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Taiwanese food through mainlander eyes.

I just finished reading the amazing Chinese magazine “Restaurant Review”. The standard of the images, texts, interviews, is equal or above any similar magazine I’ve stumbled upon before. This reassures me that if the Chinese were allowed to voice themselves freely, then I’m sure the creative industry would bloom as well. But that’s sort of a sidetrack of what I’m getting at.

This particular issue has Taiwan as a special feature, “Eat Taiwan”, which gives a funny and pretty striking description that portrays both Taiwan and the Chinese perception of wealth at the same time. The intro piece about Taipei starts of describing how hard it is to pinpoint what is so interesting and nice about Taipei, or as they put it “there is no forbidden city, there is no national museum but still…”. The magazine continues by establishing that in Taipei, you can’t tell from the outside if a restaurant is good or not, you just look at how many people are sitting there eating. The writer states in naive astonishment that: “you can’t look at what the people selling food are dressed like, even if they are dripping with sweat they might just have gotten home from studying abroad in the US”. Very true indeed. And for someone from the mainland with little experience of leaving the middle kingdom, it will indeed be surprising to see that someone who is rather wealthy still can be modest, and look like a commoner. 

This “paradox” actually counts for all of Taipei. The whole Taiwanese capital city can hardly be accused of being beautiful, but has a rather abstract beauty that lies in people, food, atmosphere. I’ve taken tons of photos during this trip, but I felt disappointed every time i looked at the photo. How can a photograph capture the atmosphere of a steaming night market and a thousand smells hitting you like an unexpected and violent hug? It’s quite impossible to describe, since it has to be seen, lived and smelled. 

I will, however, tell you this. Taiwan has the best street food that I have ever encountered in Asia, better than Vietnam, China, Thailand and Japan. The climate on the island makes it possible to grow almost anything, and it’s vicinity to the sea means that the fish is extremely fresh as well. What you are offered on the street is a sort of golden best, greatest hits of tons of asian food, but with the BEST and most fresh ingredients, better than anything that the chemical-ridden mainland could ever cough up. Go there! :~]