金花吐司專賣 (Golden Flower), Hanzhong Street @ Wanhua District, Taipei

Breakfast at Golden Flower (195 Hanzhong Street, Wanhua District, Taipei). This shop is kinda known for their toasts/sandwiches which are a couple of steps up from those at the traditional breakfast spots. Some of their sandwiches sounded interesting.

Like this one with tuna, lemon curd, cheese and egg. Like the Koreans, there seem to be a sweet element to their savoury food. That's icing sugar on top of the sandwich if you didn't notice. Couldn't taste the lemon curd but it was a nice tuna sandwich.

Their lava cheese with pork and peanut butter tasted like the ingredient described.

There's another one with taro, meat floss and condensed milk. The taro paste was chilled. Sweetness came through from icing sugar and condensed milk. That being said, it wasn't as sweet as it sounded/appeared.

Almond milk as an alternative to the usual tea/coffee because the usual tea/coffee around appear to be weak and diluted. This was not bad.

What's also cool about this shop was that they provided plastic gloves to navigate the mess their sandwiches tend to make. 👍🏼

Ningxia Night Market (寧夏夜市)

Ningxia Night Market (Ningxia Road, Datong District, Taipei) this time. This was so much smaller than the one at Raohe. It also appeared to be much more packed in the small main street.

Got this mung/green beans smoothie thingy near the entrance of the market. Nice. There's loads of mashed mung/green bean packed into the cup.

Tried something called zhi gao fan (知高飯) which was basically a small rice bowl with some braised pork trotter, bamboo shoots and an egg. Pretty good. The other bowl was dan bao xia ren tang (蛋包蝦仁湯) - basically soup with egg and prawns. Yes, those orange things were prawns coated in some flour.

Giant chunky chicken skewers. Not unique to this market but we've seen them a number of times and decided to just get them to see if they were like what we imagined. These were flavoured with salt and turmeric as far as we could tell.

Was a major pain moving through the street of this night market. It was an experience for sure, one that I do not care to repeat.

爆漿大貢丸-迪化店, Dihua Street @ Datong District, Taipei

Pitstopped here (No. 13, Section 1, Dihua Street, Datong District, Taipei) for some local bites.

Chilled beancurd with grated peanuts.

Lu rou fan here was much more enjoyable than the one from Raohe market. I attribute it to the flavour intensity of the sauce.

Taiwanese sausage with tobiko. Couldn't taste those eggs but could feel them pop in between the teeth.

Crispy milk donuts in Taipei

These fried donuts topped with milk powder are apparently a thing in recent times.

Dough was the first stall that we happened across. We got a batch freshly fried and I loved them. Crunchy surfaced fried bread with the milk powder just worked.

Tried another one from Curly Mama's. Bread was a noticeably more dense and the flavour from the milk powder didn't taste as apparent. Dough beats this.

The one with plenty of hype came from 一脆鲜奶脆皮甜甜圈 which we found in Ximending. Or at least that's what I think the stall's called. Lacked the milkiness from the powder. In our opinion, not as nice as Dough but it has the longest queue because social media.

Ramen Makotoya, Zhongshan North Road @ Zhongshan District, Taipei

Came across Ramen Makotoya (No. 142, Minsheng West Road, Datong District, Taipei) by chance and was intrigued by their gyukotsu ramen which appeared to be a specialty. From what I gathered, the ramen-ya originates from Fukushima, Osaka.

Kaki frys had a nice crispy crust which wasn't excessively oily. Oysters were pretty good quality. Wished they were bigger though. 😬 

Gyozas were ordinary and had the textbook flavours. While it meant on one hand that they were competently done, they were also kinda boring. 😅

The milky broth of their gyukotsu was intriguing. There was a discernible beefiness and butteriness in it with undertones of mushrooms. Yeah, that mushroom-y element was pretty integral to the flavour. 

Overall, nicely done bowl. Wished the noodles were harder but otherwise, enjoyed it. If anyone was wondering, those charshu disintegrated in the mouth.

Not a fan of their shoyu bowl which I found to be too sweet. All that sweetness from the cabbage made it taste Chinese.

Their charshu don looked pretty ordinary. It was delicious in that ordinary sense with the sweet caramelized cubes of tender charshu, a richness from the molten yolk of the egg and the negi to cut through all of those. 

Once you've mixed in the pureed garlic (which you can request for) and a splash of gyoza white vinegar, this became addictively moreish. Outstanding. 👍🏼

巨林美而美, Yitong Street @ Zhongshan District, Taipei

Breakfasts at 巨林美而美 (No. 127, 1 Yitong Street, Zhongshan District, Taipei). 'Breakfasts' because we came here more than once.

We had sandwiches with 3 meats. Custom order not from their menu.

Dan bing with onion. This sorta reminded me of prata.

Radish cake. Not bad tasting. Like the crusty surface.

Bacon, cheese and chocolate sandwich. Not bad tasting. Also obviously not on their menu.

Peanut butter, egg and bacon sandwich. Another custom order. Peanut butter's a little thin.

Coffee's from a machine. Not the old school kind I thought this stall would have. A little thin for my blood for morning coffee.

Tea was likewise thin. Don't think they use milk here as well. Maybe creamer.

A few days later......

Tuna, bacon and egg sandwich. Custom order. The tuna seemed to be a little sweet but otherwise tasted like how I imagined it.

Radish cake with chilli. That chilli packed a bit of punch from the both heat and garlic. This combination with a molten yolk fried egg rocked.

Another time......

Ham, cheese, fried egg and strawberry jam. I could barely taste the ham or cheese.