Raohe Night Market

Raohe is one street. That is the virtue. You enter under the incense of Ciyou Temple, you walk east, you hit the other end, you turn around and eat whatever you skipped. Compared with Shilin, there are fewer opportunities to get geographically depressed.

The market sits in Songshan, a part of Taipei that still feels like a neighborhood at dusk — scooter repair, temple courtyard, then a sudden wall of fryer noise.

The bun at the gate

Fuzhou pepper buns (hu jiao bing) from the stall at the temple entrance are the reason half the line exists. They are baked in a clay oven, pork and scallion and enough white pepper to clear your head, a sesame crust that flakes onto your shirt. The wait is real on weekends. It is worth it once. It is not worth it if you are already hungry enough to be rude.

Pay, step aside, eat it standing. It leaks. That is correct.

How to walk it

Cash helps. Weeknights after 7 p.m. are the sweet spot: enough heat in the stalls, not yet a shoulder-to-shoulder shuffle. Herbal pork rib soup is the bowl to sit down for if you can find a stool; it tastes medicinal in a way Taiwanese night markets like, which is to say comforting rather than spa.

Stinky tofu here is a reliable second act. Save something cold — taro balls, a fruit stall — for the walk back to the MRT. You will want it.

If you only have one night-market night in Taipei and you do not enjoy getting lost, come here instead of Shilin. You will still get the lights, the smell of sugar and drain and chili, and a bun that justifies the taxi.