Food, Part II

As I've mentioned, some of the things Taiwanese people eat can border on the bizarre to say the least. Last night, I had the opportunity to taste snake soup with chunks of snake meat in the soup. They say snake offers a plethora of health benefits but who cares about that. However, I found the soup and snake meat to be very bland. The red liquid you see is snake blood and the other shot glasses are the different venom produced by the snakes. Yes, I did drink them and once again, kind of bland.



One of my favorite foods is a delicacy called steamed pork's blood rice cake. Yes, it's exactly what it sounds like. It is usually served in a soup or my favorite, on a stick, dipped in a special sauce then rolled in peanut powder and cilantro. It's very, very yummy!



Other street foods I've enjoyed include, BBQ corn, Stinky Tofu, Chinese Pork Sausage, Onion Pancake, Fried Chicken, and Steam Fried Meat Buns.
The corn here is very different from the corn in the States. The kernels are not as soft and not as sweet. When BBQ'd, the corn is not hard but chewy and really good when basted in the Taiwanese BBQ sauce.





The stinky tofu is a traditional dish that is served fried with a side of pickled cabbage. Tangy, savory, and yes, smelly, but delicious. Chinese sausage is sweet and savory, but not salty at all compared to western style sausages. This particular one is served wrapped inside a Chinese Rice sausage.



You can get onion pancake pretty regularly in the States now, but not on a cart in the streets. It just tastes better made in a cart, especially with a fried egg wrapped inside it.



Remember that episode of Seinfeld with the Soup Nazi where Elaine finally tastes the Crab Bisque and is so amazed by it she tells Jerry, "I gotta sit down." Well, that's exactly how I felt when I bit into one of these Steam Fried Meat Buns.



Besides from being extremely tasty, street food is usually pretty cheap. The buns I just mentioned are only 35 cents a piece, yes 35 cents and they're the size of a McDonald's hamburger. A giant corndog costs $1.35. The onion pancake a dollar. Basically, everything I've mentioned costs around a dollar or less. This giant soft serve cone, 33 cents.



Other than street food, I mentioned the food courts in the shopping malls. The selection there isn't as vast as street vendors but it's definitely cleaner and a little pricier. But by no means expensive considering it's in a mall food court. Typical fare is something like this teppen style plate, usually around $4.



And Beef Noodle Soup, which you can also get on the streets. This one was $2.



It's amazing that with these prices, people here are so thin.

With as much as I've been eating, this is usually how I feel by the end of the day.