Index
Dishes
One page per food. Start with the English name you already know; the Chinese sits in the headline.
Iconic dish
Beef Noodle Soup
牛肉麵
A bowl of wheat noodles in a soy-and-spice broth, with beef that should pull apart with chopsticks — Taiwan’s unofficial national dish, and not a night-market snack.
Drink
Bubble Tea
珍珠奶茶
Milk tea with chewy tapioca pearls, born in Taichung in the 1980s and now the drink Taiwan exported to the rest of the world.
Iconic dish
Lu Rou Fan
滷肉飯
Minced or sliced pork belly braised in soy, spooned over rice — the everyday Taiwanese lunch, and the dish that tells you more about a kitchen than any tasting menu.
Snack
Stinky Tofu
臭豆腐
Fermented tofu, usually fried to a crisp shell, with a smell that walks ahead of the stall — the night-market food visitors fear and then finish.
Iconic dish
Xiaolongbao
小籠包
Soup dumplings — a thimble of hot broth sealed inside a pleated wrapper, famous in Taipei even though the idea came from Jiangnan.