side, but the restaurants sometimes overpowered it with ginger.
Vegetarian dishes:
1) Pickled cabbage.
When I used to tell my friends in Taiwan that this was my second favorite Taiwanese food, they'd politely point out that pao t'sai, as it's called, is Korean, not Taiwanese.
No, no, I'd say. None of that red, garlic-flavored kim chee for me. I'm talkin' about the Taiwanese kind, sans garlic and with three simple ingredients: cabbage, a few carrot strips, and a sprinkling of chili pepper slices for color and kick.
(Pao t'sai's a real gamble, though. The first time I had it, it was sweet and sour and spicy and incredible. But usually it was unpalatable, being either too bland or too salty. Let the buyer beware.)
(Image from Wikipedia.org)
2) Japanese eggplant in chili sauce with garlic.
Completely changed the way I felt about eggplant. But if I ever find the recipe, I'd cut back on the oil.
Fast food:
1) Deep-fried squid tentacles.
These are about 4 inches long, with some kind of powder sprinkled on them. Superb. About the only Taiwanese fast food that I could stand. (Sorry, all you chicken feet and stinky tofu vendors!)
Desserts:
1) Strawberry rollmop cake from the 85 deg C cafe.
Taiwanese cakes and pastries were usually too bland on my palate to ever be a real temptation. Not so with this one. The cream inside? Made from real berries.
2) Kinmen peanut brittle.
Pretty good. Could be sweeter.
3) Sour green mango slices on sweet ice.
(Probably out of season, but oh man, I wish I were in Taiwan having some of THIS right now . . .)
Miscellaneous:
1) Eggs scrambled with tomato slices & tomato sauce.
Not my absolute favorite, but deserves an honorable mention, nonetheless.
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Postscript: Now that I look at it, this list is longer than I thought it'd be. But since I'm finished "accentuating the positive", it's only fair to point out a couple Taiwanese dishes I used to avoid:
1) Stir-fried chicken with bone fragments.
If there was any truth in advertising, that'd be the name. Apparently, Taiwanese chefs like to take a cleaver to meat on the bone, believing the resulting meat chunks will acquire taste during the cooking process from the tip-of-the-pinky size bones they contain.
Now, this may in fact be true, but the meat also ends up containing an unacceptably high number of tiny bone chips. Which must be murder on dental work and healthy molars alike.
My personal motto while eating out in Taiwan was always, "Just say, 'No,' to broken teeth."
2) Dong Po pork.
Mmmm . . . coronary on a plate. Picture a two-inch thick slab of pork. No -- picture a two-inch deep ocean of corpuscular animal fat, sparsely populated with a few lonely islands of edible brown meat. That's Dong Po pork. One of the first dishes I ever tried in Taiwan; just recalling the experience is enough to provoke a case of psychosomatic angina.
When eating Dong Po pork remember: No matter how carefully you trim it away, you will be eating lots of sickly, translucent, artery-clogging fat. MOUTHFUL upon MOUTHFUL of it.
Best pay close attention to those gag reflexes, diners. Your body is indeed trying to tell you something.
(Image from EatingChina.com)
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UPDATE (Feb 20, 2010): A couple other favorites . . .
1) Hualien aboriginal BBQ pork.
Great smoky flavor. Best pork I've ever had.
2) Small abalone in the shell.
Has a red sauce with a sort of sweet & sour taste. Very nice.
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