A taste of Taipei

The Taiwanese seem besotted with food. The National Palace Museum in Taipei has almost 700,000 objects in its collection, but the most popular two items are a piece of jade that looks like a pak choi cabbage and a stone which resembles a slice of pork belly. You can judge a nation by what it treasures most — and we only had three days in Taipei, so we decided to let the city’s culinary life dominate our experience.

My boyfriend Ed and I arrived at night — hungry and awake. Unlike Bangkok, where we had just flown from, Taipei seemed to be a sleepy city. On a side street, away from the comfort of the Mandarin Oriental, we found a restaurant serving something. It was unclear what, but we ordered two bowls. What arrived was a Chinese-style hot pot with noodles sunken beneath the dark broth. The man on the next-door table started laughing at us, but we were too famished to care why. Whatever we were eating tasted good and filled us up. ‘Lin’s Family Lamb Furnace’ turned out to be the restaurant’s name. It only served lamb dishes.

The following day, we visited ‘Addiction Aquatic Development’ market. Colossal crabs and giant mussels greeted us. Women sat on little wooden stools rolling up fish flakes into balls. Bulbous white bits of meat hung down from shop counters. Cows ovaries, we were told. At the end of the market was a barbecue stall where younger people hung out, listening to jazz and Taiwanese pop, while sipping on sweet potato milk and picking at rosy slices of Japanese-style sushi.