Does San Francisco need an izakaya??

Hi everyone, I received an email from an SF State grad student doing research on the potential market for an Izakaya restaurant in the city. She is giving away two $25 Amazon.com gift certificates, but more importantly, her research just might bring us a new restaurant!

Help a sister out: take her survey here

Taiwan Pt. III: National Palace Museum Nightmarket

Part three of the Taipei series.

Day 3: 2 am
Continuing on with the biggest Taipei nightmarket just outside the National Palace Museum.

Variations of fried everything.


Not quite sure what this was...but some kind of fish cake/starchy dough thing


Topped with seaweed flakes and sweet sauce


Screw: a continuous potato chip circling around a stick


Ice cream, chopped nuts "burrito"


Interesting shirt


A wrap with stir fried veggies, nuts, and other eclectic things


The eponymous fried tofu


Making a stop for my favorite thing in life


Fresh squid - seemingly an abundance in Taipei, which is a major squid fishing port


You can literally find anything on skewers. Chicken anuses my friend. Yeah you read that right.


Balls of dough being cooked in oven


More tofu


Some doughy-eggy flaky fried pancake. So good.


Big chunk of pork


Servsafe certified too



Day 4: 8 am

After eating all that street food at 2 am, we wake up the next day bright and early for breakfast. A local specialty, clam soup with vegetables in clear broth.


Marinated pork and cucumbers in flaky dough sesame wrap


Salad

Continuing on our nonstop gluttonous parade, we headed over to King of Curry for some Japanese curry. For $20 US, we got an individual set lunch including: salad, soup, wings, main entree, and dessert. I love Taiwan.


Fruit salad


Vegetable soup


Mushroom soup


Curry wings - some of the best wings I've had. Juicy, tender succulent, and most importantly, drowned in curry.


A pot of chicken curry


Omurice - fried rice wrapped inside an omelet, with beef curry


The omelet itself was so soft and smooth, just cooked and nearly runny.


Cheesecake


"Cheese" - a soft cheese jello with some fruit juice. Weird and not too appetizing

Taiwan Pt. II: 鼎泰豐 Din Tai Fung, More Street Food

I have finalized my Spring Break plans - and will be traveling to London, Amsterdam, Brussels, and Paris! We are in the itinerary planning stage, so any restaurant suggestions are welcome.


After dinner, we all decided that we should have Taiwan's most famous beverage - bubble tea, or boba, tapioca, pearls, etc. etc. The bulbous drink finds its roots in Taiwan, and has since proliferated all over Asia as well as North America. Shown here are 3 large ass mugs of the drink - a foot tall, at least. There is a lot of variety on the menu, and I proceeded to order the jasmine green tea with aloe vera. Cleansing and astringent, slightly sweet with strong, bitter tea flavor. I like.


Buttered toast. Too full to really enjoy anything at that point.


The next day, we were set to go to lunch w/ T's family at Din Tai Fung, the world famous soup dumpling (xiaolongbao) restaurant. I had blogged about it previously when we visited the satellite store in Los Angeles, and likewise, this original store had a huge line of patrons awaiting dumplings.


A vegan appetizer with soy protein and mushrooms


Another vegan appetizer with vermicelli and soy protein


Shrimp and pork dumplings


I was not expecting it to be juicy. The skin was wonderfully thin and elastic.


Broiled, peppered pork.


Herbal chicken soup, which you pour on:


Noodles.


The prized soup dumplings themselves


Dumplings with glutinous rice


Snowpea shoots


Dessert: pasty taro dumplings

After that very rich and satisfying lunch, we proceeded to the National Palace Museum for art and things. All I know about this museum, which houses the biggest collection of Asian art in the world, is that it has two pieces that look like food. Apparently, these two highly prized pieces were excavated from the Forbidden City.


The "meat-shaped stone", a piece of agate, the strata of which are cleverly used to create a likeness of a piece of pork cooked in soy sauce. - Wikipedia

Yum.


The "Jade Cabbage", a piece of jade carved into the shape of a head of cabbage, with two insects attached. The fame attached to this piece is due to the masterful utilisation of natural colour variations in the jade to recreate colour variations in the cabbage. - Wikipedia


What got me even more excited was the proximity of the museum to the biggest Taipei nightmarket. Very crowded, as you can see.


Candied fruits


A big vat of oil to fry popcorn chicken


A vendor flipping dough to make Indian style wraps. A naan-like dough is freshly baked inside a clay oven, then topped with your choice of marinated beef, pork, or chicken, then finished with yogurt or curry. SO GOOD.


A stand literally named "Very big fried chicken"


A deep fried pocket of meet and vegetables. Very "hot air"


Skewers


Japanese style doriyaki


..And more doriyaki


Japanese style fish balls with egg and cuttlefish


Topped off with fish flakes and a sweet sauce. Delicious.

Part III

鼎泰豐 Din Tai Fung
194 Xinyi Rd., Section 2
Taipei City