Thursday, February 28, 2008

Taipei Trips

At the request of my beloved wife I will post a few things about Taiwan. First post is about food. Besides - that's the first thing people usually ask about.

A lot of what I eat in Taipei is good. Though it took a while to develop the taste for it. (About 2 years to be precise!)

Dragon Fruit is wonderful (taste and texture) AND exciting to look at.








I have found that I love shrimp in almost any dish.
But NOT raw shrimp!!!! They have tricky shrimp that are orange when they are raw (not the common blue-when-raw - orange-when-cooked shrimp). The flavor might actually be good but I was overwhelmed by the gooiness of the texture and the notable features in this photo - black eyeballs and green-brain-goo. Yikes I need some Taiwan Beer just thinking about it!!


They have a killer dish that has tempura shrimp with pinapple-and-mayonaise sauce. Yum. They insist on putting colored sprinkles on it - gotta be cutsie.

You can always find something good in the "lunchboxes".


Oolong tea is wonderful - the best tea! - if made right - light, slightly sweet aftertaste, yum! It is very bitter when made wrong - and no amount of sugar can help fix it.
Zak, the best oolong tea maker I have encountered is trying to instruct me in the art.


The stinky tofu is not something I want to have every day. But if you are ever challenged to eat it there are two things you should know: 1) It smells a lot worse than it tastes. and 2) you really DON'T want to know how it is made.

I really do like sushi. But have learned that you should eat it toward the beginning of a meal rather than when you are already mostly full. Thankfully, the nauseating results were never seen by the world... but only just.

I tried Sea Urchin eggs/roe just this last visit. They came around the resturaunt on a little conveyor - which was fun. They looked great! They didn't taste good. Maybe this is why:



- ouch!


Raw lobster is good but I wish they wouldn't be so instistant on demonstrating the "freshness" by putting the still moving head on the table.

And I was relieved to find out that they don't serve actual people despite what the sign may say!


And yes I ate this fish eyeball:

but none of this meat:

or these cute little guys:



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